IT NEWS

In 2016, threat actors pulled off a basic but devastating botnet attack that harnessed the power of the Internet of Things (IoT).

After gathering a list of 61 default username and password combinations for IoT devices, threat actors scanned the Internet for open Telnet ports and, when they found a vulnerable device, gained entry, eventually amassing an army of IoT devices to launch a massive DDoS attack.

This was the Mirai botnet attack. Though it began as a simple get-rich-quick scheme involving, of all things, the popular video game Minecraft, it led to a widespread Internet outage on the US East Coast.

In terms of ingenuity, the attack was fairly crude. There was no social engineering element and no clever attack machinery.

But if that kind of rudimentary attack destabilized an entire region’s Internet, what would a focused IoT attack do instead? And what types of IoT security are protecting users today?

Last month, for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Malwarebytes hosted multiple educational webinars and cybersecurity training sessions for its employees, offering advice on strong password creation, two-factor authentication, and how to spot a phishing email. 

In our final week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we hosted a live version of our podcast, Lock and Code, for our employees. In the episode, (which you can listen to in full here) we spoke to John Donovan, chief information security officer for Malwarebytes, and Adam Kujawa, security evangelist and a director of Malwarebytes Labs, about the future of cybersecurity for the Internet of Things.

What we learned was interesting enough to present to our audience in both our podcast and, today, as a blog on Malwarebytes Labs.

Crucially, the future of cybersecurity for IoT devices is not separate from the future of cybersecurity for all devices. In fact, as our use and reliance on IoT devices shifts from general convenience to full integration into daily routines, the two concepts may very well merge.

Here’s what is keeping us safe today, and what we can expect to keep us safe tomorrow.

IoT non-standardization: Boon or burden?

Perhaps non-intuitively, IoT devices are currently protected by the exact same infrastructure that leaves them vulnerable—they are not standardized. That means that many IoT devices out there today, from smart fridges to smart speakers to smart watches, are often built on different parts that run different operating systems that rarely, if ever, talk to one another.

From one perspective, that’s good, Kujawa said.

“Right now, the best security we have for IoT devices is that [development] isn’t standardized yet,” Kujawa said. “There are lots of different devices using different platforms, on different frameworks, with different protocols in some cases, and that confusion makes it difficult to do things like develop a serious security threat to these devices.”

From another perspective, though, this same non-standardization presents a threat to effective IoT security solutions.

“It also works against us in the sense that developing security tools in order to protect these devices is just as difficult because you can’t create one solution that will necessarily work on every single device,” Kujawa said.

Until that standardization arrives, Donovan said that a lot of IoT device cybersecurity hygiene falls to the users themselves. Donovan and Kujawa offered several best practices that consumers should be able to implement today, no matter their level of tech proficiency:

• Change the default password on your IoT devices
• Do not connect your IoT devices to networks you do not trust
• Stay informed about any reported vulnerabilities for your devices
• Update your devices

These four steps will better protect your IoT device from harm because, as we learned from the Mirai attacks, cybercriminals are primarily looking for easy targets. Think of it like actual burglary attempts: Thieves don’t often go looking for padlocks to try and pick, they look for doors that are unlocked.

Beyond these basic steps, Donovan noted that the lack of IoT standardization has created a higher bar for some users to fully secure their own devices and networks.

“All the things you would do to secure a corporate network? Now you have to do it in your house,” Donovan said. That includes several security best practices like segregating individual IoT devices and setting up a virtual LAN—or VLAN—to isolate IoT devices from the rest of a network.

No matter the level of tech proficiency, though, there’s more to cybersecurity than personal responsibility.

Donovan said that IoT developers should include automatic security updates by default. No automatic updates often result in no meaningful cybersecurity, and that goes for any popular device or software.

Where the problems really start to compound, though, is in the corporate world.

Cybersecurity issues for businesses

The Internet of Things is not there solely to help consumers set oven timers while cooking or to play a few rounds of the game show Jeopardy! when bored. In fact, countless manufacturing factories and hospitals utilize devices and equipment that routinely connect to the Internet for communication and operation. So, when one of those devices goes down, or if threat actors discover a vulnerability, the overall threat could be more severe.

Complicating the issue is that some of the companies that actually manufacture this type of equipment are small businesses that can sometimes fail, Kujawa said.

“I’ve heard about this plenty of times for plenty of hospitals, where they’ve got this equipment that’s running on Windows XP, and the company that built it doesn’t exist anymore, and they never released updates for it.” Kujawa said. “It puts the organization in a really tough spot.”

