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    A Little Sunshine / Latest Warnings / The Coming Storm / Web Fraud 2.0 — 6 Comments
    23
    Jan 12

    ‘Citadel’ Trojan Touts Trouble-Ticket System

    Underground hacker forums are full of complaints from users angry that a developer of some popular banking Trojan or bot program has stopped supporting his product, stranding buyers with buggy botnets. Now, the proprietors of a new ZeuS Trojan variant are marketing their malware as a social network that lets customers file bug reports, suggest and vote on new features in upcoming versions, and track trouble tickets that can be worked on by the developers and fellow users alike.

    A screenshot of the Citadel botnet panel.

    The ZeuS offshoot, dubbed Citadel and advertised on several members-only hacker forums, is another software-as-a-service malware development. Its target audience? Those frustrated with virus writers who decide that coding their next creation is more lucrative and interesting than supporting current clients.

    “Its no secret that the products in our field — without support from the developers — result in a piece of junk on your hard drive. Therefore, the product should be improved according to the wishes of our customers,” Citadel’s developers claim in an online posting. “One problem is that you have probably experienced developers who ignore your instant messages, because there are many customers but there is only one developer.”

    In the following excerpt, taken from a full description of Citadel’s innovations, the developers of this malware strain describe its defining feature as a social networking platform for malware users that is made available through a Web-based portal created by the malware itself.

    “We have created for you a special system — call it the social network for our customers. Citadel CRM Store allows you to take part in product development in the following ways:

    - Report bugs and other errors in software. All tickets are looked at by technical support you will receive a timely response to your questions. No more trying to reach the author via ICQ or Jabber.

    -Each client has the right to create an unlimited number of applications within the system. Requests can contain suggestions on a new module or improvements of existing module. Such requests can be public or private.

    -Each client has a right to vote on new ideas suggested by other members and offer his/her price for development of the enhancement/module. The decision is made by the developers on whether to go forward with certain enhancement or new module depending on the voting results.

    -Each client has the right to comment on any application and talk to any member. Now it is going to be interesting for you to find partners and like-minded people and also to take active parts in discussions with the developers.

    - You can see all stages of module development, if it is approved other members. We update the status and time to completion.

    Continue reading →

    A Little Sunshine / Web Fraud 2.0 — 21 Comments
    18
    Jan 12

    ‘MegaSearch’ Aims to Index Fraud Site Wares

    A new service aims to be the Google search of underground Web sites, connecting buyers to a vast sea of shops that offer an array of dodgy goods and services, from stolen credit card numbers to identity information and anonymity tools.

    MegaSearch results for BIN #423953

    A glut of data breaches and stolen card numbers has spawned dozens of stores that sell the information. The trouble is that each shop requires users to create accounts and sign in before they can search for cards.

    Enter MegaSearch.cc, which lets potential buyers discover which fraud shops hold the cards they’re looking for without having to first create accounts at each store. This free search engine aggregates data about compromised payment cards, and points searchers to various fraud shops selling them.

    According to its creator, the search engine does not store the compromised card numbers or any information about the card holders. Instead, it works with card shop owners to index the first six digits of all compromised account numbers that are for sale.  These six digits, also known the “Bank Identification Number” — or BIN — identify which bank issued the cards. Searching by BIN, MegaSearch users are given links to different fraud shops that are currently selling cards issued by the corresponding bank.

    I first read about this offering in a blog post by RSA Fraud Action Research Labs. It didn’t take much time poking around a few hacker boards to find the brains behind MegaSearch pitching his idea to the owners of different fraud shops. He agreed to discuss his offering with me via instant message, using the search service as his screen name.

    “I’m standing on a big startup that is going to be [referred to as] the ‘underground Google,’” MegaSearch told KrebsOnSecurity. “Many users spend a lot of time looking [through] shops, and I thought why not make that convenient?”

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    A Little Sunshine / Web Fraud 2.0 — 28 Comments
    11
    Jan 12

    Flying the Fraudster Skies

    Given the heightened security surrounding air travel these days, it may be hard to believe that fraudsters would try to board a plane using stolen tickets. But incredibly, there are a number of criminal travel agencies doing business in the underground, and judging from the positive feedback left by patrons, business appears to be booming.

    Ad above says: Maldives Turkey Goa Bora-Bora, Carribes, Any country, any hotels and resorts of the world.

    The tickets often are purchased at the last minute and placed under the criminal buyer’s real name. The reservations are made using either stolen credit cards or hijacked accounts belonging to independent contractors in the travel industry.  Customers are charged a fraction of the cost of the tickets and/or reservations, typically between 25 and 35 percent of the actual cost.

