IT NEWS

Back in October 2021, Microsoft announced in an email to customers that it planned to disable Excel 4.0 macros by default to protect customers from malicious documents.

Last week—after three decades of macro viruses, and three decades of trying to convince every single Excel user individually to disable macros—Microsoft made the change.

Good news

Excel 4.0 macros, aka XLM macros, were first added to Excel in 1992. They allowed users to add commands into spreadsheet cells that were then executed to perform a task. Unfortunately, we soon learned that (like any code) macros could be made to perform malicious tasks. Office documents have been a favorite hiding place of malicious code ever since.

In July 2021, Microsoft released a new Excel Trust Center setting option to restrict the usage of Excel 4.0 (XLM) macros. As planned, this setting is now the default when opening Excel 4.0 (XLM) macros.

Administrators also have the option to completely block all XLM macro usage (including in new user-created files) by enabling the Group Policy, “Prevent Excel from running XLM macros”, which is configurable via Group Policy Editor or registry key.

Backward compatibility

For backward compatibility reasons the feature was never removed, despite being superseded by Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) just one year after XLM macros were introduced.

I understand the argument in favor of keeping it back then, but why keep it enabled by default for so long after, when so few people use it? Microsoft could have made it so that those that needed Excel 4.0 macros had to turn the feature on, and the rest of us (the overwhelming majority of Excel users) could have been more secure without having to remember to turn it off.

Will you miss it?

It is very, very unlikely you will miss Excel 4.0 macros. XLM was the default macro language for Excel through Excel 4.0, but beginning with version 5.0, Excel recorded macros in VBA by default, although XLM recording was still allowed as an option. After version 5.0 that option was discontinued. All versions of Excel are capable of running XLM macros, though Microsoft discourages their use.

Now—almost 30 years after they were made obsolete—it’s fair to stay that the biggest users of Excel 4.0 macros are probably malicious threat actors.

Abuse cases

Attackers have always liked Office macros because they provide a simple and reliable method to spread malware using legitimate features, and without relying on any vulnerability or exploit. XLM macros have been used to drop many well-known malware families, including ZLoader, TrickBot, BitRat, QBot, Dridex, FormBook and StrRat, among others.

But this does not mean that now all documents are safe to open now. Malware authors are moving on to use other vulnerabilities like CVE-2017-11882.

Security over backward compatibility

Despite the shared joy about this security enhancing rollout, it raises the question of when security should overrule backward compatibility? Microsoft must have better things to do than fix obsolete features from the past century.

Wouldn’t it have been preferable if the step up to VBA in 1993 had been less steep, so we could all forget about 4.0 and move on to the latest version without having to look over our shoulder? Or perhaps Microsoft could have disabled this potentially dangerous feature decades ago and left it to those who actually wanted it to turn it back on?

If history has taught us anything, it’s that the incentive to enable something you need is a lot stronger than the incentive to disable something that might be potentially dangerous.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Microsoft is now disabling Excel 4.0 macros by default appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Avid readers of the Malwarebytes Labs blog will be well aware of QR code scams.

Take, for example, that QR code scam in the Netherlands that victimized at least a dozen (and definitely more) car owners. It went like this: Someone approaches you and says they want to pay for their parking but can’t find payment terminals that accept cash. They then ask you to kindly pay on their behalf—say, $5 USD—by scanning a QR code with their bank’s app after they hand you the money. Sadly, that ends up with you parting with a lot more than $5.

And then last week, the Austin Police Department in Texas released a scam alert on Twitter about “pay-to-park” scams involving a QR code that directs users to a phish.

Now, the FBI has released a public service announcement (PSA) about criminals using malicious QR codes.

Be extra vigilant when faced with a QR code

QR codes provide contactless access to a product or service, and they’ve proven useful and very convenient especially with the pandemic still ongoing. The problem is that there’s no way of distinguishing between a genuine code and a malicious one. Cybercriminals know this too and have capitalized on it.

“Cybercriminals tamper with both digital and physical QR codes to replace legitimate codes with malicious codes,” notes the FBI alert. “A victim scans what they think to be a legitimate code but the tampered code directs victims to a malicious site, which prompts them to enter login and financial information. Access to this victim information gives the cybercriminal the ability to potentially steal funds through victim accounts.”

QR codes can also be embedded with malware. Once scanned, the malware can be dropped onto the device and executed. Depending on the malware, criminals could steal personal and financial information (if you bank using your smartphone) from you, make your device part of a botnet, or spy on you.

Criminals can also replace legitimate QR codes in establishments to mislead users and direct them to a potentially malicious site. In certain cases where a contactless way of paying is available but does not use QR codes, it would be easy for criminals to just add their QR code sticker and make users believe that they should scan it.