Imagine the many businesses in just this situation, saddled with a now-unsupported IoT device that is crucial to their daily operations. If a vulnerability is discovered, what options can they take? Remove the IoT device and lose days of production time, or risk running the device until a serious cyberattack hits, which would also incur high costs to resolve? 

Either way, relying on specialized IoT devices made by small companies that cannot support their own products is a recipe for disaster, Kujawa said.

“Especially the smaller stuff and the specialized stuff, it’s very unlikely you’ll get security updates for that,” Kujawa said. “This is basically a vulnerability machine you can plug into your network.”

Despite the difficult cybersecurity realities today, the future of IoT devices looks potentially simpler.

The future of IoT cybersecurity

Much like how IoT devices are becoming increasingly crucial to businesses, these devices are also becoming increasingly integrated into our day-to-day lives.

It’s important to remember that our smartphones are not excluded from the IoT conversation, and every extension of our smartphones—tablets, smart watches, even far-away concepts like augmented reality glasses—will present us with more ways to connect to the Internet than ever before. No longer will cyberspace be relegated to the computer screen. 

With that increase in popularity and daily integration, Kujawa predicted that the public would see the rise of about four to five primary IoT developers. It’s not hard to imagine today which companies will be included on that list; already, Apple, Google, and Amazon are cornering the market on smart speakers, smart watches, and, of course, cell phones.

Whatever those four major players will be, Kujawa said, there will also be a narrowing in the number of operating systems available for IoT devices. Once enough people have purchased enough IoT devices running on a limited number of operating systems, then, Kujawa said, the cybercriminals will strike.

“When we get to that point and more folks are using [IoT devices] for things like banking or social media, then that’s when we see the investment by cybercriminals,” Kujawa said.

But, Kujawa said, these cybercriminal waves will demand a cybersecurity response.

“When we see investment by the cybercriminals, that means that all of the security vendors, if they haven’t already been migrating to those platforms, they need to do that,” Kujawa said. “[If] that’s where the focus is going to be by the bad guys, that’s where the focus has to be by us as well.”

When asked if he could ever see a future where Malwarebytes and other similar antivirus tools run on IoT devices, Kujawa spoke matter-of-factly:

“Absolutely. We’re headed in that direction right now.”

The post IoT forecast: Running antivirus on your smart device? appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump fired Chris Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), just days after CISA called the recent presidential election the “most secure in American history.”

In a tweet posted the same day, the President justified his removal of Krebs:

“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud – including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, “glitches” in the voting machines which changed…

…votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”

Krebs responded cordially to his firing:

“Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomrorow [sic]. #Protect2020”

For nearly one month, under Krebs’ direction, CISA has batted away rumors about the US presidential election on a website that the agency officially launched on October 20, dubbed “Rumor Control.” The website has gained enormous popularity, often ranking as the number one most-visited page that is owned and operated by the Department of Homeland Security, where CISA is situated.

Rumor Control provided election fact checks for cybersecurity and non-cybersecurity issues. Some of the website’s recent statements include:

• Robust safeguards including canvassing and auditing procedures help ensure the accuracy of official election results.
• Voter registration list maintenance and other election integrity measures protect against voting illegally on behalf of deceased individuals.
• Election results reporting may occur more slowly than prior years. This does not indicate there is any problem with the counting process or results. Official results are not certified until all validly cast ballots have been counted, including ballots that are counted after election night.

Though Krebs received the brunt of the President’s ire, he and CISA were far from alone in their evaluation of the election’s security.

Earlier this week, 59 election security researchers and computer science experts published a joint letter rejecting the President’s recent claims of election fraud.

“We are aware of alarming assertions being made that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ by exploiting technical vulnerabilities. However, in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent,” the group of experts said in a letter published online. “To our collective knowledge, no credible evidence has been put forth that supports a conclusion that the 2020 election outcome in any state has been altered through technical compromise.”

Further, 16 federal prosecutors tasked specifically with catching election tampering told Attorney General William Barr last week that they found no such evidence.

Despite these mounting facts, Krebs’ departure was largely anticipated. According to an exclusive report by Reuters last week, Krebs had told several associates that he expected to be fired after his agency refused to remove factual information from Rumor Control, as requested by The White House:

“In particular, one person said, the White House was angry about a CISA post rejecting a conspiracy theory that falsely claims an intelligence agency supercomputer and program, purportedly named Hammer and Scorecard, could have flipped votes nationally. No such system exists, according to Krebs, election security experts and former US officials.”

