Cyber News Rundown: Edition 1/12/18

by Connor Madsen | Jan 12, 2018 | Industry Intel

The Cyber News Rundown brings you the latest happenings in cyber news weekly. Who am I? I’m Connor Madsen, a Webroot Threat Research Analyst with a passion for all things security. Any questions? Just ask.

Exploitable Backdoor Found in Western Digital NAS Drives

Western Digital has recently released numerous patches for the vulnerabilities that were found and reported to the vendor nearly six months ago. The prominent issue revolved around a hard-coded administrative backdoor that could allow attackers to remotely execute files on the drives. Unfortunately for Western Digital, this series of vulnerabilities comes not long after the same generation of drives were found with 85 different exploits (and the company waited to push out patches until after the exploits had come to public attention.)

Welsh Restaurant Closes After Cyberattack

In the past month, the owner of a Welsh restaurant has been struggling to keep the doors open on the Seafood Shack following a cyberattack that completely cleared out the restaurant’s reservation system in the weeks before to Christmas. The restaurant is currently closed after nearly a month without patronage. The systems weren’t being monitored manually, so every diner’s booked tables were left empty. In addition to the cyberattack, the restaurant also faced licensing issues after a supervisor left their employ.

Winter Olympics Organizers Targeted by Phishing Attacks

Officials working on the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics have been under a constant stream of phishing attacks disguised as Microsoft® Word documents from a South Korean intelligence agency. The documents work like normal ones, but request that the user enable macros to launch a PowerShell script. Another version of the malware even bypassed the need for user permission, and instead waited for the user to click the .docx icon to change the language to Korean before launching the same PowerShell script.

Older Zero-Day Exploit Released on New Year’s Eve

In an unusual finish for 2017, one researcher chose to release a 15-year-old macOS® exploit into the wild. The exploit requires local access to the device, but, once active, would give any attacker full root access to the machine after the user logged out of their session. Even though all Mac® operating systems are susceptible to this vulnerability, it’s only a matter of time until Apple steps in and corrects the issue and give their massive client-base some piece of mind.

Opera Browser Implements Anti-Cryptojacking Functions

With the recent emergence of cryptojacking (i.e., exploiting an unwitting user’s CPU to mine cryptocurrency while they visit a hijacked website), Opera has taken a stand and implemented crypto-mining protection called “NoCoin” in their current ad blocking filter. NoCoin works by detecting any mining activity on a visited website and stops the mining, freeing up the system’s processor for actual user-initiated applications.

Cyber News Rundown: Edition 1/5/18

by Connor Madsen | Jan 5, 2018 | Industry Intel

The Cyber News Rundown brings you the latest happenings in cyber news weekly. Who am I? I’m Connor Madsen, a Webroot Threat Research Analyst with a passion for all things security. Any questions? Just ask.

Researchers Find Major Security Flaws in Modern Processors

Newly discovered bugs, Meltdown and Spectre, exploit critical flaws in the architecture of many modern processors to leak system memory and view information that should remain hidden at the application level. This vulnerability would allow hackers to steal secret information, such as stored passwords, although there are no known exploits currently in use. Operating system makers such as Microsoft, Apple, and Linux scrambled on Wednesday to release security updates to protect users. Experts speculate these flaws will impact the security industry for many years to come.

‘Trackmageddon’ Bugs Leave GPS Data Open to Hackers

Two security researches have uncovered several vulnerabilities that affect GPS tracking services, including those used in child and pet trackers. These vulnerabilities range from weak passwords and unsecured folders to unprotected API endpoints, according a report issued by the research team. Hackers could potentially exploit these flaws to collect private data from these location-tracking services.

Clothing Retailer Finds Malware on PoS Devices

The LA-based fashion retailer Forever 21 revealed that a recent data breach resulted in the theft of customer credit card information. Following an investigation, Forever 21 disclosed that point-of-sale devices were infected with malware following a lapse in data encryption. While it’s still unclear how many stores and customers have been affected, the retailer advises all customers to keep a close eye on their financial statements and credit reports for suspicious activity.