    Criminal travel services are contributing to a recent spike in airline ticket fraud. In December, the Airlines Reporting Corporation, an industry clearinghouse, said it was seeing a marked increase in unauthorized tickets issued. Between August and November of last year, 113 incidents of fraudulently booked tickets were reported to ARC, up from just 18 such incidents reported in all of 2010. The aggregate face value of the unauthorized tickets in 2011 was more than $1 million. The ARC believes the increase in fraud is mainly due to an surge in phishing emails targeting travel agency employees and contractors.

    Some of the travel agencies in the criminal underground are full-service, pitching package deals that  include airfare, car rentals and even hotel stays. A hacker using the nickname “Yoshimo” on one prominent fraudster forum offers “80-95 percent working flight tickets in most countries (some restrictions apply),” for 25 percent of the original price, and 40 percent of the price for carded hotel stays and car rentals. He has been offering this service for more than two years, and has at least 275 positive reviews from current and former customers.

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    A Little Sunshine / Web Fraud 2.0 — 32 Comments
    9
    Jan 12

    Virtual Sweatshops Defeat Bot-or-Not Tests

    Jobs in the hi-tech sector can be hard to find, but employers in one corner of the industry are creating hundreds of full-time positions, offering workers on-the-job training and the freedom to work from home. The catch? Employees will likely toil for cybercrooks, and their weekly paychecks may barely cover the cost of a McDonald’s Happy Meal.

    Kolotibablo.com home page

    The abundance of these low-skilled, low-paying jobs is coming from firms that specialize in the shadowy market of mass-solving CAPTCHAs, those blurry and squiggly words that some websites force you to retype. One big player in this industry is KolotiBablo.com, a service that appeals to spammers and exploits low cost labor in China, India, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

    KolotiBablo, which means “earn money” in transliterated Russian, helps clients automate the solving of puzzles designed to prevent automated activity by bots, such as leaving spammy comments or mass-registering accounts at Webmail providers and social networking sites. The service offers an application programming interface (API) that allows clients to feed kolotibablo.com CAPTCHAs served in real time by various sites, which are then solved by KolotiBablo workers and fed back to the client’s system.

    Paying clients interface with the service at antigate.com, a site hosted on the same server as kolotibablo.com. Antigate charges clients 70 cents to $1 for each batch of 1,000 CAPTCHAs solved, with the price influenced heavily by volume. KolotiBablo says employees can expect to earn between $0.35 to $1 for every thousand CAPTCHAs they solve.

    The twin operations say they do not condone the use of their services to promote spam, or “all those related things that generate butthurt for the ‘big guys,’” mostly likely a reference to big free Webmail providers like Google and Microsoft. Still, both services can be found heavily advertised and recommended in several underground forums that cater to spammers and scam artists.

    Registered antigate.com users can read more about why customers typically purchase the service, and how KolotiBablo is run. From the description:

    “All CAPTCHAs in our service are completely solved by real humans, there are usually 500-1000 (and growing) workers online from all the world. That’s why we can process any CAPTCHAs at any volume for a fixed price $1 per 1000 CAPTCHAs.

    You may probably think that using human resource inappropriate or inhumane. However, keep in mind that we pay the most of collected money to our workers who sit in the poorest corners of our planet and this work gives them a stable ability to buy food, clothes for themselves and their families. Most of our staff is from China, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.”

    Continue reading →

    A Little Sunshine / Web Fraud 2.0 — 20 Comments
    20
    Dec 11

    Busy Signal Service Targets Cyberheist Victims

    A new service on the cyber criminal underground can be hired to tie up the phone lines of any targeted mobile or land line around the world. The service is marketed as a diversionary tactic to assist e-thieves in robbing commercial customers of banks that routinely call customers to verify large financial transfers.

    For just $5 an hour, or $40 per day, you can keep anyone’s phone so tied up with incoming junk calls that the number is unable to receive legitimate calls.

    The seller offers discounts for frequent buyers of his service, and promises that each call to the targeted number will appear to come from a unique phone number, thereby foiling any efforts to block the bogus calls by caller ID. The vendor also is offering this service under escrow payment, which many fraud forums use to ensure both parties to a transaction are happy before payment is rendered.

    The FBI first warned about these attacks in June 2010, advising that that receiving rapid-fire “dead air” calls could be a sign that your bank account is being emptied. From that advisory:

    “Denial-of-service attacks, by themselves, are nothing new—computer hackers use them to take down websites by flooding them with large amounts of traffic.”