A bipartisan selection of Congress members and a handful of cybersecurity researchers lamented the firing of Krebs.

Matt Blaze, election security expert and McDevitt Chair of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University, said on Twitter that “protecting our national infrastructure is a vitally important and extremely difficult job, one Chris Krebs performed with both extraordinary integrity and exceptional skill.”

“Firing him, especially so abruptly, has made our country less safe,” Blaze said.

Republican US Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska spoke similarly: “Chris Krebs did a really good job — as state election officials all across the nation will tell you — and he obviously should not be fired.”

Democratic Representatives Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Lauren Underwood of Illinois—who respectively serve as chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation—spoke far more harshly.

“The fact is that, since Election Day, President Trump has sought to delegitimize the election results by engaging in a disinformation campaign that could shatter public confidence in our elections for generations,” the two said in a joint statement. “Director Krebs put national security ahead of politics and refused to use his position to do the President’s bidding, so the President fired him.”

The post Chris Krebs, director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, fired by President appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A mystery Chromium browser recently made a sudden appearance, and is certainly proving popular. But what is it, and where did it come from?

Malwarebytes detects the browser as PUP.Optional.WebNavigator, and we found several clues that this browser was brought to you by a notorious family of search hijackers.

That family isn’t new to us—we reported about them before when they changed a Chrome policy to remote administration, and lied about the permissions they asked of their users.

Search hijackers in general

We have written before about the interests of shady developers in the billion-dollar search industry and reported on the different tactics these developers resort to in order to get users to install their extensions or use their search sites.

Every time someone clicks on a sponsored advertisement, the requisite search engine earns money on a pay-per-click basis. They are paid by advertisers, who shell out for beneficial placement in the search results for keyword phrases of their choice.

As a result of the popularity of these search engines—Google in particular—US companies spend an estimated $80 billion on search engine optimization (SEO) alone. And the leading search engines are owned by some of the most valuable technology companies around.

What is WebNavigator?

The WebNavigator Browser is a Chromium-based web-browser that promises to simplify your browsing experience.

The simplification is done by keeping the browser running in the background. I fail to see the advantage of that method over minimizing your normal browser, but at least the authors made an effort to explain why the process remains running even after you closed the browser.

Another checkbox that is ticked by default is the “Set as default browser” which is pretty cheeky.

Where do people find WebNavigator?

The websites that promote the WebNavigator browser show up in advertisements and get visitors from redirectors. I found them when I was searching for new variants of the family of search hijackers that have become my “special friends” over the past years. That was my first clue that they might be related.

But using the same advertising networks is no definite proof whatsoever. As many shady website owners, they switch domains a lot so they don’t end up on every blocklist. Another detail they have in common.

What was your second clue?

The second clue was the layout and makeup of their website.

This type of layout is typically used to tell users how to install a Chrome extension, and the hijackers just changed the text in the boxes to make it fit them. Also note the line about Yahoo and other third-party search providers, that reminded me of a few search hijack extensions that were removed from the Webstore a while ago.

So, how is WebNavigator a search hijacker?

That was actually my third and most definitive clue. The WebNavigator Browser adds graphic search recommendations to the user’s search results, labelled “Search Recommendations”.

This ties them to the family of search hijackers which we have written about in detail before. For example, I found this set of search recommendations when I installed an extension called “IStreamingSearch”:

The difference in results could be caused by my use of a fresh Virtual Machine and a rotation of the VPN  servers I use in Malwarebytes Privacy. But they sure look similar.

How can I stop and remove WebNavigator Browser?

Malwarebytes Premium users are protected against this PUP, and Malwarebytes will warn them when they try to install the WebNavigator Browser.

Malwarebytes Browser Guard, Premium, and EDR will block the domains promoting WebNavigator Browser.

If you’ve already installed the browser but now want to remove it, I have posted full removal instructions for the WebNavigator Browser on our forums.

IOCs

Domains:

• webnavigator.co
• fileleauncher.co
• tvlauncher.co
• digitalfileconverter.com
• fastmaps.net
• gamelauncher.co
• officelauncher.com
• streaminglauncher.com

Filenames:

• webnavigatorbrowser.exe
• CLICK HERE TO START THE WEBNAVIGATOR BROWSER INSTALLER_********_.EXE (where ******** are random letters and numbers)

Stay safe, everyone!

