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    Latest Warnings / Time to Patch — 41 Comments
    30
    Nov 11

    Public Java Exploit Amps Up Threat Level

    An exploit for a recently disclosed Java vulnerability that was previously only available for purchase in the criminal underground has now been rolled into the open source Metasploit exploit framework. Metasploit researchers say the Java attack tool has been tested to successfully deliver payloads on a variety of platforms, including the latest Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

    On Monday, I disclosed how the Java exploit is being sold on cybercrime forums and incorporated into automated crimeware kits like BlackHole. Since then, security researchers @_sinn3r and Juan Vasquez have developed a module for Metasploit that makes the attack tool available to penetration testers and malicious hackers alike. According to a post on the Metasploit blog today, the Java vulnerability “is particularly pernicious, as it is cross-platform, unpatched on some systems, and is an easy-to-exploit client-side that does little to make the user aware they’re being exploited.”

    Metasploit also posted the results of testing the exploit against a variety of browsers and platforms, and found that it worked almost seamlessly to compromise systems across the board, from the latest 64-bit Windows 7 machines to Mac OS X and even Linux systems.

    This development should not be taken lightly by any computer user. According to Sun’s maker Oracle, more than three billion devices run Java. What’s more, Java vulnerabilities are by some accounts the most popular exploit paths for computer crooks these days. On Monday, Microsoft’s Tim Rains published a blog post noting that the most commonly observed type of exploits in the first half of 2011 were those targeting vulnerabilities in Oracle (formerly Sun Microsystems) Java Runtime Environment (JRE), Java Virtual Machine (JVM), and Java SE in the Java Development Kit (JDK).

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    A Little Sunshine / Latest Warnings / Target: Small Businesses / Web Fraud 2.0 — 23 Comments
    30
    Nov 11

    DDoS Attacks Spell ‘Gameover’ for Banks, Victims in Cyber Heists

    The FBI is warning that computer crooks have begun launching debilitating cyber attacks against banks and their customers as part of a smoke screen to prevent victims from noticing simultaneous high-dollar cyber heists.

    The bureau says the attacks coincide with corporate account takeovers perpetrated by thieves who are using a modified version of the ZeuS Trojan called “Gameover.” The rash of thefts come after a series of heavy spam campaigns aimed at deploying the malware, which arrives disguised as an email from the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA), a not-for-profit group that develops operating rules for organizations that handle electronic payments. The ZeuS variant steals passwords and gives attackers direct access to the victim’s PC and network.

    In several recent attacks, as soon as thieves wired money out of a victim organization’s account, the victim’s public-facing Internet address was targeted by a network attack, leaving employees at the organization unable to browse the Web.

    A few of the attacks have included an odd twist that appears to indicate the perpetrators are using money mules in the United States for at least a portion of the heists. According to an FBI advisory, some of the unauthorized wire transfers from victim organizations have been transmitted directly to high-end jewelry stores, “wherein the money mule comes to the actual store to pick up his $100K in jewels (or whatever dollar amount was wired).”

    The advisory continues:

    “Investigation has shown the perpetrators contact the high-end jeweler requesting to purchase precious stones and high-end watches. The perpetrators advise they will wire the money to the jeweler’s account and someone will come to pick up the merchandise. The next day, a money mule arrives at the store, the jeweler confirms the money has been transferred or is listed as ‘pending’ and releases the merchandise to the mule. Later on, the transaction is reversed or cancelled (if the financial institution caught the fraud in time) and the jeweler is out whatever jewels the money mule was able to obtain.”

    The attackers also have sought to take out the Web sites of victim banks. Jose Nazario, manager of security research at Arbor Networks, a company that specializes in helping organizations weather large cyber attacks, said that although many of the bank sites hit belong to small to mid-sized financial institutions, the thieves also have taken out some of the larger banks in the course of recent e-heists.

    “It’s a disturbing trend,” Nazario said.

    Nazario said the handful of attacks he’s aware of in the past two weeks have involved distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults launched with the help of “Dirt Jumper” or “Russkill” botnets. Dirt Jumper is a commercial crimeware kit that is sold for a few hundred bucks on the hacker underground, and is made to be surreptitiously installed on hacked PCs. The code makes it easy for the botnet owner to use those infected systems to overwhelm targeted sites with junk traffic (KrebsOnSecurity.com was the victim of a Dirt Jumper botnet attack earlier this month).

    Security experts aren’t certain about the strategy behind the DDoS attacks, which are noisy and noticeable to both victims and their banks. One theory is that the perpetrators are hoping the outages will distract the banks and victims.