    “In a recent twist, criminals have transferred this activity to telephones, using automated dialing programs and multiple accounts to overwhelm the phone lines of unsuspecting citizens.”

    “Why are they doing it? Turns out the calls are simply a diversionary tactic: while the lines are tied up, the criminals—masquerading as the victims themselves—are raiding the victims’ bank accounts and online trading or other money management accounts.”

    Continue reading →

    A Little Sunshine / The Coming Storm / Web Fraud 2.0 — 36 Comments
    8
    Dec 11

    Twitter Bots Drown Out Anti-Kremlin Tweets

    Thousands of Twitter accounts apparently created in advance to blast automated messages are being used to drown out Tweets sent by bloggers and activists this week who are protesting the disputed parliamentary elections in Russia, security experts said.

    Image: Twitterbot.info

    Amid widespread reports of ballot stuffing and voting irregularities in the election, thousands of Russians have turned out in the streets to protest. Russian police arrested hundreds of protesters who had gathered in Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, including notable anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny. In response, protesters began tweeting their disgust in a Twitter hashtag #триумфальная (Triumfalnaya), which quickly became one of the most-tweeted hashtags on Twitter.

    But according to several experts, it wasn’t long before messages sent to that hashtag were drowned out by pro-Kremlin tweets that appear to have been sent by countless Twitter bots. Maxim Goncharov, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, observed that “if you currently check this hash tag on twitter you’ll see a flood of 5-7 identical tweets from accounts that have been inactive for month and that only had 10-20 tweets before this day. To this point those hacked accounts have already posted 10-20 more tweets in just one hour.”

    “Whether the attack was supported officially or not is not relevant, but we can now see how social media has become the battlefield of a new war for freedom of speech,” Goncharov wrote.

    I’ve been working with a few security researchers inside of Russia who asked not to be named for fear of retribution by patriotic Russian hackers or the government. Since Trend’s posting, they’ve identified thousands of additional accounts (e.g., @ALanskoy, @APoluyan, @AUstickiy, @AbbotRama, @AbrahamCaldwell…a much longer list is available here) that are rapidly posting anti-protester or pro-Kremlin sentiments to more than a dozen hashtags and keywords that protesters are using to share news, including #Navalny. Continue reading →

    Other / Web Fraud 2.0 — 33 Comments
    2
    Dec 11

    Loopholes in Verified by Visa & SecureCode

    Trend Micro’s Rik Ferguson posted a good piece on Thursday about a major shortcoming in credit card security programs maintained by MasterCard and Visa. Although the loophole that Ferguson highlighted may be unsettling to some, fraudsters who specialize in stealing and using stolen credit cards online have been exploiting it for years.

    At issue is a security protocol called “3 Domain Secure,” (3DS), a program designed to reduce card fraud and shift liability for fraud from online merchants to the card issuing banks. Visa introduced the program in 2001, branding it “Verified by Visa,” and MasterCard has a similar program in place called “SecureCode.”

    Cardholders who chose to participate in the programs can register their card by entering the card number, filling in their ZIP code and birth date, and picking a passcode. When a cardholder makes a purchase at a site that uses 3DS, he enters the code, which is verified by the issuing bank and is never shared with the merchant site.

    But as Ferguson notes, people are human and tend to forget things, especially passcodes and passwords, and it is the password reset function that eliminates any security provided by Verified by Visa or SecureCode. From his blog:

    “What would a criminal do if they access to your card details but not your password? Of course, there’s that handy “I forgot my password” link. Let’s see how well protected that is.”

    The first step in the password reset procedure is to enter your card number, obviously to ensure you are resetting the password for the correct account. Once that number is entered the system now requires some corroborating data to be sure that you are the legitimate account holder, let’s have a look at that “Identification” phase.”

    “Oh noes, this doesn’t look good at all! Three out of four of the items of information used to verify my identity are all contained in the credit card data itself, embossed or printed on the card and contained in the magnetic stripe data. Wouldn’t the criminal already have access to this? So what remains? One piece of information that is not included on the card. Trouble is, it’s information that is not only widely shared on social networks, surveys, sign-up forms and a myriad of other places, but also freely available in public records. We cannot and should not consider our date of birth to be a secret.”

    “Having entered the required information all that remains is to enter a new password of your choosing and your transaction is authorised. Worse still, no email notification is sent to alert the cardholder that their account has been accessed or modified. The cardholder need never know until they check their statements.”

