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Just when we thought the QR code was on its way out, the pandemic has led to a return of the scannable shortcut. COVID-19 has meant finding a digital equivalent to things normally handed out physically, like menus, tour guides, and other paperwork, and many organizations have adopted the QR code to help with this. And so, it would seem, have criminals. Scammers have dusted off their book of tricks that abuse QR codes, and we’re starting to see new scams. Or maybe just old scams in new places.

What is a QR code again?

A quick recap for those that missed it. A Quick Response (QR) code is nothing more than a two-dimensional barcode. This type of code was designed to be read by robots that keep track of items in a factory. As a QR code takes up a lot less space than a legacy barcode, its usage soon spread.

Smartphones can easily read QR codes—all it takes is a camera and a small piece of software. Some apps, like banking apps, have QR code-reading software incorporated to make it easier for users to make online payments. In some other cases, QR codes are used as part of a login procedure.

QR codes are easy to generate and they are hard to tell apart. To most human eyes, they all look the same. More or less like this:

Why are QR codes coming back?

For some time, these QR codes were mainly in use in industrial environments to help keep track of inventory and production. Later they gained some popularity among advertisers because it was easier for consumers to scan a code than to type a long URL. But people couldn’t tell from a QR code where scanning would lead them, so they got cautious and QR codes started to disappear. Then along came the pandemic and entrepreneurs had to get creative about protecting their customers against a real life virus infection.

To name an example, for fear of spreading COVID-19 through many people touching the same menu in a restaurant, businesses placed QR codes on their tables so customers could scan the code and open the menu in the browser on their phone. Clean and easy. Unless a previous visitor with bad intentions had replaced the QR code with his own. Enter QR code scams.

Some known QR code scams

The easiest QR code scam to pull off is clickjacking. Some people get paid to lure others into clicking on a certain link. What better way than to replace QR codes on a popular monument, for example, where people expect to find background information about the landmark by following the link in the QR code. Instead, the replaced QR code takes them to a sleazy site and the clickjacking operator gets paid his fee.

Another trick is the small advance payment scam. For some services, it’s accepted as normal to make an advance payment before you can use that service. For example, to rent a shared bike, you are asked to make a small payment to open the lock on the bike. The QR code to identify the bike and start the payment procedure is printed on the bike. But the legitimate QR codes can be replaced by criminals that are happy to receive these small payments into their own account.

Phishing links can just as easily be disguised as QR codes. Phishers place QR codes where it makes sense for the user. So, for example, if someone is expecting to login to start a payment procedure or to get access to a certain service, the scammers may place a QR code there. We’ve also seen phishing mails equipped with fraudulent QR codes.

The email shown above instructed the receiver to install the “security app” from their bank to avoid their account being locked down. However, it pointed to a malicious app outside of the webstore. The user had to allow installs from an unknown source to do this, which should have been a huge red flag, but still some people fell for it.

Lastly, there’s the redirect payments scam, which was used by a website that facilitated Bitcoin payments. While the user entered a Bitcoin address as the receiver, the website generated a QR code for a different Bitcoin address to receive the payment. It’s yet another scam that demonstrates that QR codes are too hard for humans to read.

How to avoid QR code scams

There are a few common sense methods to avoid the worse QR code scams:

• Do not trust emails from unknown senders.
• Do not scan a QR code embedded in an email. Treat them the same as links because, well, that’s what they are.
• Check to see whether a different QR code sticker was pasted over the original and, if so, stay away from it. Or better yet, ask if it’s OK to remove it.
• Use a QR scanner that checks or displays the URL before it follows the link.
• Use a scam blocker or web filter on your device to protect you against known scams.

Even if the mail from a bank looks legitimate, you should at least double-check with the bank (using a contact number you’ve found on a letter or their website) if they ask you to log in on a site other than their own, install software, or pay for something you haven’t ordered.

As an extra precaution, do not use your banking app to scan QR codes if they fall outside of the normal pattern of a payment procedure.

Do I want to know what’s next?

Maybe not, but forewarned is forearmed. One method in development to replace QR codes on Android devices is the Near Field Communication (NFC) tag. NFC tags, like QR codes, do not require an app to read them on more modern devices. Most of the recent iPhones and Androids can read third-party NFC tags without requiring extra software, although older models may need an app to read them.

NFC tags are also impossible to read by humans but they do require an actual presence, i.e. they can’t be sent by mail. But with the rise in popularity of contactless payments, we may see more scams focusing on this type of communication.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post QR code scams are making a comeback appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Sometimes, I think there are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and some form of payment fraud. Security reporter Danny Palmer experienced this a little while ago, and has spent a significant amount of time tracking the journey of his card details from the UK to Suriname. His deep-dive confirmed that it is easy to become tangled up in fraud, even if you’re very careful. I myself have experienced one of the more peculiar forms of credit card theft, detailed below.

Sometimes it’s you…

Right off the bat, let’s clarify that there are ways to both help and hinder the security of your payment information.

Maybe you switched something off while traveling for easy access and forgot to turn it back on at the other end. Perhaps there was some ancient Hotmail account still tied to something important with a password on six hundred thousand password dumps. Maybe you did one of those “Without giving your exact date of birth, please tell us something you’d recognise from your childhood and also your exact date of birth and credit card number” things bouncing around on social media.

These are all ways you can inadvertently generate problems for yourself at a later date.

Sometimes it isn’t you

On the other hand, instead of winding up in one of the above examples, let’s say you successfully navigated all perils.

You secured your desktop, installed some security software, followed the advice to keep your system up to date, and avoided all dubious installs. Locking down your phone was a great idea. Reading some blogs on password managers was the icing on the cake. You’ve done it all, and anything going wrong after this will have to be one heck of a fight.

