Krebs on Security

The Lowdown on the Apple-FBI Showdown

February 22, 2016

Many readers have asked for a primer summarizing the privacy and security issues at stake in the the dispute between Apple and the U.S. Justice Department, which last week convinced a judge in California to order Apple to unlock an iPhone used by one of assailants in the recent San Bernardino massacres. I don’t have much original reporting to contribute on this important debate, but I’m visiting it here because it’s a complex topic that deserves the broadest possible public scrutiny.

Image: Elin Korneliussen (@elincello)

A federal magistrate in California approved an order (PDF) granting the FBI permission to access to the data on the iPhone 5c belonging to the late terror suspect Syed Rizwan Farook, one of two individuals responsible for a mass shooting in San Bernadino on Dec. 2, 2015 in which 14 people were killed and many others were injured.

Apple CEO Tim Cook released a letter to customers last week saying the company will appeal the order, citing customer privacy and security concerns.

Most experts seem to agree that Apple is technically capable of complying with the court order. Indeed, as National Public Radio notes in a segment this morning, Apple has agreed to unlock phones in approximately 70 other cases involving requests from the government. However, something unexpected emerged in one of those cases — an iPhone tied to a Brooklyn, NY drug dealer who pleaded guilty to selling methamphetamine last year. Continue reading →

Dell to Customers: Report ‘Service Tag’ Scams

February 19, 2016

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Computer maker Dell is asking for help in an ongoing probe into the source of customer information that appears to have somehow landed in the laps of fraudsters posing as Dell computer support technicians. KrebsOnSecurity readers continue to report being called by scammers posing as Dell support personnel who offer “proof” that they’re with Dell by rattling off the unique Dell “service tag” code printed on each Dell customer’s PC or laptop, as well as information from any previous (legitimate) service issues the customer may have had with Dell.

Image: Wikipedia

In January, Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin wrote about a guy who’d been complaining to Dell for six months about the very same problem, in which the scammers try to convince the customer that their computer is infected and in need of professional services. Dell responded at the time that its customer’s data protection was a top priority, and it reminded customers that Dell doesn’t make unsolicited calls asking to charge to fix an issue they did not report or previously request help with unless they have signed up for premium support services.

I first heard about this in December 2015 from Israeli resident Yosef Kaner, who reported receiving a phone call from someone with a thick Indian accent claiming to be from Dell technical support.

“He said that they had been monitoring my computer usage for the past couple of weeks, and that I had downloaded a dangerous piece of software,” Kaner said. “He offered to help me remove said software. Understanding that this was a scam, I asked him for a callback number. He gave me one. He also, though, knew my name and gave me the Service Tag of my PC. I thanked him and hung up. Then I Googled the number he gave me. It was a known number from a known scam.”

Almost every week this past month, I’ve received similar messages from other readers. Like this one, from Lucy Thomson of Washington, D.C. Thomson is the author of the ABA Data Breach and Encryption Handbook, and a former Justice Department fraud prosecutor.

“So I am not happy that Dell has had this breach and many people are potentially in jeopardy,” Thomson said. “I confirmed with two of the people who called on two different days, one who said he was in San Jose, CA and another who said he was in India, the nature of the PII and service records they have. All of it was correct and they have quite a bit of contact information and service records with specific dates of calls and service.”

Thomson said she called 1-866-383-4713 (the real Dell’s support line) and told the technician about having received calls every day for the previous five days from people claiming to be Dell certified technicians or who worked for Dell.

“I then told him they had all my PII and Dell service records for the computer I purchased from Dell in 2012,” Thomson recalled. “He said they had received calls ‘from people like you,’ and ‘many customers have called.’ In response to my question about why they had not sent data breach notifications, he said ‘The legal team is in charge. The legal team is working with the FBI on this.’ He said that twice. At the end of the call he said ‘we are creating a platform so this will never happen again.'” Continue reading →

This is Why People Fear the ‘Internet of Things’

February 18, 2016

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Imagine buying an internet-enabled surveillance camera, network attached storage device, or home automation gizmo, only to find that it secretly and constantly phones home to a vast peer-to-peer (P2P) network run by the Chinese manufacturer of the hardware. Now imagine that the geek gear you bought doesn’t actually let you block this P2P communication without some serious networking expertise or hardware surgery that few users would attempt.

