IT NEWS

Agent Tesla is a well-known data stealer written in .NET that has been active since 2014 and is perhaps one of the most popular payloads observed in malspam campaigns.

While looking for threats targeting Ukraine, we identified a group we call “Nigerian Tesla” that has been dabbling into phishing and other data theft activities for a number of years. Ironically, one of the main threat actors seemingly compromised his own computer with an Agent Tesla binary.

In this blog, we expose some of the activities from a scammer who started off with classic advance-fee schemes and is now successfully running Agent Tesla campaigns. In the past two years, this threat actor was able to collect close to a million credentials from his victims.

Spam campaign

Our investigation started with an email targeting titled Остаточний платіж.msg (Ukrainian for Final payment.msg). It contained a link to a file sharing site that downloads an archive containing an executable file.

This executable is actually an Agent Tesla stealer, capable of exfiltrating data in multiple ways, though most commonly using SMTP. The technique is really simple as it only requires an email account that sends messages to itself containing stolen credentials for each victim that executed the malware on their computer.

Test successful!

The attacker sent a number of messages containing the body “Test successful!” from the same machine. Those emails should have been deleted for obvious reasons but this threat actor did not and leaked his own IP address allowing us to locate them in Lagos, Nigeria.

These messages are checks done by the threat actor to make sure communication with Agent Tesla is configured properly. This is typical and is often described in hacking forums where users ask for help with the ‘software’.

There were an additional 26 emails sent from the same IP address that weren’t test emails but came from a real Agent Tesla execution. We don’t know exactly how, but the attacker managed to infect his own machine.

Here is a list containing some of the services that the Nigerian Tesla threat actor used:

• PerfectMoney
• Glassdoor signupanywhere (could be a source to get victims emails)
• omail.io (service for extracting emails)
• warzone.ws (Warzone RAT)
• worldwiredlabs (NetWire RAT)
• le-vpn.com and bettervpn.com zenmate.com tigervpn hotvpn (VPN provider)
• securitycode.eu cassandra.pw (Code Protector)
• esco.pw (office document protection)
• monovm hostwinds.com firevps dynu 4server.su (VPS and dedicated servers)
• dnsomatic.com cloudns.net (DNS services)
• spam-lab.su
• filesend.io 4shared (hosting files)
• avcheck.net (offline av test)
• bitshacking.com
• archive.org (used like cloud storage)
• xss.is hackforums.net exploit.in
• titan.email (.pw accounts, various scams)

Rita Bent, Lee Chen and John Cooper are some of the names that have been used in the past along with dozens of different email accounts with passwords containing the string ‘1985’. The following image shows the activity from user rita398 in hackforums asking about Esco Crypter:

In that case, we see Rita complaining about some RDP suspension that happened eventually to one of his registered domains.

The following email accounts were used in various phishing and data stealing operations:

• along.aalahajirazak.ibrahim@gmail.com
• administracion@romexpert.es
• administracioneforce@eforce.es
• soceanwave244@gmail.com
• barristeradamssetien@gmail.com
• catalinafuster@palmaprocura.com
• david01smith@yandex.com
• davidsmith.ntx31@yandex.com
• davids27smith@yandex.com
• elisabet.valenti@ag.barymont.com
• gestor3@afectadosvolkswagenabogados.com
• info@borrellacerrajeros.com
• info@crmarismas.org
• info@cristaleriagandia.com
• infogestinsur@grupogestinsur.com
• instalaciones@gopamar.com
• isabel@grupoatu.com
• m.lopez@forestadent.es
• nacho@alasvigilnevot.com
• restaurante@elsecretodechimiche.com
• soceanwave244@gmail.com
• tienda@di-tempo.com
• torremolinos3@copiplus.es
• v.reino@gooddental.es
• victor@sugesol.com
• vives@viveselectricitat.com

Based on these profiles, we can see this threat actor has an extensive criminal record starting at least from 2014. Back then, they performed classic scams under the Rita Bent moniker.

One of their preferred scams was phishing for Adobe login pages. We have records indicating that several Adobe fake pages were deployed from 2015 until recently. Landing pages looked like the following:

Fast forward to 2020, and the threat actor has graduated to malware distributor. He protects his binaries with the Cassandra Protector obfuscator and then checks them against AVcheck[.]net.

Who is behind these attacks?

The threat actor shared photos of himself back in 2016 and for some reason forgot about them.

E.K. was born in 1985 according to his driver license. Remember that 1985 was used in a lot of passwords collected from accounts that conducted these illegal activities.

At the moment, we do not have much information about other members in the team. But E. K. seems to be the most relevant figure, at least the one who started the scheme.

From 419 scams to Agent Tesla

Nigerian Tesla stole more than 800,000 different credentials from about 28,000 victims. This shows how simple and yet effective running one of these campaigns can be. In this case we see an interesting evolution from a threat actor that was performing the classic advance-fee scam (419 scam) before moving into the malware distribution world, more or less for the same end goal.