There is, however, a third path outside of what you do or don’t do to keep data secure.

Occasionally, the issue is elsewhere

Maybe people you don’t know, who you entrusted with the well-being of your card data, did something wrong. Perhaps a Point of Sale terminal is missing vital patches. The store across town didn’t keep an eye on their ATM, and the company responsible for it didn’t have a means to combat the skimmer strapped across the card slot. The clothing store you bought your jacket from did a terrible job of locking down payment data and everything is sitting in the clear.

This is absolutely one of those “whatever will be, will be” moments.

The…good?…news about hacks outside of your control is, they can happen to anyone. Including people who work in security. As a result, you shouldn’t feel like you’ve done something wrong. In many cases, you almost certainly haven’t. It’s way beyond time to normalise the notion that huge servings of guilt aren’t a pre-requisite for data theft.

Setting the scene: My experience with card fraud

When I received my fraud missive through the post, it was shortly after an incredibly time consuming and complicated continent-spanning house move. Did I make a multitude of payments in all directions? You bet. Shipping, storage, local transportation, and a terrifyingly long list of general administrative and paperwork duties from one end of a country to another.

I avoided using my banking debit card throughout the process, relying on my credit card instead. There’s a reason for this.

Interlude: why I used a credit card

If you buy something with your debit card and it ends up with a scammer, you may have problems recovering your funds. You may well have to endure a lengthy dispute process, or prove you weren’t being negligent in order to get your money back.

Increasingly, banks are making this a little harder to do.

If you bank online, you’ll almost certainly have seen a digital caveat any time you go to transfer money. They’re usually along the lines of waiving the ability to reclaim your money back if tricked into sending your cash to a scammer. They’ll ask you to confirm you know who you’re sending the money to or place the responsibility for transferring funds directly on your own shoulders. Perhaps they’ll try and get out of paying up if your PC was compromised by malware. If you pay by cheque, you could get into all sorts of tedious wrangling behind the scenes too.

Even without all of the above, your bank may well have a number of minimum best practices for you to follow. Unless you want to run into potential pitfalls, try and keep things ship-shape there too.

Meanwhile, the credit card is a fast-track to getting your money back, because it’s the incredibly large and powerful credit company getting their money back. You’re just there for the ride, as it were. This in no way removes your requirement to be responsible with your details, but from experience, I’ve had more success righting a cash-related wrong where it involved credit rather than debit. It’s an added form of leverage and protection. The real shame is that isn’t usually the case when paying with your own money. Once again, we’re back in the land of “whatever will be, will be”.

End of interlude: when things go wrong

I don’t know exactly what happened with my card, or who took the details. I’ve no idea if the details were swiped from an insecure database, or a store had Point of Sale malware on a terminal. I can’t say if it was cloned from one of the few times I had to use an ATM.

Stop and think about the places you frequently buy items from. Maybe even draw up a list on a map. You’ll almost certainly have a handful of stores you use regularly, with a few random places thrown in for good measure. Perhaps you avoid ATMs completely, opting for cashback in stores instead. You probably shop online at the same places too, with a few more off-the-beaten-track sites popping up here and there, too.

You may get lucky and discover one of them has had a breach. If they’re small shops or family businesses, sorry…you probably won’t read about it in the news. Website compromises can lay undetected for a long time. Same for Point of Sale malware on physical terminals. Your shopping circle of trust only extends so far and is only useful for figuring out a breach up to a point. After that, it’s guesswork and for various reasons, your bank/credit card company won’t disclose investigation information.

The scammers strike

What I do know, is that a letter came through the door telling me someone had tried to make a purchase of around 14 thousand pounds on my credit card. Their big plan was to order a huge supply of wine from a wine merchant. What I was told by the bank, is that these aren’t places you can typically wander in off the street and throw some wine in a shopping trolley. These are organisations which sell directly to retailers.

Logic suggests that card fraud circles around small, inconspicuous transactions to remain off the grid. Nothing screams small, inconspicuous transactions like “a purchase more than the limit on your card for a bulk supply of rare, expensive wine from a direct to store wine merchant unavailable to the public”.

Though this is outside my realm of experience, my guess is a successful purchase would’ve resulted in the wine being sold on in ways which obscure the source of the original funds. By the time anyone has figured out what happened, the scammer has turned a profit and I’m left holding the incredibly large wine bag.

Luckily for me, “Make small inconspicuous transactions” doesn’t appear to have been in their playbook. Even if the fraud detection team had somehow missed this utterly out of character purchase, the scammers also managed to blow past my credit card limit. I assume the big fraud detection machine exploded and required a bit of a lie down afterwards to recover.

Dealing with the aftermath

I was very lucky, if you can call it that, because of the baffling way the scammers tried to rip me off. If the ludicrous size of the attempted payment hadn’t set alarm bells ringing, the unusual items purchased probably would have given the same end result. Similarly, Danny Palmer’s card flagged the fraud tripwires before any money was taken. Banks and credit card companies are constantly adding new ways to detect dubious antics and also make logging into banking portals a safer experience.

All the same, we shouldn’t rely on others too much to ensure our metaphorical bacon is saved at the last minute. Keep locking things down, be observant when using ATMs, and familiarise yourself with the security procedures for your payment method of choice. We can’t stop everything from going wrong, but we can certainly help tip the odds a little bit more in our favour.

I probably won’t crack open a bottle of wine to celebrate, though.

The post Caught in the payment fraud net: when, not if? appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

This week on Lock and Code, we discuss the top security headlines generated right here on Labs and around the Internet. In addition, we talk to Samy Kamkar, chief security officer and co-founder of Open Path, about the digital vulnerabilities in our physical world.