The FI9286P, a Foscam camera that includes P2P communication by default.

This is the nightmare “Internet of Things” (IoT) scenario for any system administrator: The IP cameras that you bought to secure your physical space suddenly turn into a vast cloud network designed to share your pictures and videos far and wide. The best part? It’s all plug-and-play, no configuration necessary!

I first became aware of this bizarre experiment in how not to do IoT last week when a reader sent a link to a lengthy discussion thread on the support forum for Foscam, a Chinese firm that makes and sells security cameras. The thread was started by a Foscam user who noticed his IP camera was noisily and incessantly calling out to more than a dozen online hosts in almost as many countries.

Turns out, this Focscam camera was one of several newer models the company makes that comes with peer-to-peer networking capabilities baked in. This fact is not exactly spelled out for the user (although some of the models listed do say “P2P” in the product name, others do not).

But the bigger issue with these P2P -based cameras is that while the user interface for the camera has a setting to disable P2P traffic (it is enabled by default), Foscam admits that disabling the P2P option doesn’t actually do anything to stop the device from seeking out other P2P hosts online (see screenshot below).

This is a concern because the P2P function built into Foscam P2P cameras is designed to punch through firewalls and can’t be switched off without applying a firmware update plus an additional patch that the company only released after repeated pleas from users on its support forum.

Yeah, this setting doesn’t work. P2P is still enabled even after you uncheck the box.

One of the many hosts that Foscam users reported seeing in their firewall logs was iotcplatform.com, a domain registered to Chinese communications firm ThroughTek Co., Ltd. Turns out, this domain has shown up in firewall logs for a number of other curious tinkerers who cared to take a closer look at what their network attached storage and home automation toys were doing on their network.

In January 2015, a contributing writer for the threat-tracking SANS Internet Storm Center wrote in IoT: The Rise of the Machines that he found the same iotcplatform.com domain called out in network traffic generated by a Maginon SmartPlug he’d purchased (smart plugs are power receptacles into which you plug lights and other appliances you may wish to control remotely).

What is the IOTC Plaform? According to ThroughTek, it’s a service developed to establish P2P communications between devices.

“I read the documentation provided with the device as well as all the website pages and there is no mention of this service,” wrote Xavier Mertens, an incident handler and blogger for SANS. “Manufacturers should include some technical documentation about the network requirements (ex: to download firmware updates).”

In another instance from May 2015, this blogger noted similar communications traffic emanating from a digital video recorder (DVR) device that’s sold in tandem with Internet-enabled surveillance cameras made by a company called Swann.

Likewise, postings from Dec. 2014 on the QNAP network attached storage (NAS) user forum indicate that some QNAP customers discovered mysterious traffic to iotcplatform.com and other Internet address requests that also were found in the Swann and Smart Plug traffic.

What do all of these things have in common? A visit to ThroughTek’s Web lists several “case studies” for its products, including Swann, QNAP and a home automation company based in Taiwan called AboCom.

ThroughTek did not respond to requests for comment. A ThroughTek press release from October 2015 announced that the company’s P2P network — which it calls the Kalay Network — had grown to support more than seven million connected devices and 100 million “IoT connections.”

I contacted Foscam to better understand the company’s relationship to ThroughTek, and to learn just how many Foscam devices now ship with ThroughTek’s built-in, always-on P2P technology. Foscam declined to say how many different models bundled the P2P technology, but it’s at least a dozen by my count of the models mentioned in the Foscam user manual and discussion thread. Continue reading →

The Great EMV Fake-Out: No Chip For You!

February 16, 2016

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Many banks are now issuing customers more secure chip-based credit cards, and most retailers now have card terminals in their checkout lanes that can handle the “dip” of chip-card transactions (as opposed to the usual swipe of the card’s magnetic stripe). But comparatively few retailers actually allow chip transactions: Most are still asking customers to swipe the stripe instead of dip the chip. This post will examine what’s going on here, why so many merchants are holding out on the dip, and where this all leaves consumers.

Visa CEO Charles W. Scharf said in an earnings call late last month that more than 750,000 locations representing 17 percent of the U.S. face-to-face card-accepting merchant base are now enabled to handle chip-based transactions, also known as the EMV (“Europay, Mastercard and Visa”) payment standard.