Cancer Care Provider Reaches Settlement over HIPAA Violations

21^st Century Oncology has reached a $2.3 million settlement agreement with the US Department of Health and Human Services following a data breach that leaked patient records and Social Security numbers of some 2 million patients. According to a press release from HHS, the breach was uncovered after an FBI informant was able to illegally obtain the company’s private patient files from a third party.

Android Malware Variant Steals Uber Data

Fakeapp malware found on Android devices spoofs Uber app to appear legitimate to users. This new malware tricks users into entering their account credentials by imitating the Uber app’s user interface. This attack underscores the need for caution when downloading apps, even from the Google Play store, as well as using a trusted a mobile security solution.

Cyber News Rundown: Edition 12/29/17

by Connor Madsen | Dec 29, 2017 | Industry Intel

The Cyber News Rundown brings you the latest happenings in cyber news weekly. Who am I? I’m Connor Madsen, a Webroot Threat Research Analyst, and a guy with a passion for all things security. Any questions? Just ask.

WordPress Backdoor Found on Over 300,000 Machines

Recently, researchers found a WordPress plugin containing a backdoor that could allow criminals to easily access any device on which the plugin is installed (at least 300,000 machines, in this case). Even more worrisome: the backdoor wasn’t discovered until the plugin’s author was cited in a copyright claim over the use of the “WordPress” brand. The WordPress security team quickly updated the plugin and began force-installing it on all compromised sites.

Billions of Credentials Found on Dark Web

In a recent data dump on the Dark Web, researchers have discovered a trove of credentials for at least 1.4 billion users, all of which was stored in plain text and was easily searchable. While some of the data had already been released in a previous data dump, it appears most of the credentials were new and verified as authentic. Unsurprisingly, the dump has also revealed that the majority of users still have incredibly weak passwords. The most common is still “123456”.

Data on Millions of Americans Left Unattended Online

Earlier this year, researchers discovered yet another AWS S3 database left misconfigured and freely available to anyone with AWS credentials. The database belongs to Alteryx, a marketing analytics company, and revealed financial information for at least 123 million Americans. Although, fortunately, the database didn’t contain full names or social security numbers, the 248 available data fields could easily be used to identify specific individuals.

Thousands of Lexmark Printers Left Unsecured

Over 1,000 internet-connected Lexmark printers have been found to have zero security measures; most lacked even a simple password. Additionally, many of these printers have been traced back to prominent companies and even government organizations. And while sensitive information isn’t directly available, hackers could cause major disruptions to the devices’ functions, and could even install malware to remotely capture any print jobs that might contain valuable data.

Android Mobile Game Silently Leaking Data

A relatively new mobile game on the Google Play Store appears to leak sensitive data from both the device’s user and the device itself almost constantly. Dune!, the app, has been downloaded at least 5 million times, and has been known to connect to up to 32 different servers to silently transmit stolen data and access a device’s geolocation data. Along with its true functionality, Dune! carries at least 11 known vulnerabilities that make it prone to additional attacks and further data leakage.

Cyber News Rundown: Edition 12/15/17

by Connor Madsen | Dec 15, 2017 | Industry Intel

The Cyber News Rundown brings you the latest happenings in cyber news weekly. Who am I? I’m Connor Madsen, a Webroot Threat Research Analyst, and a guy with a passion for all things security. Any questions? Just ask.

NC County Crippled by Ransomware Attack

Recently, a county in North Carolina was the target of a substantial ransomware attack that took many of their official systems offline, and may have affected over a million residents. Nearly 10% of the county’s servers were forced offline with a ransom demand of $23,000. County officials have stated they will not be paying, as there are no guarantees with ransomware, and will work to recover systems as quickly as possible.

Starbucks In-Store Wi-Fi Used to Mine Cryptocurrency

In the past week, a researcher discovered that the Argentinian rewards site for Starbucks was silently running a coin-mining script to generate Monero coins. Even more worrisome: more than 5,000 unique sites have been identified which are also be running some form of CoinHive code to mine cryptocurrency by sapping unsuspecting visitor’s CPU power. Fortunately for fans of free WiFi, Starbucks was quick to contact their internet service provider and resolve the issue.