If you look through a recent history of hacking, you’ll find the clear significance of experimentation. In 2015, security researchers hacked a Jeep Cherokee and took over its steering, transmission, and brakes. In 2019, researchers accessed medical scanning equipment to alter X-ray images, inserting fraudulent, visual signs of cancer in a hypothetical patient.

Experimentation in cybersecurity helps us learn about our vulnerabilities.

Today, we’re discussing one such experiment—a garage door opener called “Open Sesame,” developed by Kamkar himself.

Tune in to hear about the “Open Sesame,” how it works, what happened after its research was presented, and how the public should navigate and understand a world rife with potential vulnerabilities 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:

• Scammers banking on the KnowBe4 security awareness training brand to get people to hand over their work credentials and other personally identifiable information (PII).
• Sandboxing—what it is, what should we know about it, and why its an essential tool in malware detection and analysis.
• Taurus, a recently developed credential stealer now being spread through malvertising campaigns.

Other cybersecurity news:

• Threat intelligence researchers from Group-IB has outed a new Russian-speaking ransomware gang called OldGremlin, and it has been targeting big companies in Russia. (Source: CyberScoop)
• Tyler Technologies, a product vendor of US states and counties during election seasons, recently admitted that an unknown party has hacked their internal systems. (Source: Reuters)
• Graphika unearthed a campaign they called Operation Naval Gazing, which is aimed at supporting China’s territorial claim in the South China Sea. (Source: TechCrunch)
• As the US elections draw near, the FBI and CISA warn voters against efforts and interference from foreign actors potentially spreading disinformation regarding election results. (Source: The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3))
• Activision, the video game publisher for Call of Duty (CoD), denied that it had been hacked after reports that more than 500,000 accounts have had their login information leaked. (Source: Dexerto)

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Lock and Code S1Ep16: Investigating digital vulnerabilities with Samy Kamkar appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

For the past several months, Taurus Project—a relatively new stealer that appeared in the spring of 2020—has been distributed via malspam campaigns targeting users in the United States. The macro-laced documents spawn a PowerShell script that invokes certutil to run an autoit script ultimately responsible for downloading the Taurus binary.

Taurus was originally built as a fork by the developer behind Predator the thief. It boasts many of the same capabilities as Predator the thief, namely the ability to steal credentials from browsers, FTP, VPN, and email clients as well as cryptocurrency wallets.

Starting in late August, we began noticing large malvertising campaigns, including, in particular, one campaign that we dubbed Malsmoke that distributes Smoke Loader. During the past few days we observed a new infection pushing the Taurus stealer.

Campaign scope

Like the other malvertising campaigns we covered, this latest one is also targeting visitors to adult sites. Victims are mostly from the US, but also Australia and the UK.

Traffic is fed into the Fallout exploit kit, probably one of the most dominant drive-by toolsets at the moment. The Taurus stealer is deployed onto vulnerable systems running unpatched versions of Internet Explorer or Flash Player.

Because of code similarities, many sandboxes and security products will detect Taurus as Predator the thief.

The execution flow is indeed pretty much identical with scraping the system for data to steal, exfiltrating it and then loading additional malware payloads. In this instance we observed SystemBC and QBot.

Stealer – loader combo continues to be popular

Stealers are a popular malware payload these days and some families have diversified to become more than plain stealers, not only in terms of advanced features but also as loaders for additional malware.

Even though the threat actors behind Predator the thief have appeared to have handed over a fork of their original creation and disappeared, the market for stealers is still very strong.

Malwarebytes users are protected against this threat via our anti-exploit layer which stops the Fallout exploit kit.

We would like to thank Fumik0_ for background information about Predator the thief and Taurus.

Indicators of Compromise

Malvertising infrastructure

casigamewin[.]com

Redirector

89.203.249[.]76

Taurus binary

84f6fd5103bfa97b8479af5a6db82100149167690502bb0231e6832fc463af13

Taurus C2

111.90.149[.]143

SystemBC

charliehospital[.]com/soc.exe
c08ae3fc4f7db6848f829eb7548530e2522ee3eb60a57b2c38cd1bdc862f5d6f

QBot

regencymyanmar[.]com/nt.exe
3aabdde5f35be00031d3f70aa1317b694e279692197ef7e13855654164218754

The post Taurus Project stealer now spreading via malvertising campaign appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

To better understand modern malware detection methods, it’s a good idea to look at sandboxes. In cybersecurity, the use of sandboxes has gained a lot of traction over the last decade or so. With the plethora of new malware coming our way every day, security researchers needed something to test new programs without investing too much of their precious time.

Sandboxes provide ideal, secluded environments to screen certain malware types without giving that malware a chance to spread. Based on the observed behavior, the samples can then be classified as harmless, malicious, or “needs a closer look.”

Running programs in such a secluded environment is referred to as sandboxing and the environment the samples are allowed to run in are called sandboxes.

Definition of sandboxing

Let’s start with a definition so we know what we are talking about. There are many definitions around but I’m partial to this one:

“Sandboxing is a software management strategy that isolates applications from critical system resources and other programs. Sandboxing helps reduce the impact any individual program or app will have on your system.”

I’m not partial to this definition because it is more correct than other definitions, but because it says exactly what we want from a sandbox in malware research: No impact on critical system resources. We want the malware to show us what it does, but we don’t want it to disturb our monitoring or infect other important systems. Preferably, we want it to create a full report and be able to reset the sandbox quickly so it’s ready for the next sample.

Malware detection and sandboxing

Coming from that definition, we can say that a cybersecurity sandbox is a physical or virtual environment used to open files or run programs without the chance of any sample interfering with our monitoring or permanently affecting the device they are running on. Sandboxing is used to test code or applications that could be malicious before serving it up to critical devices.