This is exactly what happened in the fraudulent “pay-to-park” scheme.

How to protect yourself from QR code scams

The FBI has recommended the following steps that users should keep in mind:

• Check the URL to ensure you’re being directed to a site where you’re supposed to be directed once you scan a QR code. Watch out for misspellings in the URL.
• When you see a QR code in a shop and want to scan it, make sure you check for signs of tampering, such as a sticker over the QR code itself.
• Download an app from your go-to app store, not from a QR code.
• Use the built-in scanner through your smartphone’s camera to scan for QR codes. There is no need to download another one from the app store as there are fake QR code scanners, too.
• If you receive a QR code either in the mail or sent to you by a friend, get in touch with them first and verify if they have indeed sent you the code.
• If you can, avoid making payments via a QR code. There are better and more secure ways of paying.

Stay safe!

The post Warning issued over tampered QR codes appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

It’s not been a great couple of weeks for people looking to get in on NFTs. Missing apes, rug-pulls, it’s all go in non-fungible token land. The latest mishap has come to light, in the shape of bad planning and the slowly shifting impermanence of link ownership.

Rockstar Ozzy Osbourne announced “CryptoBatz” just a week or so ago. Whoever put the marketing campaign together deserves some sliver of credit for self-consciously poking fun at aspects of NFT culture in the promo video.

“He started thinking, started working…locked away in his library for weeks working on something big. He teamed up with a company called Sutter Systems. Their mission was to create an NFT project that wasn’t another celebrity rug pull.”

Well, they didn’t end up with a rug pull but they did end up with an accidental phish-ball rolling unstoppably downhill. But how?

Minting some Batz

Close to 10,000 digital NFT bats were supposed to be put up for grabs on an NFT marketplace. The bats reference a rather infamous moment in Osbourne’s career, and allow the owner to “breed” them with NFT images from other collections. A bit like Pokemon on the blockchain, perhaps.

As with any NFT project looking to gain leeway with the general public, it has a Discord server. There’s a good chance pretty much any digital project has a similar setup, and this is nothing unusual. However, things started to go wrong in a hurry – and it’s all down to the CryptoBatz Discord.

Discord in Discord Land

Not long after the bats went on sale, people started to complain about phishing links from official sources. Could it be true? Had this somehow turned into an incredibly bizarre rug-pull? The answer is no. It was something much more mundane.

The CryptoBatz project had, at some point, changed at least one of the URLs it was working with. They switched out the old Discord vanity URL for a new one, but didn’t delete old tweets containing the now outdated URL. Can you guess what the scammers did?

As per the above tweet, the scammers set up a new Discord server using the old CryptoBatz vanity URL. As potential victims naturally came across tweets with the old link in it, they were then directed to the (bogus) Discord server.

From there, it’s a short step to having their cryptocurrency wallets connected to things they shouldn’t be. End result: drained wallets, lost funds, CryptoBatz everywhere.

The financial impact of a cryptocurrency phish

According to this Verge article, the scammers made off with quite a bit of bank. Transactions to the tune of around $40,000 were sent to a digital wallet containing “more than $150,000”. The team behind the project claim they’re not responsible for “scammers exploiting Discord”, though it’s hard to argue against them having simply deleted outdated links in the first place. No links, no scam able to take place.

All the same: the back and forth doesn’t really help the victims. Even a project fronted by known entities can easily wander into a bad NFT situation, an area of digital business where it’s all a bit Wild West by default.

I suppose we must now add “Always check the most up-to-date link on any social feed related to NFT sales” to the growing list of tips to avoid gracing your digital wallet with an Electric Funeral.

The post Discord scammers go CryptoBatz phishing appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

There’s been trouble brewing over the weekend for players of the smash-hit Dark Souls series. PvP (player vs player) servers were temporarily shut down by the developers after a hack.

Dark Souls says that PvP servers for console versions (PlayStation, Xbox) were not affected, and that it is a PC-centric issue.

What happened?

It all begins with a popular streamer playing a Souls game in PvP mode. You can view a recording of the stream here (warning: the language is not safe for work). The stream changes very unexpectedly. It switches from regular gameplay to a meme image which includes character Thanos and the words “oof my game crashed”.

On top of that, Text to Speech voice kicks in and begins a long ramble aimed at the streamer. You’ll also hear the incredibly confused streamer in the background, talking about seeing “powershell.exe” on their screen. Someone had gained control of his PC, mid-stream, to crash his game and autoplay the synthesised speech.

Dark Souls players have run into hacking related problems before, and, as a result, player-created tools like anti-cheat system Blue Sentinel are incredibly popular. Even so, it couldn’t help with this particular “attack” when it came to attention.