The post WebNavigator Chromium browser published by search hijackers appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we reported on multiple patch releases: from Mozilla’s Firefox and Thunderbird to Google’s Chrome. We also had a chat with our resident experts, Adam Kujawa and John Donovan, about the future of IoT cybersecurity in our latest Lock and Code podcast episode. Lastly, we took a look at a new ransomware called RegretLocker, and guided college students on how they can keep themselves cybersecure while distance learning in the middle of a pandemic.

Other cybersecurity news

• Pay2Key, a new ransomware family first discovered by Check Point, was found to have ties with Iranian hackers. (Source: The Algemeiner)
• Doctors were found to be easy targets for hospital-related cyberattacks (Source: MedPage Today)
• Phishers and scammers were found taking advantage of gaming console players who are looking forward to getting their hands on the new Playstation 5 (Source: Hindustan Times)
• Speaking of scams: The Better Business Bureau (BBB) warned recipients of text messages offering money to join a “COVID clinical study”. (Source: News Leader)
• Researchers identified the Google Play Store as “the main distribution vector for most Android malware”. Ouch. (Source: ZDNet)
• TroubleGrabber, a new family of information stealers, were found to target Discord messaging users by spreading as an attachment. (Source:BleepingComputer)
• Emotet and TrickBot were deemed “most prolific malware strains”, according to new analysis… (Source: InfoSecurity Magazine)
• …and targeted spear-phishing attacks are on the uptick, too, according to security experts. (Source: Security Boulevard)
• With Black Friday just around the corner, be wary of incoming scams and phishing attempts, such as an Amazon scam that is circulating in the wild. (Source: Daily Express)
• According to KnowBe4, phishing emails purporting to have originated from LinkedIn are the most clicked compared to phishing campaigns on other social media platforms. (Source: MarTech Series)

Stay safe, everyone!

The post A week in security (November 9 – November 15) appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Exploit kits continue to be used as a malware delivery platform. In 2020, we’ve observed a number of different malvertising campaigns leading to RIG, Fallout, Spelevo and Purple Fox, among others.

And, in September, we put out a blog post detailing a surge in malvertising via adult websites. One of those campaigns we dubbed ‘malsmoke’ had been active since the beginning of the year. What made it stand out was the fact it was going after top adult portals and had been continuing unabated for months.

Starting mid-October, the threat actors behind malsmoke appear to have phased out the exploit kit delivery chains in favor of a social engineering scheme instead. The new campaign is tricking visitors to adult websites with a fake Java update.

This change is significant because it drastically increases the target audience, no longer limiting it to Internet Explorer users running outdated software.

Top malvertiser for months

The malsmoke campaign derives its name from the most frequent payload it dropped via the Fallout exploit kit, namely Smoke Loader.

While we see a number of malvertising chains, the majority of them come from low quality traffic and shady ad networks. Malsmoke goes for high traffic adult portals, hoping to yield the maximum number of infections. For example, malsmoke has been present on xhamster[.]com, a site with 974 million monthly visits, on and off for months.

Despite this successful run, malsmoke fell off our radar and we recorded its last activity on October 18. A couple of days prior (October 16), our telemetry registered a new malvertising campaign that uses a decoy page filled with adult images purporting to be movies.

• Adult site: bravoporn[.]com/v/pop.php
• Ad network: tsyndicate[.]com
• BeMob Ad: d8z1u.bemobtrcks[.]com/
• Decoy adult site: pornguru[.]online/B87F22462FDB2928564CED

A couple of weeks later, this campaign added a new domain as part of its redirect chain, but we can see that they are related (including the. same identifier marker in the URL)

• Adult site: xhamster[.]com
• Ad network: tsyndicate[.]com
• Redirect: landingmonster[.]online
• Decoy adult site: pornislife[.]online/B87F22462FDB2928564CED

That portal is used as a lure to get people to play adult videos that do not actually exist. Instead, users will be asked to download a fake Java update that is malicious.

A closer look at the template used and network indicators revealed that this latest malvertising campaign actually belongs to the same malsmoke threat actors that had previously used exploit kits.

We notice the same adult movie page template, with one minor fix (the typo in the page title which could have been due to the Russian keyboard layout).

Additionally, the latest domain name pornislife[.]online was registered with the same email address mikami9722@hxqmail[.]com tied to a number of other web properties previously related to malsmoke gates.

The malsmoke operators ran successful exploit kit campaigns for several months but in October decided to switch them over to a new social engineering scheme. However, the malvertising chains remained similar as they kept abusing high traffic adult portals and the Traffic Stars ad network.

