Krebs on Security

Google Accounts Now Support Security Keys

October 22, 2014

People who use Gmail and other Google services now have an extra layer of security available when logging into Google accounts. The company today incorporated into these services the open Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) standard, a physical USB-based second factor sign-in component that only works after verifying the login site is truly a Google site.

A $17 U2F device made by Yubico.

The U2F standard (PDF) is a product of the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, an industry consortium that’s been working to come up with specifications that support a range of more robust authentication technologies, including biometric identifiers and USB security tokens.

The approach announced by Google today essentially offers a more secure way of using the company’s 2-step authentication process. For several years, Google has offered an approach that it calls “2-step verification,” which sends a one-time pass code to the user’s mobile or land line phone.

2-step verification makes it so that even if thieves manage to steal your password, they still need access to your mobile or land line phone if they’re trying to log in with your credentials from a device that Google has not previously seen associated with your account. As Google notes in a support document, security key “offers better protection against this kind of attack, because it uses cryptography instead of verification codes and automatically works only with the website it’s supposed to work with.”

Unlike a one-time token approach, the security key does not rely on mobile phones (so no batteries needed), but the downside is that it doesn’t work for mobile-only users because it requires a USB port. Also, the security key doesn’t work for Google properties on anything other than Chrome. Continue reading →

Banks: Credit Card Breach at Staples Stores

October 20, 2014

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Multiple banks say they have identified a pattern of credit and debit card fraud suggesting that several Staples Inc. office supply locations in the Northeastern United States are currently dealing with a data breach. Staples says it is investigating “a potential issue” and has contacted law enforcement.

According to more than a half-dozen sources at banks operating on the East Coast, it appears likely that fraudsters have succeeded in stealing customer card data from some subset of Staples locations, including seven Staples stores in Pennsylvania, at least three in New York City, and another in New Jersey.

Framingham, Mass.-based Staples has more than 1,800 stores nationwide, but so far the banks contacted by this reporter have traced a pattern of fraudulent transactions on a group of cards that had all previously been used at a small number of Staples locations in the Northeast.

The fraudulent charges occurred at other (non-Staples) businesses, such as supermarkets and other big-box retailers. This suggests that the cash registers in at least some Staples locations may have fallen victim to card-stealing malware that lets thieves create counterfeit copies of cards that customers swipe at compromised payment terminals.

Asked about the banks’ claims, Staples’s Senior Public Relations Manager Mark Cautela confirmed that Staples is in the process of investigating a “potential issue involving credit card data and has contacted law enforcement.”

“We take the protection of customer information very seriously, and are working to resolve the situation,” Cautela said. “If Staples discovers an issue, it is important to note that customers are not responsible for any fraudulent activity on their credit cards that is reported on [in] a timely basis.”

Spike in Malware Attacks on Aging ATMs

October 20, 2014

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This author has long been fascinated with ATM skimmers, custom-made fraud devices designed to steal card data and PINs from unsuspecting users of compromised cash machines. But a recent spike in malicious software capable of infecting and jackpotting ATMs is shifting the focus away from innovative, high-tech skimming devices toward the rapidly aging ATM infrastructure in the United States and abroad.

Last month, media outlets in Malaysia reported that organized crime gangs had stolen the equivalent of about USD $1 million with the help of malware they’d installed on at least 18 ATMs across the country. Several stories about the Malaysian attack mention that the ATMs involved were all made by ATM giant NCR. To learn more about how these attacks are impacting banks and the ATM makers, I reached out to Owen Wild, NCR’s global marketing director, security compliance solutions.

Wild said ATM malware is here to stay and is on the rise.

BK: I have to say that if I’m a thief, injecting malware to jackpot an ATM is pretty money. What do you make of reports that these ATM malware thieves in Malaysia were all knocking over NCR machines?