    “The belief is the DDoS is used to deflect attention from the wire transfers as well to make them unable to reverse the transactions (if found),” the FBI said.

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    Latest Warnings / Time to Patch — 42 Comments
    28
    Nov 11

    New Java Attack Rolled Into Exploit Kits

    A new exploit that takes advantage of a recently-patched critical security flaw in Java is making the rounds in the criminal underground. The exploit, which appears to work against all but the latest versions of Java, is being slowly folded into automated attack tools.

    The exploit attacks a vulnerability that exists in Oracle Java SE JDK and JRE 7 and 6 Update 27 and earlier. If you are using Java 6 Update 29, or Java 7 Update 1, then you have the latest version that is patched against this and 19 other security threats. If you are using a vulnerable version of Java, it’s time to update. Not sure whether you have Java or what version you may be running? Check out this link, and then click the “Do I have Java?” link below the big red “Free Java Download” button.

    A few weeks back, researcher Michael ‘mihi’ Schierl outlined how one might exploit this particular Java flaw. Over the weekend, I stumbled on a discussion in an exclusive cybercrime forum about an exploit that appears to have been weaponized along the same lines as described by Schierl. Below is a recording of a video posted by one of the members that shows the attack in action.

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    A Little Sunshine / Latest Warnings / Security Tools / The Coming Storm — 43 Comments
    23
    Nov 11

    Apple Took 3+ Years to Fix FinFisher Trojan Hole

    The Wall Street Journal this week ran an excellent series on government surveillance tools in the digital age. One story looked at FinFisher, a remote spying Trojan that was marketed to the governments of Egypt, Germany and other nations to permit surreptitious PC and mobile phone surveillance by law enforcement officials. The piece noted that FinFisher’s creators advertised the ability to deploy the Trojan disguised as an update for Apple’s iTunes media player, and that Apple last month fixed the vulnerability that the Trojan leveraged.

    Image: spiegel.de

    But the WSJ series and other media coverage of the story have overlooked one small but crucial detail: A prominent security researcher warned Apple about this dangerous vulnerability in mid-2008, yet the company waited more than 1,200 days to fix the flaw.

    The disclosure raises questions about whether and when Apple knew about the Trojan offering, and its timing in choosing to sew up the security hole in this ubiquitous software title: According to Apple, as of June 2011, there were approximately a quarter billion installations of iTunes worldwide.

    Apple did not respond to requests for comment. An email sent Wednesday morning to its press team produced an auto-response stating that employees were already on leave for the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.

    I first wrote about this vulnerability for The Washington Post in July 2008, after interviewing Argentinian security researcher Francisco Amato about “Evilgrade,” a devious new penetration testing tool he had developed. The toolkit was designed to let anyone send out bogus automatic update alerts to users of software titles that don’t sign their updates. I described the threat from this toolkit in greater detail:

    Why is this a big deal? Imagine that you’re at an airport lounge, waiting to board your flight, and you pop open your laptop to see if you can hop on an open wireless network. Bear in mind that there are plenty of tools available that let miscreants create fake wireless access points for the purposes of routing your connection through their computer. You connect to that fake network, thinking you can check your favorite team’s sports scores. A few seconds later, some application on your system says there’s a software update available. You approve the update.

    You’re hosed.

    Or maybe you don’t approve the update. But that may not matter, because in some cases, auto-update features embedded in certain software titles will go ahead and download the update at that point, and keep nagging you until you agree to install it at a later date.

    Evilgrade leveraged a flaw in the updater mechanism for iTunes that could be exploited on Windows systems. Amato described the vulnerability:

    “The iTunes program checks that the binary is signed by Apple but we can inject content into the description as it opens a browser, with a malicious binary so that the user thinks its from Apple,” Amato said of his attack tool.

    Emails shared with KrebsOnSecurity show that Amato contacted Apple’s security team on July 11, 2008, to warn them that the iTunes update functionality could be abused to push out malicious software. According to Amato, Apple acknowledged receipt of the report shortly thereafter, but it did not contact him about his findings until Oct. 28, 2011, when it sent an email to confirm his name and title for the purposes of crediting him with reporting the flaw in its iTunes 10.5.1 patch release details. Interestingly, Apple chose to continue to ignore the vulnerability even after Amato shipped a significant feature upgrade to Evilgrade in Oct. 2010.