In cybersecurity, sandboxing is used as a method to test software which would end up being categorized as “safe” or “unsafe” after the test. In many cases, the code will be allowed to run and a machine learning (ML) algorithm or another type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be used to classify the sample or move it further upstream for closer determination.

Malware and online sandboxes

As sandbox technology development further progressed and as the demand for a quick method to test software arose, we saw the introduction of online sandboxes. These are websites where you can submit a sample and receive a report about the actions of the sample as observed by the online sandbox.

It still takes an experienced eye to determine from these reports whether the submitted sample was malicious or not, but for many system administrators in a small organization, it’s a quick check that lets them decide whether they want to allow something to run inside their security perimeter.

Some of these online sandboxes have even taken this procedure one step further and allow user input during the monitoring process.

This is an ideal setup for those types of situations where the intended victim needs to unzip a password-protected attachment and enable content in a Word document. Or those pesky adware installers that require you to scroll through their End User License Agreement (EULA) and click on “Agree” and “Install.” As you can imagine. these will not do much on a fully automated sandbox, but for a malware analyst, these samples would fall into the category that requires human attention anyway.

Sandbox sensitivity

In the ongoing “arms race” between malware writers and security professionals, malware writers started to add routines to their programs that check if they are running in a virtual environment. When the programs detect that they are running in a sandbox or on a virtual machine (VM), they throw an error or just stop running silently. Some even perform some harmless task to throw us off their track. Either way, these sandbox-evading malware samples don’t execute their malicious code when they detect that they are running inside a controlled environment. Their main concern is that researchers would be able to monitor the behavior and come up with counter strategies, like blocking the URLs that the sample tries to contact.

Some of the methods that malware uses to determine whether it is running in a sandbox are:

• Delaying execution to make use of the time-out that is built into most sandboxes.
• Hardware fingerprinting. Sandboxes and Virtual Machines can be recognized as they are typically different from physical machines. A much lower usage of resources, for example, is one such indicator.
• Measuring user interaction. Some malware requires the user to be active for it to run, even if it’s only a moving mouse-pointer.
• Network detection. Some samples will not run on non-networked systems.
• Checking other running programs. Some samples look for processes that are known to be used for monitoring and refuse to run when they are active. Also the absence of other software may be considered an indicator of running on a sandbox.

Sandboxes and virtual machines

In the previous paragraph we referenced both virtual machines and sandboxes. However, while sandboxes and virtual machines share enough characteristics to get them confused for one another, they are in fact two different technologies.

What really sets them apart is that the Virtual Machine is always acting as if it were a complete system. A sandbox can be made much more limited.  For instance, a sandbox can be made to run only in the browser and none of the other applications on the system would notice it was even there. On the other hand, a Virtual Machine that is entirely separated from the rest of the world, including its host, would be considered a sandbox.

To make the circle complete, so to speak, we have seen malware delivered in the form of a VM. This type of attack was observed in two separate families, Maze and Ragnar Locker. The Maze threat actors bundled a VirtualBox installer and the weaponized VM virtual drive inside a msi file (Windows installer package). The attackers then used a batch script called starter.bat to launch the attack from within the VM.

If you’d like to know more technical details about these attacks, here’s some recommended reading: Maze attackers adopt Ragnar Locker virtual machine technique

The future of sandboxing

Keeping in mind that containerization and virtual machines are becoming more common as a replacement for physical machines, we wonder whether cybercriminals can afford to cancel their attack when they find out they are running on a sandbox or virtual machine.

On the other hand, the malware detection methods developed around sandboxes are getting more sophisticated every day.

So, could this be the field where the arms race is in favor of the good guys? Only the future will be able tell us.

Stay safe, everyone!

The post Sandbox in security: what is it, and how it relates to malware appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

“It happens to the best of us.”

And, indeed, no adage is better suited to a phishing campaign that recently made headlines.

Fraudsters used the brand, KnowBe4—a trusted cybersecurity company that offers security awareness training for organizations—to gain recipients’ trust, their Microsoft Outlook credentials, and other personally identifiable information (PII). This is according to findings from our friends at Cofense Intelligence, who did a comprehensive analysis of the campaign, and of course, KnowBe4, who first reported about it.

Email details are as follows:

Subject: Training Reminder: Due Date

Message body:

Good morning

Your Security Awareness Training will expire within the next 24hrs. You only have 1 day to complete the following assignment:

– 2020 KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training

Please note this training is not available on the employee training Portal. You need to use the link below to complete the training:

hxxps://training[.]knowb[.]e4[.]com/auth/saml/4d851fef35c0f

This training link is also available on Security Awareness Training.

Use the URL: training[.]knowbe[.]4[.]com/login if you like to access the training outside of the network. Please use your email on the initial KnowBe4 login screen. Once the browser directs you to authentication page, please enter your username, password, and click the “Sign in” button to access the training.

Your training record will be available within 30 days after the campaign is concluded.

Thank you for helping to keep our organization safe from cybercrime.

Information Security Officer

“Poor English” is usually a hallmark of a scam email, according to majority of cybersecurity experts, and phishing emails are notoriously known for it. The above training-themed email may have fooled several recipients who are quite forgiving to some English errors—after all, typos do happen.

However, we should remember to also look at the URLs closely, both on the email and where it really leads to when you hover a mouse pointer over each one of them. Granted this is a straightforward, unsophisticated scam, which makes discerning it easier. It also gives us the notion that whoever the campaign is trying to bag, they’re only after those who aren’t careful enough to look closely or critical enough to perceive that something is amiss.

To the seemingly untrained eye, the URLs on the email may seem genuine, but they’re not. If you’re familiar with a URL’s structure, you’ll realize quickly that they’re not even close to being genuine. Take, for example, training[.]knowb[.]e4[.]com. The main domain here is e4[.]com. As for training[.]knowbe[.]4[.]com, the main domain is 4[.]com. Basic familiarity to URLs can save you from falling for scams like this.