Spreading the word

The majority of information bouncing around the player base came from notices in relevant gaming Discord servers, like so:

Hey everyone, it’s come to our attention that a Remote Code Execution (also known as RCE) exploit has emerged for Dark Souls III on PC. This means that potentially malicious players connected to your game may be able to execute code by sending information to your game that directly affects aspects of your operating system. This can lead to sensitive information leaks, including but not limited to: installation of malicious programs such as keyloggers or viruses, theft of account information or login tokens, and access to other sensitive information such as banking info or other things that may be stored on your computer.

We’ve referenced the program Blue Sentinel, a community-made program that serves as a third-party anti-cheat in the past for issues like this; however, it has apparently been made known that RCE can bypass Blue Sentinel. For this reason, it is recommended that if you play Dark Souls III on PC, you may want to stay offline until a further development is made against this exploit. If you still really want to play online, know that there is still a risk of the aforementioned effects, and it would still be recommended to do some research into the Blue Sentinel mod to see if it can help with anti-cheat effects.

This rapid-response spread of information, along with the developers/publisher being made aware of it in public led to Sentinel being updated to ward off the RCE.

Do you need to worry about this?

Talk of remote execution is always scary. You don’t want someone potentially having the ability to do whatever they want to your system. However, the impact from this code-related shenanigan seems to have had an incredibly limited impact. That is to say, the one single streamer from the above video.

It’s claimed whoever first discovered the ability to do this tried to get the developer’s attention and disclose responsibly. It’s also claimed that they didn’t get very far. From a Reddit thread:

I’ll try and clear things up: A person who isn’t malicious discovered a new RCE method, and tried to contact From about it through multiple channels. They ignored him. In an attempt to raise awareness to it so that it would be fixed (as this is a SEVERE security flaw), he did a live benign showcase on stream. It didn’t “leak”. Nobody has it beside him.

If this is accurate, then it’s reassuring with regards to potential spread. At this point, there doesn’t appear to be any reports of it happening outside the gaming stream. Even so, someone could’ve conceivably discovered it separately. There’s also concerns upcoming title Elden Ring could be affected as it apparently shares a lot of code with the older games.

Either way, developer From Software is on the case and the issue is being addressed. More information will probably be revealed over the next few days. If you’re worried, playing offline and running Blue Sentinel is likely your best bet until the fixes are confirmed to solve the problem.

The post Dark Souls servers taken offline over hacking fears appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

In the early 2000’s, the Segway company released a personal transporter that would become iconic. The Segway Human Transporter was quickly sold on Amazon and featured in a number of movies.

Since 2015, Segway has been a subsidiary of Chinese-based company Ninebot and sells electric scooters under the Ninebot brand. By 2020, a number of changes in personal transportation forced the company to halt the production of its famous Segway PT.

Our web protection team recently identified a web skimmer on Segway’s online store. In this blog, we will review the attack and tie it back to a previous campaign that is attributed to Magecart Group 12. We already have informed Segway so that they can fix their site, but are publishing this blog now in order to raise awareness.

Magecart-style attack

Stefan Dasic, from our web protection team, identified a connection to a known skimmer domain (booctstrap[.]com) loaded by the Segway store. This domain has been active since November and is connected to a previously documented campaign sometimes referred to as “ant and cockroach”.

The hostname at store.segway[.]com is running Magento, the popular Content Management System (CMS) used by many e-commerce sites and also a favorite among Magecart threat actors. While we do not know how Segway’s site was compromised, an attacker will usually target a vulnerability in the CMS itself or one of its plugins.

Based on urlscanio data, the website was compromised at least since January 6th. Malwarebytes was already blocking the booctstrap[.]com domain and its hosting server at 185.130.104[.]143 since November. Looking at our telemetry, we can see that the number of blocks (attacks prevented on our customers’ machines) also goes up around the January 6th mark.

The top 5 countries exposed to this skimmer, based on our telemetry data, are:

Favicon campaign

A fairly long but innocuous piece of JavaScript disguised as ‘Copyright’ is responsible for dynamically loading the skimmer such that it will not be visible by looking at the HTML source code.

Instead, if we check the code via the browser’s debugger we can see how the URL is constructed:

The threat actors are embedding the skimmer inside a favicon.ico file. If you were to look at it, you’d not notice anything because the image is meant to be preserved. However, when you analyze the file with a hex editor, you will notice that it contains JavaScript starting with an eval function.

There is a lot that has been written about this skimmer and the threat group behind it. Sucuri’s Denis Sinegubko covered it and Jordan Herman from RiskIQ also wrote about the numerous ties it shares with a number of incidents that can attributed to Magecart Group 12.