Malwarebytes users are protected against Agent Tesla. We detect this sample as Spyware.Password.Stealer.

The post Nigerian Tesla: 419 scammer gone malware distributor unmasked appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The FBI has released a public service announcement regarding the ever-present threat of Business Email Compromise (BEC). This comes hot on the heels of an earlier release from the Las Vegas FBI department in April. Losses continue to mount, and we’re currently facing a scam racking up domestic and international losses of $43 billion.

What is Business Email Compromise?

BEC attacks, also known as CEO/CFO fraud, is financial in nature and targets organisations of all sizes The basic game plan is to pretend to be someone at executive level, and then convince an employee to help them wire funds outside of the company. Loss numbers are frequently significant, and it’s a very appealing tactic for scammers looking to get rich quick.

As the FBI points out, the goal is not always a direct fund transfer:

One variation involves compromising legitimate business email accounts and requesting employees’ Personally Identifiable Information, Wage and Tax Statement (W-2) forms, or even cryptocurrency wallets.

With any foothold gained inside the organisation, BEC attempts which run into frustration can potentially pivot into other areas of attack as we’ll mention later. With so many avenues of approach, it’s no wonder BEC attracts the attention of law enforcement at the highest levels.

The FBI BEC numbers game

• $43 billion vanished between June 2016 and December 2021. There were 241,206 domestic and international incidents between those two dates.
• The FBI observed a 65% increase in losses suffered between July 2019 and December 2021, which feels like a significant ramp-up.
• The overwhelming number of organisations filing victim complaints to the IC3 between October 2013 and December 2021 were based in the US.

The report goes into more detail, but the short version is that US organisations are suffering quite a bit from this type of attack. It’s possible that BEC still isn’t as well known as it should be. It’s also possible that the pandemic has contributed to a lack of funds for appropriate security measures and training for employees. Whatever the reason, we’ve definitely reached the part where alarm bells are ringing loud and clear.

The rise of cryptocurrency in BEC fraud

As with so many forms of online criminal activity, law enforcement is noticing an increase in cryptocurrency use. This area of concern is particularly fascinating, first identified in BEC attacks in 2018 and continuing to build through to 2021 with just over $40m in exposed losses. This will almost certainly continue to increase. No BEC fraudster will turn down the chance of fast transactions easily made online with a degree of anonymity attached to the process. Here’s what the FBI has to say about some of the cryptocurrency tactics deployed:

The IC3 tracked two iterations of the BEC scam where cryptocurrency was utilized by criminals. A direct transfer to a cryptocurrency exchange (CE) or a “second hop” transfer to a CE. In both situations, the victim is unaware that the funds are being sent to be converted to cryptocurrency.

6 tips to avoid BEC scams

1. Your business should have an approved method for money transfers and anything of a financial nature. If cash goes out of the organisation in any way, it has to stick to the process. Deviating under any circumstance is a tiny gap in your armour that could prove fatal. “We only did it one time” often results in “We just lost a terrifying amount of money somehow”. Urgent same-day requests for wire transfers? Head straight to the page which hopefully insists upon no urgent same-day wire transfer requests ever.
2. Some form of authentication to confirm your CEO/CFO is pulling the money-lever for real should be in place. Phone conversations are great for this. Any accounts tied to exec level should also have some form of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) attached to it whether or not there’s financial activity involved. Email accounts? Internal logins? Anything at all? App-based authentication or a physical hardware token is the way to go. Sometimes attackers aren’t just spoofing real emails, they’re compromising them to send money requests too. Authentication will go a long way to ward this threat off.
3. You can’t realistically hide who your executives are from the world at large. One way or another, they’re going to be on an “About Us” page. Limit the amount of data exposure. Consider placing generic “catch-all” email addresses on the contact page. It doesn’t have to be their actual, personal email address. Don’t tell everyone on social media that the CEO is on vacation for a week, or even just travelling. When people targeted by BEC scams are potentially hard to get hold of, BEC fraudsters will likely strike.
4. Email security plays a big part in cutting these attacks off at source. Deactivate accounts belonging to former employees, especially if they were part of the exec team: Malicious activity is a feature of old, abandoned addresses. Rules for suspicious looking emails coming into the organisation and also being sent around internally should be made use of. Any form of digital authentication/digital signatures to verify the sender will also help. Prominent “external sender” flags on mails are very handy tools to cut down on mail imitation.
5. If the BEC tactics aren’t working, the attacker could decide to switch to malware instead. Emails from random addresses containing attachments such as fake invoices should be quarantined, especially when mail security tools detect potential keywords or phrases related to BEC indicators. Boobytrapped Excel sheets, for example, are one of the mainstays of ransomware compromise. Don’t dodge the BEC bullet only to be taken down by file encryption on a massive scale instead.
6. Tell employees that it’s totally fine to question requests for payment or money transfer, especially if totally out of the blue. Even more so if it’s not something they’d have any involvement in. Why is the CEO asking someone in building maintenance to help them wire $30,000 through Hong Kong at 3 in the morning?