Once users click any of the links, they are directed to a destination that doesn’t bear the KnowBe4 brand but to what appears to be a Microsoft Outlook sign in page, asking for credentials.

Again, take note of the URL in the address bar.

According to Cofense, similar phishing pages like this are hosted on at least 30 sites since April of this year. They also found traces of other current or previous phishing campaigns that were themed around sexual harassment training, another learning course many organizations require their employees to take.

Going back: Once the Outlook username and password combination were provided and the user clicks “sign in”, they are directed to another Outlook page, this time asking for details that are more personal, such as date of birth and physical address.

As the phishing kit had already been taken down at the time of writing, testing couldn’t show what happens next after clicking “Verify Now”. But based on the sexual harassment training phishing campaign, which used the same kit, redirecting to a legitimate sexual harassment training page, it’s logical to conclude that users would also be directed to a security awareness training website, which may or may not necessarily be KnowBe4.

This isn’t the first time the KnowBe4 brand—or other cybersecurity brands for that matter—have been abused to defraud people. The company was first used in phishing campaigns in September 2018 and in January 2019.

In February of this year, a NortonLifeLock phishing scam, wherein threat actors forced a remote access Trojan (RAT) installation onto victim systems by making a malformed Word document appear to be password-protected by NortonLifeLock, was found in the wild.

In April 2019, sophisticated Office 365 credential stealers didn’t only craft fake Microsoft alert types around certain Microsoft products, they also mimicked the return path of Barracuda Networks, a well-known email security provider, and include it in the phishing email’s Received header, making the email appear that it passed through Barracuda servers. This would make it seem like it could be trusted, and thus, safe to open, when—upon closer inspection—it’s not.

Every organization has a brand to protect. And the first step to do this is to realize early on that their brand could be misused or abused by those who want to make illicit gains. That said, no brand is truly safe. Heck, even Malwarebytes has doppelgängers.

Businesses must be actively looking for those banking on their names online. Customers, on the other hand, must know and accept that online criminals can get to them through the services they use by pretending to be these companies. It’s no longer enough to readily trust emails based on the logos they purport to bear. It’s time to start carefully reading emails you care about and scrutinizing them, from the supposed sender to the email links and/or attachments.

Never attempt to click anything on dubious emails or visit the destinations by copying and pasting them on a browser unless you’re in a virtual machine. And if you don’t have time to do the investigative work yourself, ask. Give your service provider a call or report a potential phishing attempt. This way, you’re not only helping yourself but also alerting your provider and helping those who would have fallen for a scam if not for your efforts.

Stay safe!

The post Phishers spoof reliable cybersecurity training company to garner clicks appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we looked at Fintech industry developments, specifically the differences between Europe and the US, and we analyzed how some charities and the advertising industry are tied together. We also told readers about what companies can do to counter domain name abuse.

In our Lock and Code podcast we talked to Pieter Arntz about safely using Google Chrome Extensions.

Other cybersecurity news

• Researchers discovered the Zerologon Windows exploit, which lets attackers instantly become admins on enterprise networks. (Source: TechSpot)
• A technology firm linked to the Chinese Communist Party has created and mined a global database of 2.4 million individuals. (Source: The Diplomat)
• Five Chinese nationals and two Malaysian nationals linked to APT41 were charged in connection with a global hacking campaign. (Source: Cyberscoop)
• How do stolen credit cards get used halfway around the world? Danny Palmer tried to find out. (Source: ZDNet)
• Cybersecurity companies noticed a surge in DDoS attacks targeting the education and academic sector. (Source: BleepingComputer)
• A bluetooth vulnerability dubbed BLURtooth that overwrites Bluetooth encryption keys was reported last week by two research groups. (Source: TechXplore)
• The US Department of the Interior (DoI) failed its latest computer security assessment, mostly for a lack of Wi-Fi defenses. (Source: The Register)
• A woman in Germany died during a ransomware attack on a hospital, in what may be the first death directly linked to a cyberattack on a hospital. (Source: The Verge)
• In a transformation of the threat portfolio, web-phishing targeting various online services almost doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Source: Security Affairs)
• UK business owners were targeted by a phishing scam that attempts to gain sensitive information by impersonating Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). (Source: Infosecurity Magazine)

Stay safe, everyone!

The post A week in security (September 14 – 20) appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Even though some organizations and companies may not realize it, their domain name is an important asset. Their web presence can even make or break companies. Therefor, “domain name abuse” is something that can ruin your reputation.

Losing control

There are several ways in which perpetrators can abuse your good name to make a profit for themselves, while ruining your good name in the process.

• Domain name hijacking
• Webserver takeovers
• Domain name abuse

The first two are closely related and are usually the result of an attack or breach of some kind.

Domain name hijacking can be the result of someone getting hold of your credentials and changing the server that gets to display the information when the domain is queried. Generally speaking, this is done by changing the DNS records for the domain and if the attackers are planning to prolong the use of your domain, they will move the domain registration to a different registrar. This is done to make it harder for the original owner to get control back over the domain. To pull this off they will need to get hold of your login credentials with the original registrar, either by phishing or by a data breach at the registrar. Many registrars will also ask for an Auth-Code when a domain holder wants to transfer a domain name from one registrar to another. So, it is wise to store this separate from your login credentials. Worst case scenario: the registrar cannot solve the issue for you. Even the ICANN will not be able to remediate the illegal domain transfer if your requests to the original and new registrar do not manage to get your control back.

