Category Archives: A Little Sunshine

Includes investigative blog posts meant to shine a light on the darker corners of the Internet.

ChronoPay Fueling Mac Scareware Scams

May 27, 2011
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Some of the recent scams that used bogus security alerts in a bid to frighten Mac users into purchasing worthless security software appear to have been the brainchild of ChronoPay, Russia’s largest online payment processor and something of a pioneer in the rogue anti-virus business.

Since the beginning of May, security firms have been warning Apple users to be aware of new scareware threats like MacDefender and Mac Security. The attacks began on May 2, spreading through poisoned Google Image Search results. Initially, these attacks required users to provide their passwords to install the rogue programs, but recent variants do not, according to Mac security vendor Intego.

A few days after the first attacks surfaced, experienced Mac users on an Apple support forums began reporting that new strains of the Mac malware were directing users to pay for the software via a domain called mac-defence.com. Others spotted fake Mac security software coming from macbookprotection.com. When I first took a look at the registration records for those domains, I was unsurprised to find the distinct fingerprint of ChronoPay, a Russian payment processor that I have written about time and again as the source of bogus security software.

Point-of-Sale Skimmers: Robbed at the Register

May 18, 2011
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Michaels Stores said this month that it had replaced more than 7,200 credit card terminals from store registers nationwide, after discovering that thieves had somehow modified or replaced the machines to include point of sale (POS) technology capable of siphoning customer payment card data and PINs. The specific device used by the criminal intruders has not been made public. But many devices and services are sold on the criminal underground to facilitate the surprisingly common fraud.

Something Old is New Again: Mac RATs, CrimePacks, Sunspots & ZeuS Leaks

May 16, 2011
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One of the biggest challenges in information security — and with security reporting in general — is separating what’s new and worth worrying about from seemingly new threats and developments that really are just old threats repackaged or stubborn facts that get rediscovered by a broader audience. This post represents my attempt to apply that sorting process to several security news headlines that readers have been forwarding my way in the past week, and to add a bit more information from my own reporting.

Anonymous Splinter Group Implicated in Game Company Hack

May 12, 2011
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The Web sites for computer game giant Eidos Interactive and one of its biggest titles — Deus Ex– were defaced and plundered on Wednesday in what appears to have been an attack from a splinter cell of the hacktivist group Anonymous. The hack comes just days after entertainment giant Sony told Congress that Anonymous members may have been responsible for break-ins that compromised personal information on more than 100 million customers of its PlayStation Network and other services.

Breach at Michaels Stores Extends Nationwide

May 10, 2011
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Earlier this month, arts & crafts chain Michaels Stores disclosed that crooks had tampered with point-of-sale devices at store registers as part of a scheme to steal credit and debit card numbers and associated PINs. But new information on the investigation shows that stores all across the country have since discovered compromised payment terminals.

Scammers Swap Google Images for Malware

May 6, 2011
84 Comments

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a single tainted digital image may be worth thousands of dollars for computer crooks who are abusing weaknesses in Google’s Image Search service to foist malicious software.

For several weeks, a number of readers have complained that clicking on Google Images search results redirected them to Web pages that pushed rogue anti-virus or “scareware” through misleading security alerts and warnings. On Wednesday, the SANS Internet Storm Center posted a blog entry saying they, too, were receiving reports of Google Image searches leading to fake anti-virus. According to SANS, the attackers have compromised an unknown number of sites with malicious scripts that create garbage Web pages filled with the top search terms from Google Trends. The malicious scripts also fetch images from third-party sites and include them in the junk pages alongside the relevant search terms, so that the automatically generated Web page contains legitimate-looking content.

RSA Among Dozens of Firms Breached by Zero-Day Attacks

May 4, 2011
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The recent data breach at security industry giant RSA was disconcerting news to the security community: RSA claims to be “the premier provider of security, risk, and compliance solutions for business acceleration” and the “chosen security partner of more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500.”

The hackers who broke into RSA appear to have leveraged some of the very same Web sites, tools and services used in that attack to infiltrate dozens of other companies during the past year, including some of the Fortune 500 companies protected by RSA, new information suggests. What’s more, the assailants moved their operations from those sites very recently, after their locations were revealed in a report published online by the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Advanced Persistent Tweets: Zero-Day in 140 Characters

May 3, 2011
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The unceasing barrage of targeted email attacks that leverage zero-day software flaws to steal sensitive information from companies and the U.S. government often are characterized as ultra-sophisticated, almost ninja-like in their stealth and anonymity. But according to expert analysis of several recent zero-day attacks – including the much publicized break-in at security giant RSA — the apparent Chinese developers of those attack tools left clues aplenty about their identities and locations, with one actor even Tweeting about his newly discovered vulnerability days in advance of its use in the wild.

RSA and others have labeled recent zero-day attacks as the epitome of an “advanced persistent threat” (APT), a controversial term describing the daily onslaught of digital assaults launched by attackers that are considered to be highly-skilled, determined and have a long-term perspective on their mission. Because these attacks often result in the theft of sensitive and proprietary information from the government and private industry, the details surrounding them usually become shrouded in secrecy as law enforcement and national security officials swoop in to investigate.

But an investigation of some of the open source information available on the tools used in recent attacks labeled APT indicates that some of the actors involved are doing little to cover their tracks, and that not only are they identifiable, but that they’re not particularly concerned about suffering any consequences from their actions.

Millions of Passwords, Credit Card Numbers at Risk in Breach of Sony Playstation Network

April 26, 2011
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Sony warned today that intruders had broken into its PlayStation online game network, a breach that may have jeopardized the user names, addresses, passwords and credit card information on more than 70 million customers.

In a post to the company’s PlayStation blog, Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold said the breach occurred between April 17 and April 19, and that user information on some PlayStation Network and Qriocity music streaming accounts was compromised. The company said it had engaged an outside security firm to investigate what happened, that it was rebuilding its system to better secure account information, and that it would soon begin notifying customers about the incident by email.