New social engineering trick

The new scheme works across all browsers, including the one with the largest market share, Google Chrome. Here’s how it works: when clicking to play an adult video clip, a new browser window pops up with what looks a grainy video (black bars are ours):

The movies plays for a few seconds with audible sound in the background until an overlay message is displayed telling users that the “Java Plug-in 8.0 was not found”.

The movie file is a 28 second MPEG-4 clip that has been rendered with a pixelated view on purpose. It is meant to let users believe they need to download a missing piece of software even though this will not help in any way at all.

The threat actors could have designed this fake plugin update in any shape or form. The choice of Java is a bit odd, though, considering it is not typically associated with video streaming. However, those who click and download the so-called update may not be aware of that, and that’s really all that matters.

This fake dialog is reminiscent of the missing ‘HoeflerText font’ campaign used in the EITest traffic redirection schemes. EITest was also known for using exploit kits to distribute malware and at some point switched to a similar social engineering trick to target more users, especially those running the Chrome browser.

Payload analysis

The threat actors essentially developed their own utility to download a remote payload that had the advantage of not being easily detected. If you recall, malsmoke previously relied on Smoke Loader to distribute its payloads, whereas now it has its very own loader, thanks a new evasive MSI installer.

The fake Java update (JavaPlug-in.msi) is a digitally signed Microsoft installer that contains a number of libraries and executables, most of which are legitimate.

On installation, lic_service.exe loads HelperDll.dll which is the most important module responsible for deploying the final payload.

HelperDll.dll uses the curl library that is present in the MSI archive to download an encrypted payload from moviehunters[.]site.

This is the ZLoader malware, which is then written to disk and ran as:

%AppData%Roamingmicrosoft_shared.tmp

ZLoader injects itself into a new msiexec.exe process to contact its command and control server using a Domain Generation Algorith (DGA). Once it identifies a domain that responds, it starts downloading different modules and optionally an update to ZLoader itself.

On the left of Figure 12, we can see the traffic generated by ZLoader implants injected into msiexec.exe. On the right, we can see those implants dumped from the same process. You can find more information on ZLoader and its implants in our paper The “Silent Night” Zloader/Zbot.

Evolving web threats

Malsmoke was one of the most noticeable distributors of malvertising and exploit kits striking on high profile websites.

While we thought the threat actor had gone silent, they simply changed tactics in order to further grow their operations. Instead of targeting a small fraction of visitors to adult sites that were still running Internet Explorer, they’ve now extended their reach to all browsers.

In the absence of high value software vulnerabilities and exploits, social engineering is an excellent option as it is cost effective and reliable. As far as web threats go, such schemes are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Malwarebytes Browser Guard already protected users from this malvertising campaign. Additionally, we detect the MSI installer and ZLoader payloads via our Malwarebytes for Windows.

Indicators of Compromise

Redirector:

landingmonster[.]online

Decoy adult portal:

pornislife[.]online

MSI installer:

87bfbbc345b4f3a59cf90f46b47fc063adcd415614afe4af7afc950a0dfcacc2

First C2:

moviehunters[.]site

ZLoader:

4a30275f14f80c6e11d5a253d7d004eda98651010e0aa47f744cf4105d1676ab

ZLoader C2s:

iqowijsdakm[.]ru
wiewjdmkfjn[.]ru
dksaoidiakjd[.]su
iweuiqjdakjd[.]su
yuidskadjna[.]su
olksmadnbdj[.]su
odsakmdfnbs[.]com
odsakjmdnhsaj[.]com
odjdnhsaj[.]com
odoishsaj[.]com

The post Malsmoke operators abandon exploit kits in favor of social engineering scheme appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Slightly over a week ago we advised you to update your Chrome browser. That warning came only a week or so after we advised you to update your Chrome browser. Things are getting a bit repetitive round here.

Today, we are compelled to repeat that statement as Google has issued patches for two new zero-day vulnerabilities. Someone tipped Google off about them, although the source(s) wish to remain anonymous. Again, the vulnerabilities being zero-days means they are already being used in real life attacks.

Zero-days are a valuable commodity for cybercriminals since there are (until yesterday) no patches for the vulnerability and every unpatched system is another potential victim. Which is exactly why we advise to update your Chrome as soon as possible.

What is the problem that’s being fixed?

Publicly disclosed computer security flaws are listed in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list—a dictionary that provides definitions for publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures. The goal of CVE is to make it easier to share data across separate vulnerability capabilities (tools, databases, and services).