The compromise of the Segway store is a reminder that even well-known and trusted brands can be affected by Magecart attacks. While it usually is more difficult for threat actors to breach a large website, the payoff is well worth it.

Malwarebytes customers were already protected thanks to our website shield available in Malwarebytes for Desktop as well as our Browser Guard extension.

The post Segway store compromised with Magecart skimmer appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Not all data privacy rights are the same.

There’s the flimsy, the firm, the enforceable, and the antiquated, and, unfortunately, much of what determines the quality of your own data privacy rights is little more than your home address.  

Those in Chile, for example, enjoy a globally rare constitutional right to data protection, and if any Chilean feels their rights have been disturbed or threatened, they can file a “Constitutional Protection Action.” People in the European Union and the United Kingdom enjoy strong data protections because of the General Data Protection Regulation, the sweeping data privacy law which gave the public many new rights in 2018, including a “right to access”—which allows an individual to ask a company to hand over all the data it has collected on them—and a “right to erasure,” which allows a person to ask that company to delete that data. In Germany, already  covered by GDPR, the newly-agreed-upon government is reportedly considering the addition of a “right to encryption,” which, depending on how it is defined, could be the first of its kind, and a much-needed defense against other international efforts, like in Australia, to weaken encryption through regulation. That anti-encryption thrust is not too different in America, where federal law enforcement officials have repeatedly blamed strong encryption as one of the largest reasons that they cannot stop crime before it happens.

Speaking of America, the variety in data privacy rights around the world applies just as well to the country itself: People who live mere miles apart enjoy wildly different data privacy protections because, in the absence of a comprehensive, federal data privacy law for all Americans, individual states have passed data privacy laws for their residents and their residents alone.

This segmented, legislative push has created a patchwork quilt of privacy in the country. In its most north-eastern reaches, those east of the Salmon Falls River—which serves as a dividing line between Vermont and Maine—are protected from having their Internet Service Provider (ISP) sell, share, or grant access to their data without their specific approval. Those west of the river, however, have no such protection. And Californians, separately, have the fortune of data privacy protections similar to those included in GDPR, but their neighbors in Arizona, Utah, and Oregon are without luck.

This is the frustrating state of data privacy rights today, but you have a role to play to make it better.

Thankfully, in many countries around the world, the public can still use online tools to protect their own data privacy. No legal regime to worry about, no case law to be cited. Just user choice.

So, want to hide your internet activity specifically from your ISP, or from eavesdroppers while you’re connected to a public, unprotected network? Use a VPN. Want to gain even more privacy and send your Internet traffic through a few layers of encryption? Use the TOR network and its related browser. Want to stop invasive ad tracking? Use a more private-forward browser or download a devoted browser extension. Want to hide your online searches? This one is easy—use a private search engine.

This Data Privacy Day—which we are celebrating for the whole week— don’t limit yourself to just the data privacy rights you’re given by your country or state. Instead, broaden and deepen your own data privacy by finding out which of the many data privacy tools is right for you.

The tangled web of US data privacy rights and laws

In the United States, there is no federal law protecting all types of data for all Americans.

Instead, the national data rights that every American enjoys are purely sectoral—isolated, industry-specific protections regarding, for example, healthcare information, credit reporting accuracy, children’s data, and, bizarrely enough, VHS rental records. (Since that law has not been found to apply to streaming services, it is presumably only of use to the residents of Bend, Oregon, home to the so-called “Last Blockbuster.”)

This piecemeal strategy is the consequence of occasional laser-focus from US Congress members on only the problems facing them at that very moment. That VHS rental history law? That was passed in 1988 after a newspaper published the video rental records of then-Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. (The journalist who wrote the story succinctly proved a point—that, as Bork himself had argued, Americans had no real rights to privacy beyond those explicitly encoded in law.) A separate law protecting children’s privacy was signed in 1998 as the public feared wanton collection of kids’ data online.  

For about two years, though, that laser-focus found an ironic subject: Broader protections.

Starting in 2018, US Congress members homed in on crafting a comprehensive data privacy law that would restrict how companies and organizations collect, use, share, and sell Americans’ data. Roughly a dozen bills were introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and substantive, new ideas on data privacy were considered.

There was also Senator Ron Wyden’s bill, which recommended jail time as a consequence for tech company executives who played a vital part in violating Americans’ data privacy rights. There was Senator Amy Klobuchar’s bill, which tried to standardize perplexing, yawn-inducing—and potentially unfair—“Terms of Service” agreements by requiring that those agreements be written in “language that is clear, concise, and well-organized.” There was Senator Marco Rubio’s bill and its light touch on regulation, which simply asked that the US Federal Trade Commission write its own rules on privacy that Congress later adopt. And there were other, novel proposals, like the ACCESS Act, which focused on data portability, and the Data Accountability and Transparency Act, which erred away from today’s singular focus on user “consent,” which, even under the best intentions, can often translate to a deluge of webpages all asking: “Do you agree to our use of cookies?”