OW: The trend toward these new forms of software-based attacks is occurring industry-wide. It’s occurring on ATMs from every manufacturer, multiple model lines, and is not something that is endemic to NCR systems. In this particular situation for the [Malaysian] customer that was impacted, it happened to be an attack on a Persona series of NCR ATMs. These are older models. We introduced a new product line for new orders seven years ago, so the newest Persona is seven years old.

BK: How many of your customers are still using this older model?

OW: Probably about half the install base is still on Personas.

BK: Wow. So, what are some of the common trends or weaknesses that fraudsters are exploiting that let them plant malware on these machines? I read somewhere that the crooks were able to insert CDs and USB sticks in the ATMs to upload the malware, and they were able to do this by peeling off the top of the ATMs or by drilling into the facade in front of the ATM. CD-ROM and USB drive bays seem like extraordinarily insecure features to have available on any customer-accessible portions of an ATM.

OW: What we’re finding is these types of attacks are occurring on standalone, unattended types of units where there is much easier access to the top of the box than you would normally find in the wall-mounted or attended models.

BK: Unattended….meaning they’re not inside of a bank or part of a structure, but stand-alone systems off by themselves.

OW: Correct.

BK: It seems like the other big factor with ATM-based malware is that so many of these cash machines are still running Windows XP, no?

This new malware, detected by Kaspersky Lab as Backdoor.MSIL.Tyupkin, affects ATMs from a major ATM manufacturer running Microsoft Windows 32-bit.

OW: Right now, that’s not a major factor. It is certainly something that has to be considered by ATM operators in making their migration move to newer systems. Microsoft discontinued updates and security patching on Windows XP, with very expensive exceptions. Where it becomes an issue for ATM operators is that maintaining Payment Card Industry (credit and debit card security standards) compliance requires that the ATM operator be running an operating system that receives ongoing security updates. So, while many ATM operators certainly have compliance issues, to this point we have not seen the operating system come into play. Continue reading →

Seleznev Arrest Explains ‘2Pac’ Downtime

October 15, 2014

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The U.S. Justice Department has piled on more charges against alleged cybercrime kingpin Roman Seleznev, a Russian national who made headlines in July when it emerged that he’d been whisked away to Guam by U.S. federal agents while vacationing in the Maldives. The additional charges against Seleznev may help explain the extended downtime at an extremely popular credit card fraud shop in the cybercrime underground.

The 2pac[dot]cc credit card shop.

The government alleges that the hacker known in the underground as “nCux” and “Bulba” was Roman Seleznev, a 30-year-old Russian citizen who was arrested in July 2014 by the U.S. Secret Service. According to Russian media reports, the young man is the son of a prominent Russian politician.

Seleznev was initially identified by the government in 2012, when it named him as part of a conspiracy involving more than three dozen popular merchants on carder[dot]su, a bustling fraud forum where Bulba and other members openly marketed various cybercrime-oriented services (see the original indictment here).

According to Seleznev’s original indictment, he was allegedly part of a group that hacked into restaurants between 2009 and 2011 and planted malicious software to steal card data from store point-of-sale devices. The indictment further alleges that Seleznev and unnamed accomplices used his online monikers to sell stolen credit and debit cards at bulba[dot]cc and track2[dot]name. Customers of these services paid for their cards with virtual currencies, including WebMoney and Bitcoin.

But last week, U.S. prosecutors piled on another 11 felony counts against Seleznev, charging that he also sold stolen credit card data on a popular carding store called 2pac[dot]cc. Interestingly, Seleznev’s arrest coincides with a period of extended downtime on 2pac[dot]cc, during which time regular customers of the store could be seen complaining on cybercrime forums where the store was advertised that the proprietor of the shop had gone silent and was no longer responding to customer support inquiries.

A few weeks after Seleznev’s arrest, it appears that someone new began taking ownership of 2pac[dot]cc’s day-to-day operations. That individual recently posted a message on the carding shop’s home page apologizing for the extended outage and stating that fresh, new cards were once again being added to the shop’s inventory.