The challenge of BEC compromise

This is clearly a tricky problem to get to grips with, or else the FBI wouldn’t be publishing multiple alerts and public service announcements about it. The ever-increasing losses speak for themselves. The slowly growing relevance of cryptocurrency to BEC attacks paints a stark picture of where this tactic is headed. Try to implement as many of the tips above as possible.

Most importantly, don’t be pressured into sending money without doing some additional digging first. It may well prove to be one of the smartest work decisions you’ll ever make.

The post The $43 billion Business Email Compromise threat 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.

April 2022 was most notable for the emergence of three new ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) groups—Onyx, Mindware, and Black Basta—as well as the unwelcome return of REvil, one of the world’s most notorious and dangerous ransomware operations.

An old enemy returns

REvil (aka Sodinokibi) first appeared in May 2020 and has been responsible for numerous high-profile ransomware attacks, including arguably the biggest ransomware attack of all time—a supply-chain attack on Kaseya VSA in July 2021 that is thought to have affected over 1,000 businesses.

REvil disappeared shortly after the Kaseya attack, only to emerge again a few months later, before being forced offline on October 21, 2021, by a multi-country operation. A string of arrests followed, and then in January—in an act of unprecedented co-operation—Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had dismantled the REvil group and charged its members, thanks to the information provided by the USA.

REvil now seems to have returned to the fray with new payloads, and a new leak blog displaying a mixture of new victims and old victims known to have been attacked by REvil.

New gangs emerge

Black Basta made a name for itself very quickly by coming out of nowhere and carrying out at least eleven successful breaches in April 2022. That ability to perform so many attacks so quickly has led some to speculate that Black Basta is a re-brand of an existing group that already has affiliates.

Onyx is a new ransomware gang based on the old Chaos builder. At first, some suspected that Onyx may be a wiper rather than ransomware because it destroyed files larger than 2MB instead of encrypting them. It seems likely that this behavior is the result of a bug in the notoriously poorly-written ransomware builder though.

Another newly-emerged gang is Mindware, which appears to have started operations in mid-March using a well-known ransomware strain called SFile2 (aka Escal)—but it was not until April that it began to practice “double extortion”, where data is stolen before it’s encrypted so that victims are faced with the twin threats of data they can’t decrypt, and leaks of sensitive information.

Ransomware attacks in April 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.

Attacks by ransomware type

Despite its rapid start, the activities of Black Basta and the other newly-emerged types of ransomware were dwarfed in April by three established threats: LockBit, Conti, and AlphV, which made up 60 percent of all the known breaches in our analysis.

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.

The post Ransomware: April 2022 review appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

The wacky world of ape jpegs are at the heart of yet another increasingly bizarre internet scam, which contains malware, stolen accounts, a faint possibility of phishing, and zips full of ape pictures.

The Ape Executives have a job offer you can, and must, refuse

Lots of people with art profiles on social media in Japan and elsewhere have reported messages from people claiming to be from the “Cyberpunk Ape Executives”. These messages promoted some sort of upcoming project related to both cyberpunk and apes.

Users on several sites including DeviantArt and Pixiv were sent identical missives from a variety of accounts:

“We appreciate your artwork…”

The messages received by these artists reads as follows:

Hi! We appreciate your artwork! Cyberpunk Ape Executives is inviting 2D-artists (online / freelance) to collaborate in creating NFT project. As a 2D-artist you will create amazing and adorable NFT characters. Your characters will become an important part of our NFT universe! Our expectations from the candidate: 1) Experience as a 2D-artist 2) Experience and examples of creating characters 3) Photoshop skills

Main tasks: 1) Creating characters in our NFT style 2) Interaction with Art Team Lead on task setting, feedback. For further communication check out the examples of our NFT works: [url removed] and send a reply (CV + examples of your works) for this position. Approximate payment per day = $200-$350. We make payments to Paypal, BTC, ETH, LTC.

Anyone clicking the link was directed to a MEGA download page. The .rar file to download weighs in at 4.1MB, and comes with the password “111” supplied. Artists expecting to find ape jpegs are in for a horrible surprise, not least because it does in fact contain several ape jpegs. It also contains something else pretending to be an ape jpeg. Observe:

Can you spot the ape doing his own thing? Note that without “view file extensions” enabled, you wouldn’t notice the odd one out. Cyberpunk Ape Executive #19 is up to no good, with the gif.exe extension. Disguising executables as image files is an ancient technique, but it seems profitable in ape jpeg land. Artists opening up the file would infect their system with a form of infostealer which Malwarebytes detects as Spyware.PasswordStealer.EnigmaProtector.

Message spam galore

Many people are pointing out that their accounts started spamming the same bogus promotional messages seen up above. Here’s one example found on ArtStation from last week:

There is clearly some form of account compromise taking place, however at time of writing it’s difficult to 100% pin this on the infection file. Those who’ve suffered an account breach typically don’t confirm one way or the other if the infection or phishing of some kind is responsible (warning: very angry and swear filled artist Tweets ahoy).