    This would all be very shocking if it wasn’t already painfully obvious to today’s cyber crooks. When I read the Trend blog post, I began searching for several screen shots I had taken of a discussion on an underground carding forum more than two years ago, which explained very clearly how to get around this added level of card security. The tutorial in the screen shot below was posted by an administrator from the carding forum carder.pro on Halloween, 2009:

    Continue reading →

    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.

    Continue reading →

    A Little Sunshine / Web Fraud 2.0 — 33 Comments
    29
    Nov 11

    Attempted Malvertising on KrebsOnSecurity.com

    Members of an exclusive underground hacker forum recently sought to plant malware on KrebsOnSecurity.com, by paying to run tainted advertisements through the site’s advertising network — Federated Media. The attack was unsuccessful thanks to a variety of safeguards, but it highlights the challenges that many organizations face in combating the growing scourge of “malvertising.”

    Last week, I listed the various ways this blog and its author has been “honored” over the past few years by the cybercrime community, but I neglected to mention one recent incident: On May 27, 2011, several hackers who belong to a closely guarded English-language criminal forum called Darkode.com sought to fraudulently place a rogue ad on KrebsOnSecurity.com. The ad was made to appear as though it was advertising BitDefender antivirus software. Instead, it was designed to load a malicious domain: sophakevans. co. cc, a site that has been associated with pushing fake antivirus or “scareware.”

    The miscreants agreed to pay at least $272 for up to 10,000 impressions of the ad to be run on my site. Fortunately, I have the opportunity to review ads that come through Federated’s system. What’s more, Federated blocked the ad before it was even tagged for approval.

    Darkode members plot to purchase a rogue ad on KrebsOnSecurity.com. They failed.

    I learned about this little stunt roughly at the same time it was being planned; Much to the constant annoyance of the site administrators, I secretly had gained access to Darkode and was able to take this screen shot of the discussion. The incident came just a few weeks after I Tweeted evidence of my presence on Darkode by posting screenshots of the forum. The main administrator of Darkode, a hacker who uses the nickname “Mafi,” didn’t appreciate that, and promised he and his friends had something fun planned for me. I guess this was it. Interestingly, Mafi also is admin at malwareview.com and is the developer of the Crimepack exploit kit.

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    A Little Sunshine / Web Fraud 2.0 — 21 Comments
    8
    Nov 11

    How Much Is Your Identity Worth?

    How much does it cost for thieves to discover the data that unlocks identity for creditors, such as your Social Security number, birthday, or mother’s maiden name? Would it surprise you to learn that crooks are selling this data to any and all comers for pennies on the dollar?

    superget.info home page

    At least, that’s the going price at superget.info. This fraudster-friendly site has been operating since July 2010, and markets the ability to look up SSNs, birthdays and other sensitive information on millions of Americans. Registration is free, and accounts are funded via WebMoney and Liberty Reserve, virtual currencies that are popular in the cybercriminal underground.

    Superget lets users search for specific individuals by name, city, and state. Each “credit” costs USD$1, and a successful hit on a Social Security number or date of birth costs 3 credits each. The more credits you buy, the cheaper the searches are per credit: Six credits cost $4.99; 35 credits cost $20.99, and $100.99 buys you 230 credits. Customers with special needs can avail themselves of the “reseller plan,” which promises 1,500 credits for $500.99, and 3,500 credits for $1000.99.

    “Our Databases are updated EVERY DAY,” the site’s owner enthuses. “About 99% nearly 100% US people could be found, more than any sites on the internet now.”

    Customers who aren’t choosy about the identities they’re stealing can get a real bargain. Among the most trafficked commodities in the hacker underground are packages called “fullz infos,” which include the full identity information on dozens or hundreds of individuals.

    The table at the right shows the bulk lookup price-per-identity in this class. In the “Fullz Info USA Type A” package, each record includes the subject’s first name, last name, middle name, email address, email password, physical address, phone number, date of birth, Social Security number, drivers license number, bank name, bank account number, bank routing number, the victim employer’s name, and the number of years that individual has been at his or her current job. The proprietor of this shop says he has more than 330,000 records of this type, and is adding 300-400 new records each day.

    If you want the mother’s maiden name included in each of the bulk records, you’ll need to select “Fullz Info USA Type B”; the site’s owner says this package includes data from an older database, and perhaps that explains why the prices for these identities (pictured at left) are so much lower than those in the Type A category. The price in Type B starts at 16 cents per identity, and falls as low as nine cents per record for those requesting more than 20,000 fullz from this category.

    Continue reading →

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