Webserver takeovers are more of a physical attack on your own servers, whether they are on premise, hosted, or in the cloud. This is what we often see when websites are defaced or other attacks with a shorter lifespan. The results are easier to remedy as it usually only takes a backup of the old website to restore it to its old glory. Sometimes all you need to do is remove a few files that were added by the attacker. But the important part here is to find out how the attacker got access to the webserver(s) and how you can prevent it in the future.

A whole different, but related topic, we have discussed before is the use of expired domains for malvertising. While the technique is totally different, the end goal—malvertising— is of common interest.

Domain name abuse

But the main topic for this post will be domain name abuse, a much harder to grasp subject as it does not involve access to something that belongs to you. At best (or worst rather) the infringement is on your intellectual property.

Again, there are several possible scenarios.

• Typosquatting
• Domain name registration under another Top Level Domain (TLD)
• Replacing country code TLD’s (ccTLD’s)
• Using ccTLD’s to replace .com or other general TLD’s

Depending on the objective of the domain name abuse some strategies will make more sense then others. If the motive is email fraud then making the website look exactly like the one the perpetrator wants to mimic is more important than having a convincingly deceiving domain name. Especially since spoofing is another option that is often used in email fraud.

Typosquatting is the method of using domain names that are only a little bit different from the real one. They are usually only one typo away, hence the name. These names are often used on highly popular domain names to increase the chance of success. To use an example: goggle[.]com. (See? At first glance, it kind of works.)

Changing the TLD means the holder of the new domain changed the TLD expecting the reader will not notice or be aware of the switch they made. Yet another example: whitehouse[.]com.

Replacing country code TLD is basically the same method but this is a technique often used for banking fraud sites where a national bank is impersonated by giving it a more international TLD. For example: localbank.us becomes localbank.com.

The other way around happens as well. The international TLD gets replaced with a country code TLD Which also makes sense since many internationals use this method to direct traffic for local dealerships to the localized website. For example: Chevrolet also owns Chevrolet.de besides their own Chevrolet.com.

What is the purpose of the abuse?

Before we look at how we can respond to domain name abuse, it is important to establish what the purpose of the abuser is. The motives can range from downright malicious and illegal to trying to grab some extra traffic using your brand, which is not immediately illegal, per se. There are some grey areas between the two where legal actions may or may not have the desired result.

What is definitely not allowed is when the abuser tries to pretend to be a representative for your company or to act in your name without your consent. On the other hand, it is not illegal to hope that someone makes a typo. But like we said there is a big grey area between these two. Let’s look at an example.

In most countries it is not illegal to act as an intermediary between the public and an organization. Let’s take for example the intermediaries that ask for money to do the necessary paperwork for a US Green Card. Probably every country has at least one that offers to assist you to apply for one. For a fee of course. There is nothing illegal about most of them. The terrain gets shady, though, when the intermediary uses a domain name that could make the visitor think they are dealing with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) directly. For example, by using the domain uscis[.]us. It gets downright illegal when the owner of the domain puts official logos of another company on his website. At that point they are impersonating the USCIS and can expect a takedown. For commercial companies such behavior can also be treated as an infringement on intellectual property.

Countermeasures

What are your options when you notice, or worse, get notified about domain name abuse? There are a few options to deal with websites that throw a negative shadow over your own:

• Ignore. In some cases, there are few other options, so your best strategy may be to not waste any time on the matter and hope it goes away.
• Contact the owner. If you look up the domain name there will be a contact email or abuse email of the registrar provided. This method may help in cases of an honest mistake, but your efforts are likely to be futile when there is malicious intent.
• Contact the registrar. You will need some luck and provide decent evidence to get a registrar to take down a website of one of their customers. Some registrars are known for their slow and reluctance to help victims of domain name abuse.
• In those cases you will have to resort to a so-called “Notice and takedown” procedure. Many countries have an independent authority that you can contact with complaints about their ccTLD’s. But these authorities will not be able to help you with international TLDs.
• Take them to court. Easier said then done when you don’t know who you’re dealing with. And even if you do, court rulings can take a long time and are costly. But sometimes threatening with legal proceedings is enough since they are costly for the other party as well.
• Make sure nobody finds the offensive sites. When the owners rely on search engines to find their site you can counter them there. Often, new sites rely on paid advertisements with search engines to bring in the necessary traffic. Your options are to file a complaint with the search engine or to simply outbid the opponent by paying more for advertisements pointing to your own site.

Required level of protection

There are very different levels of necessity for specialized services and systems that watch and report possible domain name abuse on your domain. Banks and other financials will probably have a whole department involved in takedowns, where your run of the mill pop and mom shop will be satisfied if they can keep their own site updated. Some companies will have an in-house department to keep an eye on possible domain name abuse which will be backed by a legal department that gets called in when necessary. Others will hire a specialized company to do this for them, while the vast majority has taken no precautions at all and will respond whenever a problem should arise.

And as long as your company is considered to be in the appropriate category there is not much reason to make any changes. Having a specialized department when there is absolutely no track record of domain name abuse and none is to be expected is a waste of time and money.

The post Is domain name abuse something companies should worry about? appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Data makes the world go round, more often than not via advertising and its tracking mechanisms. Whether you think making money from large volumes of PII to keep the web ticking over is a good thing, or a sleazy data-grab often encouraging terrible ad practices, it’s not going to go away anytime soon. Charity advertising is an important feature of revenue generation for UK-based charitable organisations, and that’s where our focus lies in this post.

A detailed analysis of ad tracking mechanisms on popular charity websites has been released by ProPrivacy, and it explores the nuances of organisations balancing the need to stay in operation alongside ensuring personal data and privacy are top of the agenda. Unfortunately, it appears there’s still a lot of work to do in that regard.