What we’ve observed that it connects to a server, sending some basic system information like Operating System and various system parameters. There’s no direct evidence of password theft (yet), though it could be waiting for direct orders or certain conditions to swipe data.

Keeping your accounts safe

It’s possible there’s a phishing aspect to this independent of the infostealer. Perhaps there’s a second set of messages aimed at tricking people into visiting fake logins, though we stress there is currently no evidence of this. The executable seems the most likely candidate. Either way, our tips are as follows:

1. Do not download the .rar containing the apes. If you have, do not open up the .gif.exe file. Proceed to running security scans at this point, and ensure whatever you have on board is quarantined and stripped out from your system.
2. If there are messages from so-called Cyberpunk Ape Executives bouncing around somewhere sending you login links, don’t enter the credentials they happen to be asking for. Done this already? Log in and change your password. If they’ve already changed your login, contact support as soon as possible. Again: we don’t know if a phish campaign is operating in tandem with the infection file campaign, and we’d suggest you’re most likely to fall foul of login compromise via the system infection.

All my apes giving security advice

Possibly the most amazing thing here is that the Cyberpunk Ape Executives actually do appear to exist. Here’s the genuine Ape Executives themselves, warning artists about the fakers:

Accept no ape imitations.

We’ll continue to observe this one and add to the post should any fresh information come to light. For now, keep a close eye on messages sent your way. There’s nothing better for an artist than receiving the possibility of a well paying commission. Unfortunately, all you’ll be paying with here is system data, and quite possibly your logins too.

The post Fake Cyberpunk Ape Executives target artists with malware-laden job offer appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Small businesses and startups are known to face some extra challenges when it comes to cybersecurity. Because they don’t have the size or budget to have a fully-fledged dedicated security team, it often comes down to a smaller staff that doesn’t have the time to do everything that is recommended or even required. Often security issues are just dealt with when the need arises.

There is the first issue right there. When the need arises, it’s often already too late. An infection has been found, a breach was discovered, or ransomware has disabled systems or made files unretrievable.

Small businesses also often do not consider themselves to be a target, but you don’t have to be explicitly targeted to get breached or infected. Depending on how small your business is, the tips below may be more or less important in your circumstances and for your threat model. Your threat model depends more on the line of business that you are in than it does on the size of your company.

1. Enable your staff

Your staff need to know what is expected of them, and what not to do.

• Make cybersecurity a company-wide issue, but also appoint a go-to person that has a responsibility, along with the time and the tools to perform that task.
• Train your employees in security awareness, so they can recognize phishing attempts and know what they can and can’t do on company-issued hardware.
• Consider outsourcing time-consuming and specialized tasks. In the end this may turn out to be more cost-effective than trying to do it with your own staff.

2. Know your equipment

It is important to be aware of your networking equipment, endpoints, and devices. Not only to know what needs to be protected, but also to know where weaknesses may lie.

• Pay special attention to devices that are used to work from home (WFH) or included in a BYOD program. Make it clear that mixing work and pleasure on the same device comes with security risks.
• Audit your environment on a regular basis, especially if you are a fast growing small business. That way you’ll know what you are using and what may need to be upgraded, replaced, or updated.

3. Get your patches and updates asap

Once you have established the hardware and software in your environment you need to perform effective patch and vulnerability management.

If having specialized software for this task or outsourcing it is not an option, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog which is maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). This catalog provides Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies with a list of vulnerabilities that are known to be exploited in the wild and gives the agencies a due date by when the vulnerability needs to be patched in their organization. Even if your organization isn’t a FCEB agency that needs to follow the Binding Operation Directive 22-01, the CISA list acts as a good guide for your patch management strategy.

And keep an eye on security news sites (like this!) in order to stay alerted to the biggest and most important updates and patches.

4. Lock things down

Having a strict policy to protect your important assets with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be a no-brainer. Consider making it easier for your staff by using a single-sign-on service or alternatively by providing them with a password manager.

Very important files and documents can be encrypted  or stored in password protected folders to keep them safe from prying eyes. A stolen or lost device is stressful enough without having to worry about confidential information.

5. Use a firewall and VPN

A firewall protects an entry point to a network while a VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between two networks. Both can be used to protect your network.

If your company has internet facing assets—and who doesn’t—it is important to apply network segmentation. The process of network segmentation separates a computer network into subnetworks, and allows for each segment of the network to be protected with a different set of protocols. By separating each segment according to role and functionality, they can be protected with varying levels of security. A common step for small organizations is to separate the systems that require internet access from those that don’t.

Remote desktop protocol (RDP) is a network communications protocol that allows remote management of assets. It allows users to remotely login to systems and work on them as if they were physically there. RDP is a necessary evil sometimes, but there are ways to make it more secure.