Brand New HP Laptops Come with a Nasty Surprise

Keylogging software was recently discovered on over 400 models of HP laptops—preinstalled in their keyboard drivers. Even though the keylogger is disabled by default, it wouldn’t be difficult for anyone with access to the device to compromise its security by enabling it to record users’ keystrokes. Luckily for HP users, the company promptly issued a patch that removed the keylogging software from affected devices.

Spider Ransomware Focused on Balkans

Over the last few days, researchers have been monitoring a new ransomware variant called “Spider” as it works its way across the Balkan region of Europe. Surprisingly, this variant gives victims a mere 96 hours to pay the ransom. In addition to the tight deadline, the ransomware makes several attempts to ease the payment process for victims by providing an “educational” video tutorial and giving the user steady reassurance on how simple it is. As with many other ransomware variants, Spider spreads through malicious Microsoft® Office documents that request users to enable macros.

Mirai Botnet Creators Federally Charged in US

The creators of the original Mirai botnet have been federally charged for its initial creation and use as a DDoS-for-hire service. At its peak, Mirai affected over 300,000 individual IoT devices. Apparently, after the major DDoS attack earlier this year against DNS provider Dyn, one of the creators released the source code in the hope that others might use it, thereby obscuring the trail leading back to him.

10 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2018

by LeVar Battle | Dec 12, 2017 | Industry Intel

It has been a turbulent year of devastating ransomware attacks (e.g. NotPetya) and gut-wrenching breaches (e.g. Equifax). Undoubtedly, the question on everyone’s mind is, “what’s in store for us in the New Year?” Webroot’s top 10 cybersecurity predictions for 2018 covers everything from ransomware and breaches to mobile, cryptocurrency, and government.We’ve grouped our predictions to help you navigate this glimpse into one possible cybersecurity future.

Malware will get smarter and threats more serious.

Malware campaigns will use AI to make secondary infection decisions based on what they’ve learned from previous campaigns. – Gary Hayslip, chief information security officer

We will see the first health-related ransomware targeting devices like pacemakers. – Eric Klonowski, sr. advanced threat research analyst

We haven’t seen the last of breaches.

I predict a minimum of 3 separate breaches of at least 100 million accounts each. I’d be willing to bet the data has already been compromised, but the affected organizations won’t learn of the breach until next year. – Tyler Moffitt, sr. advanced threat research analyst

Not even biometric security will be safe from malicious actors.

We will see the first biometric-access-based exploits using facial recognition or fingerprint access. – Eric Klonowski, sr. advanced threat research analyst

Consumers will want more from governments to keep them safe.

Consumers fighting back: 2018 will see major a major backlash from consumers (perhaps in the form of class action lawsuits), necessitating more regulations around data protection, particularly in the U.S. – David Kennerley, director of threat research

Infosec will become a C-level priority.

The CISO role will be mandatory for all organizations who do business with the Federal Government. – Gary Hayslip, CISO

Being a mobile-first society will come with greater costs.

We will see the first widespread worming mobile phone ransomware, perhaps spread by SMS or MMS. – Eric Klonowski, sr. advanced threat research analyst

Cryptocurrency will continue to rise and impending legislature is inevitable.

Malware distribution will rise and fall in conjunction with Bitcoin value. – Christopher Cain, associate malware removal engineer

GDPR will set a tone, for better or worse, and businesses should prepare on all sides.

Companies who trade with the European Union will suddenly panic over GDPR requirements and just encrypt everything in a knee-jerk response. – Jonathan Giffard, sr. product manager

The boom in the IoT space will bring stricter oversight to device manufacturers.

Data collected from IoT devices will be aggregated and used to develop an even larger, more involved picture of customers’ habits, constituting a major breach of privacy without consent. – Gary Hayslip, CISO

Do you have any cybersecurity predictions for 2018? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter with the tag #CyberIn2018.