Disappointingly, none of these bills moved forward, and following the US presidential election in 2020, new priorities were mapped out for Congress. Thankfully, in the United States, there are more legislative machines at work that can pass data privacy laws at home—the individual states themselves.

For years now, the majority of US states have at least attempted to lasso companies into better handling the consumer data that is collected whenever users interact with their websites, use their products, or respond to their social media posts. In fact, according to a recent analysis by The New York Times, only 15 states have essentially ignored consumer data privacy legislation; every other state has either introduced, passed, or signed a law, or replaced a comprehensive data privacy bill with a task force committed to researching the topic.

Within those 35 states, though, only three have found success—California, Colorado, and Virginia all passed consumer data privacy laws in the past few years. And not to immediately rob those successes of their merit, but each of those laws has its own problems, and the law in Virginia, especially, has drawn rebuke from Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel at ACLU, said in speaking with The New York Times that Virginia’s law, when it was still a bill, was “pretty weak.”

“It essentially allows big data-gathering companies to continue doing what they have been doing,” Ruane said.

At this point, it’s easy to think that US data privacy rights are following a sad trend of one step forward, two steps back. Just a few years ago, federal lawmakers were interested in data privacy. Then, they weren’t. Stateside, multiple states introduced broad data privacy laws for their residents. Then, only three such laws actually passed, and each law has its own problems.

The good news here is that you don’t have to—you shouldn’t have to—wait around for your government representatives to decide when you deserve data privacy rights. You deserve those rights today.

Here’s how you can take some first steps forward.

The right data privacy tools for you

In the US and in many countries abroad, one of the most powerful data privacy rights you have is the right to use a tool that can put data privacy into your own hands.

Data privacy tools are actually a lot like US data privacy rights, in that there are specific tools that protect specific types of data, or they protect your data in specific circumstances. While this variety is appreciated, it also means there is no one single solution to keep your information private online at all times.

To avoid any confusion about what tool can protect what data, here’s a quick run-down of what is available and how it can help you:

• A privacy-forward web browser or a devoted web browser extension can block third-party ad tracking
• A private search engine keeps your online searches private, protecting your interests from being sold to advertisers who want to serve you more ads
• A VPN can obscure your Internet traffic from your Internet Service Provider and encrypt your data on public networks
• The Tor Network and the Tor browser can route your Internet traffic through multiple “relays,” or servers, encrypting the data multiple times along the way

Knowing all that, let’s start with the simplest option that can also protect you from the most subversive and invisible form of data privacy invasion.

Privacy-forward web browsers and browser extensions

If you’re using a web browser that is made by a company that makes the majority of its money from online advertising (according to Wired, Google’s advertising revenue alone in one quarter of 2020 was $26 billion), your online browsing behavior is being stealthily watched across nearly every website you visit. As your browsing habits start to form a profile of who you are, where you live, what you like, and what you typically buy, you’ll start to see ads that follow you around constantly.

This is the work of third-party ad tracking. Due to the implementation of cookies in nearly every corner of the public-facing Internet, nearly all of our Internet behavior is tracked online. That information then gets packaged and sold to companies that want to deliver ads specifically to you and people like you.

To stop this type of invisible, online tracking, you should use a web browser that takes your privacy seriously. Options like Firefox, Safari, and Brave all block many types of ad tracking by default, which means that from the first time you launch these programs, you’ll start being protected, no user intervention needed.

If you’re too attached to your web browser to ditch it, you can also download a browser extension for this very same purpose. Several browser extensions that block ad trackers include Malwarebytes Browser Guard, EFF’s Privacy Badger, and the self-titled ad-and-tracker blocking extension made by Ghostery.

For those interested, Ghostery has also released a web browser that, with a monthly subscription fee, comes with a host of other privacy tools, including the company’s web analytics tool and a private search engine.

Speaking of which…

Private search engines

A private search engine, like the ones built by DuckDuckGo or, more recently, Brave, will keep your searches yours. Both companies promise that they do not collect or track your searches, and that they do sell that search data to third parties.

Though Brave’s search engine is newer and still in beta, DuckDuckGo has been in business for years, and this month, it passed the 100 billion total search mark.

VPNs

Any discussion on data privacy wouldn’t be complete without talking about VPNs. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are tools that can help you hide your Internet traffic from your Internet Service Provider, which might appeal to you in the United States because your ISP could actually take what it knows about you and then sell that data to the highest bidder, who will then use your information to send you even more ads across the Internet.