6. Protect your systems

Make sure your servers and endpoints are all protected by anti-malware solutions, preferably EDR (endpoint detection and response). Logs created by your endpoint protection software should be easy to digest and easy to understand, regardless of whether the readers are your own employees or those of a provider. A lot of needless alerts will interrupt your workflow, but you do not want to miss the important ones. So balance is important, especially with a limited staff.

7. Consider your supply chain safety

Businesses need to understand what level of protection their providers or others with access to their resources have in place. Ransomware is contagious, so if your providers have it you likely will too. Supply chain attacks can come from your most trusted provider and still be disastrous. 

Check for compliance and certifications. Depending on the type of supplier and the level of access to your assets, there is nothing wrong about setting some standards. For example, your IT services supplier can demonstrate a good level of cybersecurity by having achieved a cyber certification. It may also help to know that your supplier is aligned with a standard of cybersecurity deemed good enough by government organizations.

8. Have a recovery strategy

When a security issue arises despite all of your efforts to secure your environment, you should have a plan ready to contain and deal with the consequences.

• Backups. Make sure you have backups that are as recent as possible and that are easy to deploy. Create backups in an environment that can’t be ruined by the same mishap that destroyed the original (preferably on a different carrier, physical location, and network).
• Know what legal body you need to inform in case of a breach. This is especially important if Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is involved. It is hard to give guidelines here, since every US state has different data breach notification laws, so plan this ahead of time for your jurisdiction. And have a critical communications plan in place that details how you will inform your customers in case of a breach.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post 8 security tips for small businesses appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Researchers have found a vulnerability in a popular C standard library in IoT products that could allow attackers to perform DNS poisoning attacks against a target device.

The library is known to be used by major vendors such as Linksys, Netgear, and Axis, but also by Linux distributions such as Embedded Gentoo. Because the library maintainer was unable to develop a fix, this vulnerability remains unpatched. For this reason, the affected devices were not mentioned in detail.

Libraries

In computing, a library is a set of resources that can be shared among processes. Often these resources are specific functions aimed at a certain goal. These functions can be called upon when needed so they do not have to be included in the code of the software that uses it. Another example of such a library that caused some havoc was Log4j.

A C standard library is a library for the C programming language itself. Such a library provides macros, type definitions, and functions for tasks such as string handling, mathematical computations, input/output processing, memory management, and several other operating system services. As you can imagine, such a standard library is called numerous times by many programs that depend on these basic functions.

uClibc

In this case, the library at hand is uClibc, one of the possible C standard libraries available, which focuses specifically on embedded systems because of its size. Because uClibc is a relatively small C standard library intended for Linux kernel-based operating systems for embedded systems and mobile devices. Features can be enabled or disabled to match space requirements.

The alternative uClibc-ng is a fork of uClibc that was announced after more than two years had passed without a uClibc release, citing a lack of any communication from the maintainer. Unfortunately uClibc-ng shares the same vulnerability.

Similar to other C standard libraries, uClibc provides an extensive DNS client interface that allows programs to readily perform lookups and other DNS-related requests.

DNS poisoning

DNS poisoning, also known as DNS cache poisoning or DNS spoofing, is a cyberattack method in which threat actors redirect web traffic, usually toward fake web servers and phishing websites.

In a typical home setup, there is:

• A modem provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) which is your connection to the outside world.
• A router that distributes the internet connection across all the devices (often wireless).
• The devices like your laptop, phones, tablets and IoT (Internet of Things) devices such as TVs, temperature sensors, and security cameras.

These days, the modem and router are usually combined in the same device.

A DNS poisoning attack enables a subsequent Machine-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack because the attacker, by poisoning DNS records, is capable of rerouting network communications to a server under their control.

The vulnerability

One of the main ingredients to protect us against DNS poisoning is the transaction ID. This is a unique number per request that is generated by the client, added in each request sent, and that must be included in a DNS response to be accepted by the client as the valid one for that particular request. So while this transaction ID should be as random as possible, the researchers found that there is a pattern. At first the transaction ID is incremental, then it resets to the value 0x2, then it is incremental again.

While figuring out where this pattern comes from, the researchers eventually found out that the code responsible for performing the DNS requests is not part of the instructions of the executable itself, but is part of the C standard library in use, namely uClibc 0.9.33.2.

Given that the transaction ID is now predictable, to exploit the vulnerability an attacker would need to craft a DNS response that contains the correct source port, as well as win the race against the legitimate DNS response incoming from the DNS server. As the function does not apply any explicit source port randomization, it is likely that the issue can easily be exploited in a reliable way if the operating system is configured to use a fixed or predictable source port.

Mitigation

Since the library maintainer has indicated he is unable to develop a fix, this vulnerability remains unpatched. The researchers are working with the maintainer of the library and the broader community in order to find a solution. The maintainer explicitly asked to publicly disclose the vulnerability, hoping for help from the community.

Because of the absence of a fix, the researchers did not disclose the specific devices that they found to be vulnerable. They did however, disclose that they were a range of well-known IoT devices running the latest firmware versions with a high chance of them being deployed throughout all critical infrastructure.