Cyber News Rundown: 2017 Year in Review

by Connor Madsen | Dec 11, 2017 | Industry Intel

As 2017 comes to a close, we’re looking back at the 10 most significant (or simply the most devastating) cybersecurity stories of the year. Read through the list below to see which attacks, data breaches, and other events left a lasting impact on both the security industry and the global online community overall.

Which story meant the most to you or your business? Let us know in the comments below!

 

MongoDB Hacks

In January of this year, MongoDB suffered a severe hack that left thousands of installations at the mercy of a ransomware attack that transformed into a destructive force, by deleting thousands of data entries while still leaving a ransom note behind to taunt the victims. At its peak, this specific attack was being played out by up to 12 unique attackers, all leaving their own ransomware variant and encryption information on the systems, making it exceedingly difficult for remediation.

WikiLeaks Release CIA Vault 7

By March, an enormous national security hole was revealed thanks to a release on WikiLeaks dubbed “Vault 7”, which exposed information on CIA hacking, zero-day exploits that they had used, and finally that the lead security organization in the country is not invulnerable to security flaws. While consumer data has become less and less secure due to retail data breaches, it’s shocking that such a trove of information could be heisted from right under the noses of those whose job it is to protect some of the nation’s greatest secrets.

Shadow Brokers Divulge NSA Exploits

Just a short month after the WikiLeaks dump came the sudden flood of software exploits, all from the National Security Agency’s systems. Most of these were initially labeled as zero-day exploits that focused on older Windows operating systems that hadn’t received security updates, something which many large organizations had yet to implement. While Microsoft was quick to push out patches for these vulnerabilities, some of which were available for nearly a month prior to the actual Shadow Broker’s reveal, these exploits were later used for some of the largest ransomware attacks to date.

WannaCry Ransomware Tackles Globe

Within weeks of the last Shadow Brokers dump, organizations in over 150 different countries were dealing with the WannaCry ransomware that spread like wildfire across at least 150,000 individual endpoint devices. By propagating like a worm, the infection was able to spread quickly, exploiting several largely unpatched vulnerabilities in several Windows operating systems. While a patch for un-updated systems has been publicly available since March, many organizations struggled to roll it out to their endpoints, or couldn’t do so without rendering their proprietary software unusable. Months after the initial WannaCry campaign was launched, systems across the globe were still getting infected, including a Honda production plant in Japan, and an entire network of traffic cameras in Australia.

NotPetya Causes Global Chaos

Following closely behind the WannaCry campaign was a new variant of an older ransomware, dubbed NotPetya. The variant used similar tactics to the original Petya ransomware, though it had an entirely different agenda. By using the EternalBlue exploit made available by the Shadow Brokers back in March to attack unprotected Windows systems, NotPetya encrypted thousands of systems by booting to a fake ChkDsk to cover its actions, and then leaving the victims without a method to pay the ransom or make any attempts to retrieve their destroyed data.

NHS Database Exposes Over 1 Million Patient Records

By August, a breach had been discovered in a patient booking system known as SwiftQueue, which is widely used by several National Health Service facilities across the UK. The database in question contained patient information for nearly 1.2 million citizens, and to makes matters even worse, the attackers also claimed to have found additional vulnerabilities within SwiftQueue’s software and possessed of all 11 million records stored by the company. The breach comes just 2 months after the NHS fell victim to the WannaCry attacks that affected hundreds of industries around the world.

Equifax Sees Largest Data Breach to Date

In early September, Equifax announced that it had been compromised, leaving over 145 million Americans social security numbers and other highly sensitive information both vulnerable and likely for sale. The original point of access would seem to be their main Argentinian employee portal page which, through simple HTML viewing, could show both the username and password for nearly 14,000 customers who had filed a complaint, along with their social security number-equivalent, all stored in plain text.