VPNs can also provide vital protection to you whenever you connect to the Internet on a public network, like at a coffee shop, an airport, or hotel. If those networks are not password-protected, then it is easier for eavesdroppers to watch your Internet traffic on that network. With a VPN, your traffic is encrypted and illegible to outside parties.

Because there are so many options out there, you can read our guide about how to choose the best VPN for you.

The Tor network and browser

The Tor network, in a way, is the Internet run by people—not companies, not conglomerates, not revenue-chasing decision-makers. The way it works is that volunteers around the world set up individual servers for Tor users to connect to—and through—when browsing online. This means that whenever you browse the Internet through the Tor network, your Internet traffic actually moves through three separate servers, which Tor calls “relays.” The last relay that you connect to then connects you to your final destination online, like a website. Because your traffic has been sent through three relays and encrypted each time it goes through a relay, the website you eventually connect to does not actually know who you are. It cannot collect any meaningful data about your age, your gender, your location, your politics, or your interests.

With the Tor network, then, you can obscure what advertising companies the world over want to know about you and what they spend countless dollars to discover.

Years ago, utilizing the Tor network required quite a bit of technical work, but with the nonprofit’s release of the Tor browser, much of that work can be done by the browser itself.

If you’re interested in taking your privacy to the next level, consider downloading the Tor browser and connecting to the Internet through a Tor connection, which the browser can configure the first time you start it up.

It’s not just about tools. Adopt new rules

While all the tools we described above can better protect your online privacy, there’s one more thing you should consider this Data Privacy Week, and that’s how you treat other people’s privacy online, too.

The devices that we carry in our hands every single day are capable of recording so much of our daily lives, and that includes private moments of other people’s lives, too. The photos you take with family, the conversations you have with friends, the videos you record and share—all of these can and do include people other than yourself who have their own idea of privacy, both online and off. Think about how much you care about your own privacy, and then think about what you can do to protect the privacy of others around you.

Don’t share private conversations, don’t post embarrassing videos, and don’t send photos around unless you know that other people in the photos are okay with it.

For years, we’ve heard that cybersecurity is a team sport. It’s time to treat data privacy like one, too.

The post Data Privacy Day: Know your rights, and the right tools to stay private appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

In a CISA Insights bulletin the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warns that every organization in the United States is at risk from cyber threats that can disrupt essential services and potentially result in impacts to public safety.

The warning specifically reminds readers of the recent developments in the Ukraine where public and private entities have suffered a series of malicious cyber incidents. Especially highlighting the use of destructive malware against critical infrastructure and the potential damage it can do. The website defacements and data-wiping malware attacks in the Ukraine were originally thought to be different attacks, until it became clear that victims were hit by both, leading authorities to believe the attacks were coordinated.

CISA says it wants to ensure that senior leaders at every organization in the United States, regardless of sector or size, are aware of critical cyber-risks, and take urgent steps to reduce the likelihood and impact of a potentially damaging compromise.

In the document, CISA provides guidelines to make near-term progress toward improving cybersecurity and resilience.

Reducing the chance of an intrusion

To reduce the chance of an unwanted cyber-intrusion, CISA recommends that orgaizations:

• Ensure that all remote, privileged or administrative access requires multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Update their software, prioritizing updates that address vulnerabilities identified by CISA.
• Disable all ports and protocols that are not essential for business purposes.
• Review and implement strong controls for Cloud services, as outlined in CISA’s guidance.
• Sign up for CISA’s free cyber hygiene services, including vulnerability scanning.

For those unfamiliar with the CISA list of known, actively exploited vulnerabilities, this is tied to Binding Operational Directive 22-01, Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. This directive applies to all software and hardware found on federal information systems managed on agency premises or hosted by third-parties on an agency’s behalf.

One of the most welcomed of the required actions set forth in the directive is that CISA will keep a catalog of vulnerabilities alongside timeframes in which they must be remediated. According to the plan, this catalog will list only the most important vulnerabilities that have proven to pose the biggest risks.

Although CISA can only require action from federal agencies, it’s clearly hoped that organizations outside its perview will see the benefit of using the catalog in the same way.

It is interesting to note that the latest list of vulnerabilities includes ProxyToken. ProxyToken is a vulnerability that was fixed in June of last year. It allows an unauthenticated attacker to perform configuration actions on mailboxes belonging to arbitrary users. For example, an attacker could use the vulnerability to forward your mail to their account, and read all of your email. All that organizations need to do to protect themselves from it is patch.

Detecting potential intrusions

The bulletin also offers some simple guidance on how to detect and deal with a potential intrusion:

• Ensure that cybersecurity/IT personnel are focused on identifying and quickly assessing any unexpected or unusual network behavior, and that they have the logging they need.
• Confirm that your network is protected by anti-malware software, and that signatures in these tools are updated.
• If working with Ukrainian organizations, take extra care to monitor, inspect, and isolate traffic from those organizations; closely review access controls for that traffic.