The vulnerability was disclosed to 200+ vendors invited to the VINCE case by CERT/CC since January 2022, and a 30-day notice was given to them before the public release.

If you suspect that your router has been affected by DNS cache poisoning, have a look at our article DNS Hijacks: Routers where you will find some information on how to resolve such matters. When it is purely a case of router DNS caching, I have yet to find a router where resetting the router and leaving it off for at least 30 seconds did not clear the cache. But note that this does not resolve an ongoing attack or remove the vulnerability. It’s just a matter of symptom management.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Unfixed vulnerability in popular library puts IoT products at risk appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, Adaptive Health Integrations (AHI), a healthcare software and billing services firm in North Dakota, suffered a data breach that affected more than half a million individuals. According to the firm, the breach occurred in mid-October last year, but it only started notifying people last month.

The notification letter, a copy of which was posted on the Montana Attorney General’s website, states that the firm was made aware of the attack recently and immediately took action.

“Upon learning of the issue, we contained the threat by disabling unauthorized access to our network and commenced a prompt and thorough investigation with assistance from external cybersecurity professionals. Through an extensive investigation and an internal review, which concluded on February 23, 2022, we determined that certain potentially accessed data contained personal information such as names, dates of birth, contact information, and Social Security numbers.”

The firm was quick to add that not all individuals were affected by the breach, and not all information about affected individuals was accessed.

The letter advises those affected on what they should do next. In it, individuals are encouraged to enrol in free, 12-month complimentary identity monitor services provided by a third party. Doing so opens up additional services to help clients, such as fraud consultation and identity theft restoration.

HIPAA Journal noted that the letter has no information about Adaptive Health Integrations or why it keeps people’s protected health information (PHI). Recipients of the letter also questioned its legitimacy because it used paper with a photocopied company logo, making it look dubious and unprofessional. After checking the website (screenshot below), some letter recipients thought it was a scam.

A couple of law firms, namely Murphy Law Firm in Oklahoma and Migliaccio & Rathod LLP in Washington, are conducting their own investigation on behalf of individuals affected by the breach. Both firms made their announcements days apart.

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A real world scam which sucks the fun out of craft fairs has caused nothing but stress for victims. It may sound bizarre, but it’s actually a fairly popular attack focused on small/self-run business owners selling their own creations.

Are you ready for a trip to the craft fair?

You’re a small business owner. You sell a variety of craft-style items, the type you see in vast quantities on sites like Etsy and Redbubble. Getting these products in front of real world audiences at an event is sure to boost sales.

You see messages posted to genuine crafting community groups, looking for sellers to grab a stall spot at an upcoming fair. You’re given a link to a booking form for more information, and asked for payment via PayPal or similar methods. Soon after paying, the organiser vanishes and you realise you’re £60 to £75 out of pocket for a three day event. More, if you took the time to arrange transport and head down to the non-existent fair.

This isn’t an isolated case; this specific scam targeted people all across the UK.

How does this fake vendor fair scam work?

The general flow follows a similar pattern, no matter the location.

1. The fake organisers create brand new Facebook accounts, and often reuse the same name across muliple profiles.
2. They use several online forms to collect information from the would-be fair exhibitors. We’ve provided an example of what one of the forms used looked like below. It asks for name, address, a description of sold items, business name, and phone number.

3. At this point, requests for payment are made. Depending on the payment method, it may range from “reasonably easy” to “complete nightmare” to recover the funds.

How do they select targets?

The fraudsters use the seller’s own public information against them, taking note of location or even types of product sold before claiming an event is taking place nearby.

The really interesting thing about all this is that fake fair scams aren’t some weird anomaly. It’s an actual mini-industry populated by particularly dedicated scammers.

A brief history of fake fair scamming

While this may be the first fake fair scam you’ve read about in the news, it’s by no means the first to take place. They’re quite popular in the US, but can pop up pretty much anywhere. Below is just a few examples of how this ruse operates.

Targeting the visitors

October 2021 to February 2022: Spokane County discovered a fake event claiming to be the Spokane County Interstate Fair. A fake Facebook account messaged people asking them to pay for tickets via a registration link. They weren’t trying elaborate tactics on sellers here; they just wanted visitor money as fast as they could get it before being shut down.

Elsewhere, a similar fraudulent operation involving counterfeit tickets for the Coastal Carolina Fair was reported by fair officials.

Targeting the vendors

November 2020: Vendors were warned about two separate bogus craft fairs being promoted in Wyoming. That alert provided several examples of the fake posts made to Facebook pages advertising the events. The promo messages asked for a fee of $70 to take part.

October 2021: The Hunterdon, New Jersey Sheriff’s office warns of an elaborate scam involving fake fairs and requests for vendors to book a booth. Once again, it originated on social media. The fraudsters pulled out all the stops, offering no fewer than three separate craft events across November and December. This attack moved from social media to email, sending potential victims a link to an external site requesting payment information.