    The length of time Apple took to patch this significant security flaw is notable. In May 2006, I undertook a longitudinal study of how long it took Apple to ship security updates for its products. In that analysis, I looked at two years’ worth of patches issued to fix serious security bugs in Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, as well as other Apple software applications like iTunes. I found that on average, 91 days elapsed between the date that a security researcher alerted Apple to an unpatched flaw and the date Apple shipped a patch to fix the problem. In that study, I examined patch times for four dozen flaws, and the lengthiest patch time in that period was 245 days.

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    A Little Sunshine / Latest Warnings — 31 Comments
    18
    Nov 11

    Cyber Intrusion Blamed for Hardware Failure at Water Utility

    A recent cyber attack on a city water utility in Illinois may have destroyed a pump and appears to be part of a larger intrusion at a U.S. software provider, new information suggests. The incident is the latest to raise alarms about the security protecting  so-called supervisory control and data acquisition system, or “SCADA” networks — increasingly Internet-connected systems designed to monitor and control complex industrial networks.

    CNN is reporting that federal officials are investigating the attack, but quoted a Department of Homeland Security official downplaying the incident. Wired.com says the focus of the attack may be the Curran-Gardner Public Water District near Springfield, Ill. The Register quotes DHS’s Peter Boogaard saying the agency and the FBI are gathering facts surrounding the report of a water pump failure, but that “at this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety.”

    The incident was first reported in a state cyber fusion notice dated Nov. 10, and soon was summarized on the blog by Joe Weiss, managing partner of Applied Control Solutions, a SCADA systems security firm. Weiss criticized the lack of response and alerting by the US-CERT, Department of Homeland Security, and the information sharing and analysis center (ISAC) run by the water industry.

    Weiss read KrebsOnSecurity sections of the report, which traced the origin of the attack to Russian Internet addresses.

    “Sometime during the day of Nov. 8, 2011, a water district employee noticed problems with a SCADA system. An information technology service and repair company checked the computer logs of the SCADA system and determined the system had been remotely hacked into from an Internet provider address located in Russia.”

    The alert also indicates that this attack may be linked to a SCADA provider that also serves other industries, in addition to the water sector. From the alert:

    “The SCADA system that was used by the water district was produced by a software company based in the US. It is believed the hackers had acquired unauthorized access to the software company’s database and retrieved the usernames and passwords of various SCADA systems, including the water district systems.”

    The intrusions apparently took place over several months, during which time the attackers remotely logged into the water district’s SCADA networks and toggled systems off and on, eventually causing the failure of a water pump at the facility.

    “Over a period of 2-3 months, minor glitches have been observed in remote access to the water district’s SCADA system. Recently, the SCADA system would power on and off, resulting in the burnout of a water pump.”

    The notice also stated that the method of attack appears to be similar to the recent compromise of servers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which involved security weaknesses around phpMyAdmin, a popular Web-based database administration tool.

    “This network intrusion is the same method of attack recently used against the MIT Server,” the water district alert stated. “The water district’s attack and the MIT attack both had references to PHPMyAdmin in the log files of the computer systems. It is unknown at this time the number of SCADA usernames and passwords acquired from the software company’s database, and if any additional systems have been attacked as a result of this theft.”

    Michael Assante, president and CEO of the National Board of Information Security Examiners and a former chief security officer for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), said the attack highlights the potential pitfalls of utilities increasingly turning to off-the-shelf commercial solutions and remote access to trim costs in an era of tight state and local budgets.

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    Latest Warnings / Time to Patch — 38 Comments
    10
    Nov 11

    Critical Flash Update Plugs 12 Security Holes

    Adobe has issued a critical software update for its Flash Player software that fixes at least a dozen security vulnerabilities in the widely-used program. Updates are available for Windows, Mac, Linux,  Solaris and Android versions of Flash and Adobe Air.

    The update fixes flaws present in Flash Player versions 11.0.1.152 and earlier for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris systems, and in Flash 11.0.1.153 and earlier for Android. The vulnerabilities are rated critical, meaning they could give hacked or malicious Web sites an easy way to install software on your machine.

    Adobe’s advisory says users of Flash version 11.0.1.152 and earlier should update to v. 11.1.102.55; those using Flash v. 11.0.1.153 and earlier versions for Android should update to Flash Player 11.1.102.59. Users of AIR 3.0 for Windows, Macintosh, and Android should update to AIR  v. 3.1.0.4880. The company says it is not aware of any active attacks against these flaws at this time.