Viewed another way, that means U.S. consumers currently can expect to find chip cards accepted in checkout lines at fewer than one in five brick-and-mortar merchants.

Why are so many chip-capable checkout terminals already installed that have not been enabled to actually accept chip cards? Allen Weinberg, co-founder of Menlo Park, Calif. based management consulting firm Glenbrook Partners, examined this very question in a recent column that pointed to several factors holding retailers back from enabling dip-the-chip.

WHAT LIABILITY SHIFT?

New MasterCard and Visa rules that went into effect Oct. 1, 2015 put merchants on the hook to absorb 100 percent of the costs of fraud associated with transactions in which the customer presented a chip-based card yet was not asked or able to dip the chip. The chip cards encrypt the cardholder data and are far more expensive and difficult for card thieves to clone.

Despite the increased risk of eating the entire loss from counterfeit card use in their stores, many merchants are taking a wait-and-see approach on enabling chip card transactions. Weinberg said some merchants — particularly the larger ones — want to turn the often painful experience of training customers how to use the chip cards and terminals into someone else’s problem.

“They see [chip cards] as just slowing down lines and chose to wait until consumers learned what to do — and do it quickly — at someone else’s store,” Weinberg wrote.

Weinberg adds that for many larger merchants, switching on the chip readers also can be a big and expensive project. Part of the problem, he says, is that many integrated point of sale systems — particularly the electronic cash register software for these systems — were just not ready in time for the Oct. 2015 liability shift.

“Even if the software was ahead of the game, they faced long certification queues at many acquirers,” Weinberg wrote. “I believe this is going to be a problem for a while.”

Visa said based on recent client surveys it expects 50% of face-to-face card accepting merchants to have chip card transactions enabled by the end of this year. But even 50 percent adoption can mask a long tail of smaller merchants who will put off as long as they can the expensive software and hardware upgrades for accepting chip transactions.

“My dry cleaner isn’t worried about someone using counterfeit cards at his cash register,” Weinberg said, noting that many businesses meanwhile discount the chances that hackers will siphon customer cards by sneaking malicious software onto point-of-sale devices — a problem that has lead to one breach after another at brand name retailers, restaurants and hotels over the past several years. Continue reading →

Fraudsters Tap Kohl’s Cash for Cold Cash

February 11, 2016

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Scam artists have been using hacked accounts from retailer Kohls.com to order high-priced, bulky merchandise that is then shipped to the victim’s home. While the crooks don’t get the stolen merchandise, the unauthorized purchases rack up valuable credits called “Kohl’s cash” that the thieves quickly redeem at Kohl’s locations for items that can be resold for cash or returned for gift cards.

kohlscash KrebsOnSecurity reader Suzanne Perry, a self-professed “shopaholic” from Gilbert, Penn., said she recently received an email from Kohls.com stating that the email address on her account had been changed. Recognizing this as a common indicator of a compromised account, Perry said she immediately went to Kohls.com — which confirmed her fears that her password had been changed.

On a whim, Perry said she attempted to log in with the “updated” email address (the one the thief used) along with her existing password. Happily, the thieves had been too lazy to change the password.

“Once I was logged in, I checked my order history to determine if any fraudulent orders were placed in the 20 minutes since I received the notification,” she said. “I wasn’t that surprised to see two online orders, totaling almost $700 each, but I was very surprised to see they were being shipped to my house and not some address I never heard of.”

Perry said she then contacted Kohl’s and gave them the two order numbers and the fraudulent email address.

“I explained what happened, and they were very helpful in canceling the orders, updating my email address, and resetting my password,” she said. “I told them I couldn’t understand why someone would hack into my account just to have a bunch of stuff shipped to my own address. I was trying to figure out what the criminal would possibly have to gain from the effort, but the service representative informed me that is actually a very common occurrence for them.”

Turns out, the criminal wasn’t after the merchandise at all. Rather, the purpose of changing her email address was to drain the account’s stored Kohl’s cash, a form of rebate that Kohl’s offers customers — currently $10 for every $50 spent at the store. The two fraudulent orders yielded $220 in Kohls cash total, which is emailed once the order is confirmed (hence the need to change the victim’s email address).

“Since the orders were being shipped to me, even though they were above the threshold for what my typical online spending behavior is, no red flags were raised on their end,” Perry said.