November 2021: Napierville, Illinois was the latest location of $40 a day fakeouts targeting vendors. As usual, vendors were asked to complete forms and submit payment online. Time was once again taken up for law enforcement while they put out alerts warning people away from the non-existent event.

November 2021: Law enforcement warned of a scam originating outside the US, targeting vendors in the Hendersonville, North Carolina region. Though they didn’t say what kind of social media post set the scam rolling, it’s likely they followed the Facebook pattern seen so many times elsewhere.

Getting personal with a fraudster

February 2022: Green River, Wyoming was the latest focal point for a fake fair scam. Unfortunately for Wyoming, this marks its second appearance on the list! This one was particularly interesting, because law enforcement provided screenshots of actual conversations between scammer and vendors.

The messages read as follows:

We’re looking for vendors and crafters for our vendor and craft show March 18th – 20th. Table and two chairs are provided, along with a meal for the vendors!

Vendors needed are Do Terra, posh, Younique, Lularoe, Norwex, Colorstreet, Scentsy, Tupperware, Mary Kay, Thirty-one, Pampered chef etc

All crafters are invited. For more details please pm!

You fill out the application and send payment via PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, or Cash app

Note that the descriptions of the best products for the event seem to have had some thought put into them. I recognise the word “Tupperware” but everything else may as well be written in a lost alien language. They’re clearly using words and product types that vendors would recognise and think “This person knows their stuff, here’s my money”.

How vendors can protect themselves

There are several posts from events and vendors giving tips for avoiding these fake events, but one of the best ones was posted back in February to a Civic Center Facebook account. The advice:

1. Posts made on Facebook with no location tag are trying to fly under the radar. The moment they do this, a wider range of people and organisations may be made aware of the event and know for a fact that it isn’t real.
2. If the method for arranging payment is kept secret and hidden away in private messages, what is the reason for this? A public payment method would be expected.
3. If the only way you hear about the supposed event is by direct messages, this is another red flag. A large fair with stalls and vendors shouldn’t exactly be a secret.
4. Missing posters and event pages is another bad sign. Why isn’t a very public event as public as it’s possible to be?

One other piece of advice I’ve seen mentioned several times is that scammers often mess up their locations. They’re not aware of the local lay of the land, but you are. Once targets have been selected, nearby location names are googled and provided to vendors.

As the lead article explains, one fraudster mixed up Bangor in Northern Ireland for Bangor in Wales. As it’s quite possible the people running these operations are nowhere physically close to the victims, this is definitely one way to drill into claims of upcoming events.

Craft fairs: look before you leap

Attempting this type of scam during a pandemic, when people are naturally low on funds, is bad enough. Sending people who may potentially be vulnerable to COVID-19 outdoors in the hope of selling products when they may otherwise have remained indoors, is quite something else.

If you’re a vendor who attends fairs to sell products, this is one multi-layered piece of social engineering that won’t go away. Keep the tips above in mind, and if anything seems suspicious, contact local event organisers or law enforcement who’ll be able to give you the most accurate advice.

The post Craft fair vendors targeted by fake event scammers on Facebook appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

In an unexpected turn of events, research has surfaced about a Chinese APT (advanced persistent threat) group targeting the Russian military in recent cyberattacks.

Tracked as Bronze President, Mustang Panda, RedDelta, and TA416, the group has focused mainly on Southeast Asian targets—and more recently, European diplomats—and turned their attention towards Russia and started targeting the country’s military situated close to the Chinese border.

Dell SecureWorks retrieved a file named Blagoveshchensk – Blagoveshchensk Border Detachment, which bears the icon of a PDF file but is actually an executable file.

From the report:

“Blagoveshchensk is a Russian city close to the China border and is home to the 56th Blagoveshchenskiy Red Banner Border Guard Detachment. This connection suggests that the filename was chosen to target officials or military personnel familiar with the region.”

Once the supposed document is “opened,” the executable downloads four files, including a clean document file used as a decoy (screenshot below), from a server Mustang Panda is known to use.

The document appears like a formal report from the European Commission, and it details the refugee and migrant status pressuring countries bordering Belarus.

The three additional files are required for Mustang Panda to use DLL search order hijacking to install a variant of PlugX, an old remote access tool (RAT), onto target systems. This allows threat actors to secretly load a malicious DLL, thus avoiding detection from security solutions software.

PlugX is capable of stealing sensitive information from target machines. Although this, as a whole, is a benign attack that involves intelligence gathering, it is interesting to note the shifting targets, presumably based on the political situation in Europe and what’s happening in Ukraine. Suffice to say, China continues to look out for itself and its interests, even if it involves countries it considers “strategic partners of coordination”.

The post State-backed hacking group from China is targeting the Russian military appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Airdrop phishing is a really popular tactic at the moment. It emerged alongside the explosion of Web3/NFT/cryptocurrency popularity, and ensures scammers get a slice of the money pie. You may well have heard the term in passing, and wondered what an Airdrop is. Is your iPhone about to be Airdrop phished?