In this case, the two vulnerabilities were catalogued as:

CVE-2020-16013: Inappropriate implementation in V8. Sound familiar? V8 was also the subject of CVE-2020-16009 where researchers stated it must have something to do with the way the Chrome browser handles Javascript.

CVE-2020-16017: Use after free in site isolation. Site isolation is the feature that makes every website run in a separate process without interaction with each other. Each will be running in a sandbox which provides an additional line of defense. Use after free may indicate that after closing a site the memory location for it may not be freed up properly.

How do I install Chrome patches?

The easiest way to do it is to allow Chrome to update automatically, which basically uses the same method as outlined below but does not require your attention. But you can end up lagging behind if you never close the browser or if something goes wrong, such as an extension stopping you from updating the browser.

So, it doesn’t hurt to check now and then. And now would be a good time, given the zero-day vulnerabilities. My preferred method, which also allows me to keep track, is to have Chrome open the page chrome://settings/help which you can also find by clicking Settings > About Chrome.

If there is an update available, Chrome will notify you and start downloading it. Then it will tell you all you have to do to complete the update is Relaunch the browser.

What version do I need?

After the update, your version number should be 86.0.4240.198 or later. You will now be protected against the vulnerabilities. Google states that the stable channel has been updated to 86.0.4240.198 for Windows, Mac, and Linux which will roll out over the coming days/weeks. Also keep an eye on your Chromium based browsers (Opera, Edge, and others) since they may require updates as well.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Hat trick for Google as it patches two more zero-days in Chrome appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Social distancing, the wearing of face masks, practicing hand hygiene, and disinfecting often-touched surfaces have become human necessities during the pandemic era. For schools, they’ve also had to adapt quickly to incorporate distance learning methods that let students continue their studies.

But being in crisis management mode didn’t give higher educational institutions much time to think carefully and plan around issues concerning cybersecurity and privacy, even though it was a struggle for them pre-pandemic. The thing is, cybersecurity and privacy isn’t just a job for the school’s IT department, students and staff have a responsibility to stay secure, too, especially with distance learning in full or partial effect.

So, what’s the TL;DR version?

Wondering how to stay secure while in your online classes, or doing homework? Try a multilayered approach.

What do we mean by this?

In privacy and security, a multilayered approach is about using multiple methods of security. It’s considered the best way of protecting yourself, whether you’re an entity that wants to protect everything important that belongs to you or you’re a person who wants to keep their data safe. A multilayered approach is paramount because a single failure in one layer wouldn’t automatically lead to the complete breakdown of security.

So, how can you create security layers to stay protected while attending classes online and/or doing homework? Before we break that down, remember that these steps not only protect you, your machine, and your data from potential cyberattacks, it also protects others as a consequence, such as your school network and everyone else who connects to it.

Protect your device

Whether you’re using your own computer or one provided by your school, it’s vital that you:

• Keep your device in a space where it can be physically safe and away from potential theft, or be accessed by other people in your home or flat.
• When you need to step away from your computer, ensure that you lock your screen. You can do this by setting up a password—or, in some cases, a picture password—and never share it with anyone, so that only you can access your own machine.
• Enable a firewall on your device.
• Download and install endpoint protection if your school hasn’t provided this, and confirm it’s running in real time.
• Ensure that all software installed on your device is up to date. And while you’re at it, uninstall software you don’t use as they could become security risks if you don’t update them.
• Turn off your device when not in use.
• Do non-school related browsing or other activities within a virtual environment. Using your personal computer for distance learning shouldn’t hinder you from using your computer like you normally do. But whether you keep school files on your computer or not, it’s best to get used to scrolling the internet within a virtual network in your personal time. This lessens the chances of you getting your computer infected if you encounter online threats.

Protect your Wi-Fi network

Whether you’re using your own internet or the Wi-Fi hotspot your school provided, it is vital that you:

• Check you are not using your router or hotspot’s default admin credentials. Using them only makes it easier for those with ill intent to hack into your device and network.
• And, while you’re there, ensure your router or hotspot is secured with a strong password—that’s at least 20 random characters long. These characters shouldn’t follow a pattern. If you don’t want to sweat this out, much less remember a complicated string without writing it down, a password manager can help you with these.
• Set up a reminder to yourself to change your router or hotspot password. This will help keep potential attacks against these devices at bay. A password manager can come in handy here, too.
• Turn on your router’s firewall.
• Enable the highest encryption option available for your Wi-Fi hotspot/router, which could be the WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) or WPA3 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) protocol.
• Change your default SSID (service set identifier), which is the network name broadcasted by your wireless router for your computer and/or device to see and connect to.
• Keep your router/hotspot firmware updated.
• Disable features that would allow any device that isn’t your own to connect to the school-provided hotspot. We’re referring to WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) here.