More interestingly, virtually all of the merchandise the thieves ordered to build up the account’s Kohl’s cash balance were bulky items: Three baby cribs, a stroller system and car seat, and a baby bath tub, among other items. Perry said Kohl’s told her that the thieves do this because they know bulky items usually take longer to return, and since Kohl’s revokes Kohl’s cash credits earned on items that are later returned, the thieves can spend the stolen Kohl’s credits as long as the owner of the hijacked account doesn’t return the fraudulently ordered items. Continue reading →

Critical Fixes Issued for Windows, Java, Flash

February 10, 2016

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Microsoft Windows users and those with Adobe Flash Player or Java installed, it’s time to update again! Microsoft released 13 updates to address some three dozen unique security vulnerabilities. Adobe issued security fixes for its Flash Player software that plugs at least 22 security holes in the widely-used browser component. Meanwhile, Oracle issued an unscheduled security fix for Java, its second security update for Java in as many weeks.

brokenwindows One big critical update from Redmond mends more than a dozen security problems with Internet Explorer. Another critical patch addresses flaws Microsoft Edge — including four that appear to share the same vulnerability identifiers (meaning Microsoft re-used the same vulnerable IE code in its newest Edge browser). Security vendor Qualys as usual has a good roundup of the rest of the critical Microsoft updates.

Adobe issued an update for Flash Player that fixes a slew of security problems with Flash, a very powerful yet vulnerable piece of software that is also unfortunately ubiquitous. After all, as Chris Goettl at Shavlik reminds us, fixing Flash on a modern computer can be a complicated affair: “You need to update Adobe Flash for IE, Flash for Google Chrome, and Flash for Firefox to completely plug all of these 22 vulnerabilities.” Thankfully, Chrome and IE should auto-install the latest Flash version on browser restart (I had to manually restart Chrome to get the latest Flash version). Continue reading →

Skimmers Hijack ATM Network Cables

February 9, 2016

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If you have ever walked up to an ATM to withdraw cash only to decide against it after noticing a telephone or ethernet cord snaking from behind the machine to a jack in the wall, your paranoia may not have been misplaced: ATM maker NCR is warning about skimming attacks that involve keypad overlays, hidden cameras and skimming devices plugged into the ATM network cables to intercept customer card data.

Two network cable card skimming devices, as found attached to this ATM.

In an alert sent to customers Feb. 8, NCR said it received reliable reports of NCR and Diebold ATMs being attacked through the use of external skimming devices that hijack the cash machine’s phone or Internet jack.

“These devices are plugged into the ATM network cables and intercept customer card data. Additional devices are attached to the ATM to capture the PIN,” NCR warned. “A keyboard overlay was used to attack an NCR ATM, a concealed camera was used on the Diebold ATM. PIN data is then likely transmitted wirelessly to the skimming device.”

The ATM maker believes these attacks represent a continuation of the trend where criminals are finding alternative methods to skim magnetic strip cards. Such alternative methods avoid placing the skimmer on the ATM card entry bezel, which is where most anti-skimming technology is located.

NCR said cash machine operators must consider all points where card data may be accessible — in addition to the traditional point of vulnerability at the card entry bezel — and that having ATM network communications cables and connections exposed in publicly accessible locations only invites trouble. Continue reading →

IoT Reality: Smart Devices, Dumb Defaults

February 8, 2016

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Before purchasing an “Internet of things” (IoT) device — a thermostat, camera or appliance made to be remotely accessed and/or controlled over the Internet — consider whether you can realistically care for and feed the security needs of yet another IoT thing. After all, there is a good chance your newly adopted IoT puppy will be:

-chewing holes in your network defenses;
-gnawing open new critical security weaknesses;
-bred by a vendor that seldom and belatedly patches;
-tough to wrangle down and patch

In April 2014, researchers at Cisco alerted HVAC vendor Trane about three separate critical vulnerabilities in their ComfortLink II line of Internet-connected thermostats. These thermostats feature large color LCD screens and a Busybox-based computer that connects directly to your wireless network, allowing the device to display not just the temperature in your home but also personal photo collections, the local weather forecast, and live weather radar maps, among other things.

Trane ComfortLink II thermostat.