Big Four Accounting Firm Breached

Using an administrative account without 2-factor authentication to gain access to their email system is the likely entry point for the September breach involving Deloitte, one of the world’s largest accounting firms. The attack appears to have only affected a limited number of the firm’s clients, though actual figures have remained quiet. In addition to the improperly managed client data, it was also revealed that the company’s entire email database, including administrative accounts, had been accessed by the attackers for an unknown amount of time. While the scale of this attack appears relatively small in comparison to Equifax, it should be known that Deloitte works with some of the largest organizations currently in operation and the sensitive nature of their information could be catastrophic if placed in the wrong hands.

Yahoo Breach Expands to All 3 Billion Users

In a mid-September statement, Yahoo announced that the initial breach that occurred in 2013 and took nearly 4 years of investigation, has impacted all the company’s 3 billion unique users. Along with this recent update, the company is still reeling from yet another data breach that happened in 2014, but pushes Yahoo into the podium as the largest data breach in current history. This update to the total affected users comes as little surprise, as the original breach left questions as to why some accounts were compromised quickly, while others remained untouched and showed no signs of malicious activity for several years.

IoT Takes Major Hit with Krack Attacks

To round off a high-profile year, a vulnerability was found within the Wi-Fi encryption currently in use by hundreds of millions of IoT devices around the world. The vulnerability has fortunately been patched by dozens of vendors for quite some time now. However, there are still some devices that won’t likely receive an update in the near future: security cameras, routers, and other household wirelessly connected ‘things’ due to the complexity and sheer quantity of devices that even one vendor can bring to market, let alone the dozens of vendors who are currently working with their partners to decide on the best methods for tackling this enormous vulnerability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cyber News Rundown: Edition 12/08/17

by Connor Madsen | Dec 8, 2017 | Industry Intel

The Cyber News Rundown brings you the latest happenings in cyber news weekly. Who am I? I’m Connor Madsen, a Webroot Threat Research Analyst, and a guy with a passion for all things security. Any questions? Just ask.

PayPal Plagued by Phishing Emails

Recently, many PayPal users have received emails about a fake transaction failure that request the user verify their login credentials. While many users were quick to notice the illegitimate sender email address, they also noticed that the email didn’t call them by name or username. Anyone who did follow the verification link would land on a fake site that asks the user to reenter their payment information and security questions.

Satori Botnet Emerges with 280,000 Infected Devices

Closely following worm behavior, the Satori variant of Mirai is able to spread quickly by using exploits to remotely connect to devices with unsecured ports, specifically ports 37215 and 52869. While exact methods are still unclear, Satori appears to be using a zero-day exploit for Huawei routers that received some attention in late November for allowing unauthorized code execution on affected devices. Use of Mirai variants has continued to rise in prevalence following the initial Mirai botnet discovery, which received worldwide attention for being the largest active botnet to date.

Virtual Keyboard App Leaves Data Exposed

With over 40 million users worldwide, you might expect a popular virtual keyboard app company would use strong data protection, rather than hosting the information on a simple server without so much as a password. Although the company secured their server shortly after learning of the vulnerability, 577 gigabytes worth of sensitive user data were available for an unknown period of time. The data included names and email addresses, along with user locations by city. Even worse, any keystrokes entered via the app were recorded and stored; this data was also on the unencrypted server.

Phishing Sites Now Use HTTPS to Appear Legitimate

In the past few years, security measures for websites have gotten significantly stronger, but cybercriminals are managing to close the gap. By implementing HTTPS for phishing sites, scammers can trick victims into divulging their information even more easily. After all, many users have been trained to look for the HTTPS protocol to ensure a website’s security. In a recent sample collected over a 24-hour period, nearly 200 unique phishing pages were found using HTTPS, even though it isn’t necessary for anything beyond user deception.

Apple Root Bug Resurfaces After Update

As a follow-up to last week’s new regarding a bug that allowed anyone with access to the device to gain “root” or administrative privileges, the bug appears to have resurfaced on systems that received the update after the patch was released. In addition to the bug’s return, the security update also managed to break Apple’s file sharing functionality. They have since pushed out yet another update that appears to patch all the recent issues.