Protect your school’s network

Infecting your school’s network—whether knowingly or unknowingly—is the last thing we want to happen. Both students and staff alike are expected to adhere to rules, which may look like the following, when connecting to a school network:

• Whatever computing device you use for distance learning, make sure you scan it first with endpoint protection software before connecting to your school’s network.
• Never download and run or share files that are of questionable origin. This includes email attachments.
• Remain informed about the types of online threats students like you might encounter. This includes phishing attempts, scams, and ransomware infections.

Protect your data

• Back up your data, especially if you’re using your own computer for studying.
• Use two-factor authentication on your school-related accounts.
• Use a virtual private network (VPN) when connecting to your school’s network.
• Avoid reusing passwords.
• Never share school-related account credentials with anyone.

Protect your virtual class sessions

A number of Zoombombing attacks have happened because students shared their Zoom details with third parties via a public, social space (think Discord, Reddit, Twitter, and even Instagram). And recordings of these Zoombombings have been floating around on YouTube and Twitch.

Please do not share your Zoom or other video communication software details to anyone. It might seem fun and that there’s “no harm done there really”—plus the class gets to be suspended for the day woo!—you’re not only hindering your other classmates from learning, you’re also getting yourself in trouble.

Understand that Zoombombing is a federal offense, and anyone found involved in such an act could be prosecuted and imprisoned. Nowadays, affected schools are encouraged to report any Zoombombing incidents to law enforcement, which may include the local or state police department and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, to kickstart investigations. Here’s a great post containing tips on how to curb Zoombombing.

College cybersecurity is a student’s responsibility, too

Schools have the duty and responsibility to physically protect their students and staff from harm, especially during this ongoing pandemic. The same is true for ensuring that students have what they need to continue their studies in the best conceivable way they can. This includes protecting systems that house confidential information and financial data.

Yet some schools are unequipped to address every cybersecurity and privacy challenge they encounter, even before COVID-19 struck. In fact, they can only do so much. Students and staff must start recognizing their part in keeping their school network safe from cyberattacks.

Security is everyone’s responsibility. And there’s no better time than today to take this duty seriously.

The post Surviving college distance learning during the pandemic: a cybersecurity guide appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Cybersecurity researchers discovered a new ransomware last month called RegretLocker that, despite a no-frills package, can do serious damage to virtual hard disks on Windows machines.

Through a clever trick, RegretLocker can bypass the often-long encryption times required when encrypting a machine’s virtual hard disks, and it can close any files currently opened by a user to then encrypt those files, too.

Chloé Messdaghi, vice president of strategy at Point3 Security, described RegretLocker as having “broken through the speed-of-execution barrier for encryption [of] virtual files.”

She continued: “[RegretLocker] actually seizes the virtual disk and is much faster in execution than previous ransomware attacking virtual files.”

Despite the ransomware’s state-of-the-art machinery, its appearance remains quite plain.

RegretLocker does not offer its victims a lengthy ransomware note—a common practice for many ransomware types today—and it asks victims to contact threat actors through an email address. That email address is hosted on CTemplar, which, according to Silicon Angle, is an anonymous email hosting service based in Iceland.

The short note that victims receive, titled “HOW TO RESTORE FILES.TXT” contains the following text:

“Hello, friend.

All your files were encrypted.

If you want to restore them, please email us : petro@ctemplar.com”

As of Tuesday, our threat intelligence team only knew of one in-the-wild reported sample, with no known or reported victims. However, this ransomware should still be watched because of its ability to quickly encrypt virtual hard disks, a potential breakthrough in ransomware capabilities.  

Often, ransomware avoids any attempts to encrypt virtual disks found on machines because those virtual disks can be enormous in size, and the time to encrypt those files would simply delay the ransomware’s purpose—to get into a machine and lock it up.

RegretLocker treats virtual disks differently, though. It utilizes the OpenVirtualDisk, AttachVirtualDisk, and GetVirtualDiskPhysicalPath functions to mount virtual disks as physical disks on Windows machines. Once the virtual disk has been mounted, RegretLocker encrypts the disk’s files individually, which speeds up the overall process.

RegretLocker’s virtual hard disk mounting capabilities potentially came from research that was recently published on GitHub by the security researcher smelly__vx. The researchers at MalwareHunterTeam also analyzed a sample of RegretLocket and found that it can run offline as well as online.