The numbers game

Right off the bat, I think it’s important to pin down exactly what kind of numbers we’re talking about here. The report is incredibly long and detailed, and it’s quite easy to miss key points as a result. If you skimmed the report, or just glanced at bits and pieces, you might come away thinking 80,000 UK based charities are harvesting data on a grand scale. That isn’t the case.

The domains were extracted by researchers from the Charity Commissioner’s database. Once potentially unrelated sites such as publishing companies, subdomains, dead URLs and more were removed from the total, what’s left is 64k sites. That’s still a sizeable number of domains. Even so, that tally is about to drop further.

The study authors deduced that 42% of what remained used ad tracking technology. That’s around 27,000 sites. This is still a big number, but as you can see we’ve already lost a significant chunk of the original tally.

Adding shape to data

As for what kind of charity advertising lurked on those sites, I’ll stand back and let the researchers do the talking:

The majority of these trackers were related to social platforms. 33.8% of the sites analysed contained trackers belonging to: Facebook, Twitter, AddThis, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Flickr.

DoubleClick, the Alphabet-owned programmatic advertising (RTB) platform was installed on 10,105 (15.6% of sites).

Outside of the Google advertising ecosystem, we found 330 (0.51%) charities with RTB trackers and 220 (0.34%) with data broker trackers installed.

Your mileage can (and will!) vary, but I don’t personally think people generally have issues with things like social plugins, especially when many of us use those tools daily. It’s also quite easy to find out what, exactly, those plugins do and how to avoid them if you really want to.

Some of the other elements could be cause for concern, however.

The study found that 90% of the top 100 popular charities in the UK used advertising methods via DoubleClick or similar technology. Again, Google’s DoubleClick is something you can at least find information on and make an informed decision as to whether you want your data to interact with it. With them taken out of the picture, 40% used third party elements belonging to either RTB players or data brokers.

This is where the story really kicks into gear. Before said gear can be kicked, it’s time for a brief “What is RTB” interlude.

What is Real Time Bidding (RTB)?

Back in the olden times of online advertising, ads were purchased in bulk and placed on specific websites only. It was all a bit cumbersome and not particularly sophisticated, at least compared to what’s now available. Real Time Bidding (RTB) is a system where advertisers compete in real time set against specific audiences and targets.

It’s more agile than more traditional methods of ad unit placement, and usually a bit cheaper. Instead of the old bulk methods, you can assign whatever size budget you like and only “win” the bids you’re interested in. Anything unimportant to your overall strategy won’t factor into things.

Think of it as an advertising sandwich, with the advertisers wanting to promote wares on one side, the website on the other, and the ad network filling in-between connecting the two. Within that ad network space, you’ve got the big players at the top of the…sandwich tree?…and an endless procession of ad agencies.

There are usually additional ad agencies filling the role of brokers liaising with said big guns. In amongst all of this, the rogue advertisers place their bids for impressions alongside legitimate buyers, and the real-time nature of things makes it tricky to sniff them out. Those bogus ads could be pushing malware, or redirects, or both.

That’s at the “definitely very bad” end of the scale. Elsewhere, we have simply “RTB working as intended”. That’s our sign to jump back to the story at hand.

Charity sites and RTB

According to the research, 21 charities are sharing data with brokers directly, and seven are sharing with more than one broker. As you can imagine, it’s important to comply with all relevant rules to keep site visitors safe from potential privacy intrusions. What the study found, however, was that in a lot of cases where charity advertising is concerned, organisations simply had no idea what was happening on their site.

Daisy chains of third-party requests from the initially placed tracker means visitor data could be shared with multiple companies. Who are they? What are they doing with it? Well, the charity may not know and so neither would you. If people running the ad tech don’t fully explain what’s going to take place to the charities, that leaves both site and visitors at risk.

Oh no, my cookie jar

Worse, cookie compliance is a mess. In theory, when you see one of those “Do you accept” notices, you’re supposed to be able to decide if you accept cookies / tracking or not. Everything should pause under the hood and wait for you to make an informed decision. The reality is a little bit shocking, with a whopping 92% of the top charity sites failing to pause cookie loading till a decision is made.

Going back to the data, 8 charities paused 3^rd party cookie loading till a decision was made. The rest were potentially sharing data with advertisers while the site visitor decides what to do next. 30% of those in the top tier gave no consent option either way. Some form of actual control offered to visitors was granted by just 32%, with 13% ensuring their cookies are inactive, waiting for the visitor to make a move.

This is, frankly, not great.

Scenes from a charitable donation

Many of us donate to charity organisations, whether it’s one-off payments, rolling subscriptions, bags of clothing, and more. To give one example, after a house-move I passed in a lot of clothing and other items I no longer had a use for. The way it works is you fill in a few forms when you hand it over, and a few months later a letter comes through the door. It encourages me to visit the website and “See what we’ve done with your items”.

There are a few different ways this can play out:

1. The letter will be personalised to my items, for example with a unique printed code which I input on the site. From there, the website would attempt to tie me to the items given to begin the matching of personal data and advertising profiles. Who knows if the marketing tools under the hood do anything prior to me making cookie related decisions? If they’re connected to daisy-chained advertising firms?
2. The letter includes a code tied to your name / address. This code may or may not be used on the website to update details in case of a house move. It’s possible this will be tied to marketing profiles when first entered or updated, and then you’re back to the same situation in example 1.

Time to make a choice

In my example, the site presents me with a popup the length of the page, telling me analytical / marketing cookies are set to off by default. Essential cookies are ticked, and there are two separately placed “accept recommended settings” boxes. Is there no way to disallow the essential cookies even if the site requires them to function? If I click the “accept recommended settings” next to the currently switched off marketing cookies, will it enable them? Or is “off” the recommended setting?

Does the “accept recommended settings” box next to the essential cookies tick related to those specifically, or does it do the same thing as the recommended settings box next to marketing cookies? Where do I click to find out?