It doesn’t really help that the term tied up into lots of new forms of tech you might never have experienced directly. It’s one of those odd scams, doing weird things, to accounts you have no idea about.

Fret no more, because we’re going to walk you through an actual Airdrop phish example. No apes were harmed in the making of this documentary.

What is an Airdrop?

Confusingly, the term has multiple uses jostling for attention. The older, more familiar term is the one related to Apple devices. An Apple Airdrop is where Bluetooth is used to send files to other people. If you’re not an Apple user, it’s likely you’ve only ever seen Airdrop in relation to trolling. If you’re out and about, you may walk into an unintended crossfire of memes, and in the worst case scenario, it might be objectionable unsolicited images.

In terms of security concerns specifically, research has shown how it could potentially aid spear phishing in the right circumstances. Crucially, none of these things are related to the Airdrops we’re talking about today.

What type of Airdrop are we talking about?

The Airdrops of the moment are promotional tactics aimed at cryptocurrency/Web3 people. Airdrops typically reward early adopters of certain currencies or communities. This type of reward can also be given out as no strings attached freebies to anyone who wants in on the action, and they’re great ways to keep people emotionally invested in their Web3 activities. There’s a lot of real world examples listed here.

In terms of how you receive the Airdrop, there are a few different ways. Those early adopters may find the free Airdrop distributed to their address automatically, assuming they have some level of investment in the service giving it away. A big red flag is when a supposed Airdrop asks for funds (for a freebie?), or even worse, your login/recovery phrase.

Nobody should ever be asking for that.

Airdrops are very popular, and this is where phishing attacks come in.

Common Airdrop phishing tactics

Airdrop phish pages try to ensnare as many cryptocurrency users as possible. No matter how obscure your digital currency of choice is, or how unusual your wallet is, there’s a scam just waiting for you.

Our bogus site below is quite slick looking, complete with ticker at the top. “Claim reward bonus/Airdrop”, they implore.

Hitting the button takes you to the select a wallet page. There is, quite simply, a ridiculous amount of wallets and services listed. MetaMask, Solflare, Binance, Digitex, Argent, the works. If you use any form of cryptocurrency wallet or service, there’s a good chance it’s on the list somewhere.

Clicking any of the wallets results in you being informed that an error has occurred. Connecting manually is what you’re now asked to do. From here, you’re asked to send them your phrase, private key, or keystore.

Hitting connect pauses the site for a second, then dumps you onto a 404 Page not found containing “sent” in the URL. At this point, it’s probably a good idea to hope the 404 is genuine and nothing has been sent to the scammers.

Some sites target users of one wallet only. Here’s one targeting MetaMask users, asking for their recovery phrase:

As MetaMask’s official support says:

The ape themed Airdrop phish

Apes are, of course, the hottest draw in town where Airdrop phishing is concerned. Just recently, close to $3m worth of Ape NFTs were stolen via an Instagram compromise. Anything ape related is a giant dollar sign in the sky for fraudsters, and the variety of fake pages out there reflects this.

This particular site asked visitors to claim up to 10 Bull & Ape NFTs, then asked for a variety of password/recovery phrases. The supposed T&C page leads to a 404, and the cookies and privacy policy pages go to pages from an unrelated wallet app. Does this really sound like something you want to hand over your recovery phrase to?

The “Connect your wallet” Airdrop phish

This is where a scam site checks to see if you have a wallet installed, and if not, tells you to install one and then connect it to the site.

Here’s an account with 60k followers, claiming to be the Moonbirds project offering up an NFT airdrop:

When people started calling out the tweet, they locked people’s ability to reply under the guise of “safety” so nobody else could highlight the scam.

This is the genuine Moonbirds account. Note the verified status, which the imposter lacks:

Below, you can see my already installed MetaMask extension opening in the top right corner when I click the “Connect Wallet” button on the fake Airdrop page.

Connecting your wallet to Decentralised Applications (Dapps) is common. What you need to be careful of is connecting to rogue sites. If you start granting permissions, or signing transactions, you may find your wallet draining of funds. It’s up to you to ensure that you don’t simply say “yes” to everything a site asks you. From the MetaMask FAQ:

Be careful about which Dapps you connect to, and what permissions you give them. 

Certain types of transaction require granting a Dapp permission to access your funds–infinite amounts of your funds.

In fact, there have been cases of Dapps being created specifically with the intent to defraud users and steal all of their funds once they’ve granted this kind of access.

Where Airdrops are concerned: safety first, every single time

Nobody needs the stress of losing all their digital currency because of phishing, no matter which form it arrives in. Whether it’s websites asking for recovery phrases or Dapp style sites connecting wallets, be very careful what you do with your wallet. You almost certainly won’t get a second chance if things go wrong.

The post Airdrop phishing: what is it, and how is my cryptocurrency at risk? appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.