Cisco researchers found that the ComfortLink devices allow attackers to gain remote access and also use these devices as a jumping off point to access the rest of a user’s network. Trane has not yet responded to requests for comment.

One big problem is that the ComfortLink thermostats come with credentials that have hardcoded passwords, Cisco found. By default, the accounts can be used to remotely log in to the system over “SSH,” an encrypted communications tunnel that many users allow through their firewall.

The two other bugs Cisco reported to Trane would allow attackers to install their own malicious software on vulnerable Trane devices, and use those systems to maintain a persistent presence on the victim’s local network.

On January 26, 2016, Trane patched the more serious of the flaws (the hardcoded credentials). According to Cisco, Trane patched the other two bugs part of a standard update released back in May 2015, but apparently without providing customers any indication that the update was critical to their protection efforts.

Continue reading →

Safeway Self-Checkout Skimmer Close Up

February 3, 2016

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In Dec. 2015, KrebsOnSecurity warned that security experts had discovered skimming devices attached to credit and debit card terminals at self-checkout lanes at Safeway stores in Colorado and possibly other states. Safeway hasn’t disclosed what those skimmers looked like, but images from a recent skimming attack allegedly launched against self-checkout shoppers at a Safeway in Maryland offers a closer look at once such device.

A skimming device made for self-checkout lanes that was removed from a Safeway Store in Germantown, Maryland

The image above shows an simple but effective “overlay” skimmer that banking industry sources say was retrieved from a Safeway store in Germantown, Md. The device is designed to fit directly over top of the Verifone terminals in use at many Safeways and other retailers. It has a PIN pad overlay to capture the user’s PIN, and a mechanism for recording the data stored on a card’s magnetic stripe when customers swipe their cards at self-checkout aisles.

Safeway officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment about this incident.

My local Safeway in Northern Virginia uses this exact model of Verifone terminals, and after seeing this picture for the first time I couldn’t help but pull on the terminal facing me in the self-checkout line on a recent store visit, just to be sure.

Many banks are now issuing newer, more secure chip-based credit and debit cards that are more expensive and difficult for thieves to steal and to counterfeit. As long as retailers continue to allow customers to avoid “dipping the chip” and instead allow “swipe the stripe” these skimming attacks on self-checkout lanes will continue to proliferate across the retail industry.

It may be worth noting that this skimming device looks remarkably similar to a point-of-sale skimmer designed for Verifone terminals that I wrote about in 2013.

Here’s a simple how-to video made by a fraudster who is selling very similar-looking overlay skimmers for Verifone point-of-sale devices; he calls them “Verifone condoms.” As we can see, the device could be attached in the blink of an eye (and removed quickly as well). The device in the video is just a shell, and does not include the POS PIN pad reader or card reader.

Good Riddance to Oracle’s Java Plugin

February 2, 2016

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Good news: Oracle says the next major version of its Java software will no longer plug directly into the user’s Web browser. This long overdue step should cut down dramatically on the number of computers infected with malicious software via opportunistic, so-called “drive-by” download attacks that exploit outdated Java plugins across countless browsers and multiple operating systems.

javamess According to Oracle, some 97 percent of enterprise computers and a whopping 89 percent of desktop systems in the U.S. run some form of Java. This has made Java JRE (the form of Java that runs most commonly on end-user systems) a prime target of malware authors.

“Exploit kits,” crimeware made to be stitched into the fabric of hacked and malicious sites, lie in wait for visitors who browse the booby-trapped sites. The kits can silently install malicious software on computers of anyone visiting or forcibly redirected to booby-trapped sites without the latest version of the Java plugin installed. In addition, crooks are constantly trying to inject scripts that invoke exploit kits via tainted advertisements submitted to the major ad networks.

These exploit kits — using names like “Angler,” “Blackhole,” “Nuclear” and “Rig” — are equipped to try a kitchen sink full of exploits for various browser plugins, but historically most of those exploits have been attacks on outdated Java and Adobe Flash plugins. As a result, KrebsOnSecurity has long warned users to remove Java altogether, or at least unplug it from the browser unless and until it is needed.

On Jan. 27, 2016, Oracle took a major step toward reducing the effectiveness of exploit kits and other crimeware when the company announced it was pulling the browser plugin from the next desktop version of Java – Java JRE 9. Continue reading →

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