This last point was likely added to the list since there are indications that the attacks in the Ukraine were, at least partly, the result of supply-chain attacks. The Ukraine Cyber Police are investigating the use of Log4j vulnerabilities and stolen credentials as other means of access to the networks and servers.

If an intrusion is detected, CISA recommends that organizations should create a crisis team that already knows how it will respond. The team should have conducted tabletop exercises so that everyone understands their roles if an incident occurs.

Backups can be an important backstop during a cyber-incident such as a ransomware attack, and the bulletin reminds organizations that taking backups isn’t enough—they need to test their backup procedures too, so they know they can actually restore their critical data if they need to. Backups should, of course, be isolated and out of the reach of potential attackers.

Digging deeper

The Malwarebytes Lock and Code podcast has a wealth of information for people looking to dig deeper into the topics raised by the CISA bulletin. The most recent episode, embedded below, examines why arguably the most important security practice of all—patching—is so hard for organizations.

Previous episodes have included deep dives into why we fail at getting the cybersecurity basics right, why getting backups right is difficult, and what it’s like to be at the centre of a ransomware attack—from a sysadmin who has been there.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post CISA calls for urgent action against critical threats appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Restoring Family Links is a program most commonly associated with The Red Cross. It’s been around since 1870, and aims to reunite lost family members, repatriate individuals, prevent folks from disappearing, and much more. You may have seen them in the news during times of disaster, war, and other situations necessitating some form of international aid.

Sadly, someone has compromised a large chunk of data related to the Restoring Family Links program and nobody knows what they intend to do with it.

Unauthorised access of data

In an attack billed as “sophisticated”, personal and confidential data related to no fewer than 515,000 people has been pilfered by unknown attackers. Those impacted may be victims of disaster, conflict, or detention.

According to the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), the data originated from “at least 60 Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies around the world”. The plundering itself took place from an “external company” located in Switzerland contracted to manage the data by the ICRC.

The impact of the attack is already being felt. Should you visit the Restoring Family Links page at this time, you’ll see it’s down for maintenance. The whole program’s systems have been shut down while they figure out what exactly has happened, and which bits of their network are still insecure.

As the ICRC notes, an average of 12 missing people a day are reunited with their families. Humanitarian work such as this can have potentially fatal consequences if interfered with so the stakes here are very high indeed.

Under attack (again)

The Red Cross/ICRC have had a number of run-ins with hacks and leaks in the past. For example, 555,000 people had their details leaked in 2016 when Red Cross Australia blood donor information was accessed by someone without permission. In 2019, it happened again in Singapore but on a much smaller scale.

The ICRC takes this subject very seriously, to the extent there’s a handbook on data protection in humanitarian action. We don’t know yet how this aligns with whatever has happened at the external data host, however.

From untargeted to very targeted…

During the Japan tsunami and earthquake of 2011, a huge volume of scam attacks sank their claws into the disaster. We saw fake missing relative notices, bogus Red Cross websites, fake charity donation sites, 419 scams, and even radiation health e-books.

They all tried to exploit a crisis, but it was primarily very general and untargeted.

This breach could have severe consequences for both people in the data and those related to them. The pilfered details could be used for all manner of scam attempts. Phishing, social engineering, blackmail, fraud: all of these things and more could be in the running. Highly targeted, with a potentially very good chance of succeeding. Sensitive information could make its way to Governments who don’t have the best interest of those named at heart.

The humanitarian world holds its breath

We don’t know what’s going to happen to the compromised data. There’s a real worry it could simply be tossed out into the ether. As the ICRC put it:

Your actions could potentially cause yet more harm and pain to those who have already endured untold suffering. The real people, the real families behind the information you now have are among the world’s least powerful. Please do the right thing. Do not share, sell, leak or otherwise use this data.

Will they do the right thing? Unfortunately, we could be in for a long wait to find out.

The post Red Cross begs attackers to “Do the right thing” after family reunion service compromised appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Rogue ads are a problem-causing menace which can strike in many ways. Malvertising often uses a combination of exploits to drop malware. Phishing campaigns get the job done with social engineering and bogus websites. This particular incident is an example of the latter, and a good reminder to be cautious when clicking.

Shall we take a look?

Balancing your gift cards

A Reddit user reports seeing an advert related to gift card balance searches. You may have been given a gift card at some point, but what you may not realise is that you can check the balance of a card online. Some cards can be topped up, which might make it even harder to remember how much you have. Very handy if you’re out and about and the cash value isn’t written down somewhere!