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    Latest Warnings / Time to Patch — 21 Comments
    9
    Nov 11

    Adobe, Apple, Microsoft & Mozilla Issue Critical Patches

    Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla all released updates on Tuesday to fix critical security flaws in their products. Adobe issued a patch that corrects four vulnerabilities in Shockwave Player, while Redmond pushed updates to address four Windows flaws. Apple slipped out an update that mends at least 17 security holes in its version of Java, and Mozilla issued yet another major Firefox release, Firefox 8.

    The only “critical” patch from Microsoft this month is a dangerous Windows flaw that could be triggered remotely to install malicious software just by sending the target system specially crafted packets of data. Microsoft says this vulnerability may be difficult to reliably exploit, but it should be patched immediately. Information on the other three flaws fixed this week is here. The fixes are available via Windows Updates for most supported versions of the operating system, including XP, Vista and Windows 7. Continue reading →

    Latest Warnings / Security Tools — 17 Comments
    4
    Nov 11

    Microsoft Issues Stopgap Fix for ‘Duqu’ Flaw

    Microsoft has released an advisory and a stopgap fix for the zero-day vulnerability exploited by the “Duqu” Trojan, a highly targeted malware strain that some security experts say could be the most important cyber espionage threat since Stuxnet.

    According to the advisory, the critical vulnerability resides in most supported versions of Windows, including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The problem stems from the way Windows parses certain font types. Microsoft says it is aware of targeted attacks exploiting this flaw, but that it believes few users have been affected.

    Nevertheless, the flaw is a dangerous one. Microsoft said that an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code, install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. The most likely vehicle for the exploit is a poisoned email attachment.

    Microsoft is working on developing an official security update to fix the flaw. For now, it has released a point-and-click Fixit tool that allows Windows users to disable the vulnerable component. Enabling this tweak may cause fonts in some applications to display improperly. If you experience problems after applying the Fixit solution, you can always undo it by clicking “disable” image in the Microsoft advisory and following the prompts.

    Update, Nov. 10, 9:22 a.m. ET: As several readers have noted, installing this FixIt may cause Windows Update to repeatedly ask prompt you to install two particular updates: KB972270, and KB982132. Uninstalling the FixIt seems to stop these incessant prompts, although it leaves the vulnerable Windows component exposed.

    A Little Sunshine / Latest Warnings — 7 Comments
    13
    Oct 11

    ATM Skimmer Powered by MP3 Player

    Almost a year ago, I wrote about ATM skimmers made of parts from old MP3 players. Since then, I’ve noticed quite a few more ads for these MP3-powered skimmers in the criminal underground, perhaps because audio skimmers allow fraudsters to sell lucrative service contracts along with their theft devices.

    Using audio to capture credit and debit card data is not a new technique, but it is becoming vogue: Square, an increasingly popular credit card reader built for the iPhone, works by plugging into the headphone jack on the iPhone and converting credit card data stored on the card into audio files.

    An audio skimmer for a Diebold ATM.

    The device pictured here is a card skimmer designed to fit over the card acceptance slot on a Diebold Opteva 760, one of the most common ATMs around. The green circuit board on the left was taken from an MP3 player (no idea which make or model). When a card is slid past the magnetic reader (the small black rectangle at the end of the black and red wires near the center of the picture), the MP3 player “hears” the data stored on the card’s magnetic stripe, and records it as an audio file to a tiny embedded flash memory device.

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    Latest Warnings / Time to Patch — Comments Off
    11
    Oct 11

    Critical Security Updates from Microsoft, Apple

    Microsoft and Apple today released security updates to fix a slew of critical security problems in their software. Microsoft’s patch batch fixes at least 23 vulnerabilities in Windows and other Microsoft products. Apple’s update addresses more than 75 security flaws in the Windows versions of iTunes.

    Nine of the 23 flaws Microsoft fixed with patches today are rated “critical,” meaning attackers could exploit them to break into vulnerable systems with little or no help from users. Eight of the nine critical bugs are in Internet Explorer. The remaining critical flaw is corrected in an update for the .NET Framework. Three of the vulnerabilities fixed with these updates were disclosed publicly prior to today, including a flaw in Windows Media Center that Microsoft believes crooks are likely to soon figure out how to reliably exploit.

    The iTunes update brings the music player software to version 10.5, and is available for Microsoft systems running Windows 7, Vista, XP SP2 and later. Two new features of iTunes deserve mentioning: Apple says iPhone and iPad users who upgrade to iOS 5 when it is released later this week will be able to sync with iTunes wirelessly. More importantly from an update perspective, Apple has at long last untethered iTunes from QuickTime.

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