Further, RegretLocker can tamper with the Windows Restart Manager API to terminate active programs or Windows services that keep files open. According to IT Pro Portal, the same API is utilized by other ransomware types, including Sodinokibi, Ryuk, Conti, Medusa Locker, ThunderX, SamSam, and LockerGoga. Files encrypted with RegretLocker use the .mouse extension.

Malwarebytes users should know that we protect them from this new threat, as shown below.

The post RegretLocker, new ransomware, can encrypt Windows virtual hard disks appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Mozilla has issued a critical patch for Firefox, Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird after a security issue was discovered at the Tianfu Cup 2020 International Cybersecurity Contest

The security issue has been assigned CVE-2020-26950 which has the “reserved” status. Publicly disclosed computer security flaws are listed in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list—a dictionary that provides definitions for publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures. The goal of CVE is to make it easier to share data across separate vulnerability capabilities (tools, databases, and services).

What is the problem that’s being fixed?

The description Mozilla published itself reveals that write side effects in MCallGetProperty opcode were not accounted for. In certain circumstances, the MCallGetProperty opcode can be emitted with unmet assumptions resulting in an exploitable use-after-free condition.

Use-after-free is a naming convention for vulnerabilities related to the incorrect use of dynamic memory during an operation by a program. It means that after freeing a memory location, a program does not clear the pointer to that memory, which could allow an attacker to abuse the error and launch a buffer overflow attack. In a “worst case” scenario this could allow for a remote code execution (RCE) attack, but whether that is true in this case is unknown at the moment.

Which versions are vulnerable?

Make sure you are on the latest versions of the following:

• Firefox should be updated to version 82.0.3 or later
• Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) should be updated to version 78.4.1 or later
• Thunderbird should be updated to 78.4.2

Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) is a version of the popular browser for large organizations that need to deploy and maintain Firefox at a large scale. It does not have all the latest functions, to limit the number of updates, but it does receive security and stability updates.

How do I check my version and update?

To find out which version you are using on a Windows machine, open the application menu and click on Help > About. On a Mac, look at the top menu and click Firefox > About Firefox. This will show which version you currently have and whether an update is available.

The screens and the way to access are largely the same for all the Mozilla programs, so we will only show the Firefox example.

After the update you should see a screen similar to this:

The next stable version of Firefox will be released on November 17, 2020.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Mozilla patches critical security issues in Firefox and Thunderbird appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

This week on Lock and Code, we offer something special for listeners—a backstage pass to a cybersecurity training that we held for employees during Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which ended in October.

The topic? The future of cybersecurity for the Internet of Things.

Our guests, Chief Information Security Officer John Donovan and Security Evangelist and a Director for Malwarebytes Labs Adam Kujawa guide us through some of the future’s most pressing questions. Will we ever run antivirus software on IoT devices? What predictions can we make for how the cybersecurity industry will respond to the next, possible big IoT attack? And what can we do today to stay safe?

This episode was recorded live in front of our fellow Malwarebytes employees (over Zoom, of course, as is tradition during the coronavirus pandemic). The episode even includes a Q&A with our employees.

Tune in to get a glimpse into how Malwarebytes helped its own employees during Cybersecurity Awareness Month, on the latest episode of Lock and Code, with host David Ruiz.

You can also find us on the Apple iTunes store, Google Play Music, and Spotify, plus whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

We cover our own research on:

• Hospital ransomware, because scammers have gone back to targeting things they really shouldn’t be.
• Retirement announcements, though perhaps not in the way you might expect.
• Updating is good, and updating to protect against zero-days is even better.
• Trojans and US elections? Oh my.
• If you’re in California then data privacy laws are changing. Find out how.
• Everything you ever wanted to know about RegTech but were too scared to ask.
• In a big week for patching, Apple has a little updating of their own to do.

Other cybersecurity news

• Ransomware isn’t kid’s stuff: Toy maker Mattel discloses a ransomware attack (Source: ZDNet)
• It’s a trap: what happens when a tech support scammer manages to dial through to a law enforcement cybercrime squad? (Source: The Register)
• Getting bored with ad fraud: What are some of the ways you can nip this problem in the bud? (Source: Help net Security)
• Fake Elon and his Bitcoin: The age-old Twitter problem resurfaces once again (Source: International Business Times)
• Game makers compromised: Gaming giants Capcom reveal they’ve been the target of a cyberattack (Source: BBC)

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Lock and Code S1Ep19: Forecasting IoT cybersecurity with John Donovan and Adam Kujawa appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.