“Please submit your details”

The ad, which claims to let visitors “check their gift card balance”, rang a few alarm bells for the Reddit user. For one thing, the website’s domain seemed to be related to van hire. This isn’t, typically, what you’d expect to find in a gift card search.

The page, sporting a Target logo and banner at the top, asks visitors to check their balance via an entry form. It says:

“Gently remove the metallic strip on the back of your gift card to reveal both the card and the access numbers”.

Some people who tried the site out reported that it redirected them to the real Target page after hitting the submit button.

The site in question now resolves to a 404 error. It’s likely the site was compromised, with the bogus card check page added in afterwards.

But there are still many other examples of these sites online.

Digging into a card submission

There’s a few different examples of sites posted to the Reddit comment thread, all of which are now currently offline, likely due to multiple webhost reports. They use branding from multiple big name corporations, with incredibly long descriptions on how to check your balance. Much of it is clearly cut and pasted from somewhere else, to the extent that some also reference Amazon and McDonalds cards further down the page. This is designed to try and game SEO rankings on search engines, but all they really care about is having you click the redeem code button.

Clicking through on these kind of sites takes visitors to replicas of the balance check function on the real Target website, like so:

Like the page hosted on the van hire portal, the forms take submitted gift card/access numbers, then redirect to the genuine Target page.

Tips to avoid losing your gift card balance

With Christmas and New Year fading into the distance, there’ll be a lot of people with gift card balances waiting to be spent. No doubt many will want to check their balances at short notice. All it’ll take to be potentially parted with their credit is a few hurried searches and a bogus website.

If this sounds familiar, you may wish to take some steps to mitigate the threat. Here’s some general tips:

• Don’t open emails from senders you are not familiar with.
• Don’t click on a link inside an email unless you know exactly where it is going.
• To layer that protection, if you get an email from a source you are unsure of, navigate to the provided link manually by entering the legitimate website address into your browser.
• Just because a website is HTTPs, does not guarantee a site’s legitimacy. It’s easier than ever to set up a free HTTPs certificate, which is why manually navigating to websites is important.
• As you’ll likely check balances at short notice on your mobile, it’s worth finding official card pages now. Save them as bookmarks in your browser.
• There are many balance check sites out there and it’s not easy to figure out which ones are legit. Some deal with one card specifically, while others allow you to check multiple cards in one go. We’ve seen balance check sites which may well be genuine, but no link from the parent site seems to exist to it. So go to the official website of the service you’re using, and ask customer support where you can check balances.

All of these tips combined will help you avoid gift card scams. 

The post Steer clear of gift card balance scams appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Popular website Open Subtitles has been breached. The impact so far: almost seven million accounts “breached and ransomed” back in August.

There’s a long and detailed post on Open Subtitles’ forum with regard to what’s happened. Notable points of interest:

The site received a message from someone with proof of having gained access to the data.

“He gained access to all users’ data – email, username, password…He promised the data would be erased and he would help us secure the site after the payment.

The site was created in 2006 with little knowledge of security, so passwords were stored in md5() hashes without salt”

Money troubles

One point of contention relates to paying off the ransom. Some coverage is claiming they paid up, but then the data eventually leaked anyway. The language in the post reads a little ambiguously:

He asked for a BTC ransom to not disclose this to public and promise to delete the data.

We hardly agreed, because it was not a low amount of money.

However you stack it up, and whether they paid the ransom or not, the data is now out there.

Dangers to your data

This one falls under the familiar banner of “password reuse is bad”. Lots of people do it, and almost everyone has likely reused login details on more than one site without realising it.

The uptake rate on two-factor authentication or similar methods of protection on accounts generally isn’t very good. I dread to think how many of the breached seven million have secondary measures applied to their various logins.

Unsalted password hashes are easy to crack. You should assume your password has been compromised and that criminals will try to use it to gain entry to all your online accounts. If you have used your Open Subtitles password on any other services, change your passwords on all of them, straight away.

It’s very quick and easy to hijack several logins tied to one person. If an attacker manages to gain access to a primary email account used for password resets on lots of other accounts, then they really have hit the jackpot.

Those accounts can all be used for spamming, malware distribution, social engineering, phishing…the sky’s the limit.

If your data is in the breach, you absolutely must go and take stock of any accounts sharing login details as soon as you can. Get yourself a password manager, a temporary notepad file to jot down your possible duplicates, and kickstart the damage limitation process.

As for Open Subtitles, some folks still aren’t happy with the direction the fixer-upper has taken. Do your bit and address the lingering threat of password duplication. While it remains to be seen how the subtitle breach shakes out, there’s nothing wrong with ensuring the rest of your logins are in safe hands.

The post Open Subtitles breach: The dangers of password reuse appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.