These are just a few of the questions I had in my mind as I browse the page, and I’m not entirely sure what the correct answers will be. It may well be a slightly excessive observation of the choices before me, but such observations are required to figure out exactly what we’re agreeing to. Without them, the idea of granting consent seems somewhat meaningless.

Charitable ethics

As the report notes, many charities deal with very sensitive subjects. How prepared are we to become monetised for random third parties, in order to keep our favourite charities of choice ticking over? There are no easy answers to this question. The main requirement here is to ensure people’s data is treated with the same respect the charities give the recipients of their hard work. Donators are happy to keep these organisations ticking over, and it’s definitely in the long-term interests of the charities to keep them that way.

Full report: Exposing the hidden data ecosystem of the UKs most trusted charities (Source: ProPrivacy)

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“Put your money in the bank and you can watch it grow.” If there is a statement that shows us how much the financial world has changed it’s this one. With the introduction of negative interest, companies and consumers with a large amount of liquid assets are looking for a different way to handle those assets.

This is where the innovative fintech industry comes into play.

What is fintech?

The hardware and software used in the financial world is generally referred to as fintech. But the expression is also used to describe the startups in the financial world. In this article it will be used to describe the technology as many of the settled financial institutions feel they need to adapt to the same new technology that the startups offer their customers. Because of this we can find these new features in banking and other financial applications both in the apps of accomplished firms along with those of the new financials.

Differences in the leading markets

When you think about fintech there is a big difference in what everyone might envision, and this may rely for a big part on which part of the world you are in. Before 2017 the US was leading the way and they were making large investments in the development of new technologies related to online banking, mobile apps, and other new technologies in this field.

From then on investments in the US in this industry started to dwindle, simply because the existing companies turned out to need too much more investments before they could possibly become profitable. Also, there were too many horses to bet on, and the more horses, the harder it is to pick the winning one. The playing field in Europe was easier to oversee and many new branches were carried by older and more trustworthy trees. In other words, fintech firms in Europe have long been undervalued by the market while offering substantial added value and more interesting growth perspectives than their American counterparts. Product advancements and a focus on regulation have made European fintech companies more attractive for investors.

Regulation is an important factor

The use of consumer fintech in the United States seems to be well behind that in most of Europe, where regulation that looks ahead has sparked a surge of innovation in digital banking services along with the backend infrastructure onto which products are built and operated.

That might seem counterintuitive, as regulation is often blamed for slowing innovation down. Instead, European regulators have focused on reducing barriers to fintech growth rather than clinging to the way things are. For example, the U.K.’s Open Banking regulation requires the country’s nine big high-street banks to share customer data with authorized fintech providers.

Importance of fintech

The financial industry is considered to be vital infrastructure and for good reason. When we lose trust in our financial institutions, it turns our society upside down.

Web skimmers are a potential hurdle when it comes down to trust issues. Generally speaking, web skimmers insert code into legitimate websites to eavesdrop on the payment details and attempt to find enough information to steal from the buyer. These information sets are sold on the black market to the highest bidder and could turn out to be very costly for the victim, or his bank if they reimburse their customers. But even if you get reimbursed, the occurrence of someone plundering your bank account, could scare away potential buyers from online shopping.

Fintech as an industry is one of the possible caretakers when it comes to constructing tamper proof websites and prevent the interception of re-usable payment details.

PCI DSS compliance

One of the instruments that is already in place, but could be implemented better is PCI DSS compliance. Providers staying on top of achieving effective and sustainable compliance will make a notable contribution to the level of trust that consumers will have in online transactions and other fintech innovations.

The differences

The future of fintech is promising but how fast we can reap the fruits depends on where we live and how our governments handle regulation of the sector. As we have said before European laws are focused on enabling developments in the fintech industry. All the while keeping an eye on privacy issues under the flag of GDPR regulations. In the US the industry has been under heavy scrutiny since the 2008 banking crisis. For the fintech startups this has resulted in a complicated regulatory framework but also the inexistence of a concrete legislation for fintech firms that takes into consideration the different nature of their activities. And if these companies want to be players on an international level, they still have to adhere to GDPR regulations as well.

A common request from the US fintech industry has been to implement legislation that supports startups and is tailormade for the specific industry. The feeling is that this will create a favorable environment for growth and give the industry a chance to catch up with their European counterparts.

Given that the biggest part of the European fintech startups’ activity is based in the UK some analysts are still holding their breath while the implications of Brexit are starting to pen out. During the implementation period, EU law will continue to apply, firms and funds will continue to benefit. But this hasn’t brought a lot of certainty for the financial services sector in the long-term. The more traditional banks are already preparing to move hundreds of billions of dollars from London to the continent after Brexit. The magnitude of the move will likely depend on the result of the negotiations for new trade deals between the UK and the EU. But, a report from thinktank New Financial suggests that 332 financial services firms have already moved jobs out of London because of Brexit, up from 60 last time they looked in March 2019. And this was before the COVID pandemic threw a wrench in the progress of the negotiations between the UK and the EU. Companies are considering to move as a consequence of the delay and uncertainty around Brexit.

Consumer security

Whichever route the legislators decide to take, it should be clear that consumer security is a priority. Without consumer trust all the fintech endeavors will be futile anyway. Obviously mistakes will be made but they should be dealt with in a fair way and lessons should be learned from them.

One of the reasons why some of the fintech startups are so successful lies in their ability to offer alternatives to conventional financial solutions through cryptocurrencies, online loans, and P2P. Along comes a variety of challenges and one of them will be cybersecurity. The huge growth in the number and size of online platforms makes this industry very vulnerable to security breaches and creates potential targets for DDoS attacks.

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