The message, dated Aug. 8, 2014, explains that the proprietor of the shop was unreachable because he was hospitalized following a car accident:

“Dear customers. We apologize for the inconvenience that you are experiencing now by the fact that there are no updates and [credit card] checker doesn’t work. This is due to the fact that our boss had a car accident and he is in hospital. We will solve all problems as soon as possible. Support always available, thank you for your understanding.”

2pac[dot]cc’s apologetic message to would-be customers of the credit card fraud shop.

IT’S ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE

2pac is but one of dozens of fraud shops selling stolen debit and credit cards. And with news of new card breaches at major retailers surfacing practically each week, the underground is flush with inventory. The single most important factor that allows individual card shop owners to differentiate themselves among so much choice is providing excellent customer service.

Many card shops, including 2pac[dot]cc, try to keep customers happy by including an a-la-carte card-checking service that allows customers to test purchased cards using compromised merchant accounts — to verify that the cards are still active. Most card shop checkers are configured to automatically refund to the customer’s balance the value of any cards that come back as declined by the checking service. Continue reading →

Microsoft, Adobe Push Critical Security Fixes

October 14, 2014

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Adobe, Microsoft and Oracle each released updates today to plug critical security holes in their products. Adobe released patches for its Flash Player and Adobe AIR software. A patch from Oracle fixes at least 25 flaws in Java. And Microsoft pushed patches to fix at least two-dozen vulnerabilities in a number of Windows components, including Office, Internet Explorer and .NET. One of the updates addresses a zero-day flaw that reportedly is already being exploited in active cyber espionage attacks.

Earlier today, iSight Partners released research on a threat the company has dubbed “Sandworm” that exploits one of the vulnerabilities being patched today (CVE-2014-4114). iSight said it discovered that Russian hackers have been conducting cyber espionage campaigns using the flaw, which is apparently present in every supported version of Windows. The New York Times carried a story today about the extent of the attacks against this flaw.

In its advisory on the zero-day vulnerability, Microsoft said the bug could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted malicious Microsoft Office document. According to iSight, the flaw was used in targeted email attacks that targeted NATO, Ukrainian and Western government organizations, and firms in the energy sector.

More than half of the other vulnerabilities fixed in this month’s patch batch address flaws in Internet Explorer. Additional details about the individual Microsoft patches released today is available at this link. Continue reading →

Who’s Watching Your WebEx?

October 13, 2014

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KrebsOnSecurity spent a good part of the past week working with Cisco to alert more than four dozen companies — many of them household names — about regular corporate WebEx conference meetings that lack passwords and are thus open to anyone who wants to listen in.

Department of Energy’s WebEx meetings.

At issue are recurring video- and audio conference-based meetings that companies make available to their employees via WebEx, a set of online conferencing tools run by Cisco. These services allow customers to password-protect meetings, but it was trivial to find dozens of major companies that do not follow this basic best practice and allow virtually anyone to join daily meetings about apparently internal discussions and planning sessions.

Many of the meetings that can be found by a cursory search within an organization’s “Events Center” listing on Webex.com seem to be intended for public viewing, such as product demonstrations and presentations for prospective customers and clients. However, from there it is often easy to discover a host of other, more proprietary WebEx meetings simply by clicking through the daily and weekly meetings listed in each organization’s “Meeting Center” section on the Webex.com site.

Some of the more interesting, non-password-protected recurring meetings I found include those from Charles Schwab, CSC, CBS, CVS, The U.S. Department of Energy, Fannie Mae, Jones Day, Orbitz, Paychex Services, and Union Pacific. Some entities even also allowed access to archived event recordings.

Cisco began reaching out to each of these companies about a week ago, and today released an all-customer alert (PDF) pointing customers to a consolidated best-practices document written for Cisco WebEx site administrators and users.

“In the first week of October, we were contacted by a leading security researcher,” Cisco wrote. “He showed us that some WebEx customer sites were publicly displaying meeting information online, including meeting Time, Topic, Host, and Duration. Some sites also included a ‘join meeting’ link.” Continue reading →

Malware Based Credit Card Breach at Kmart

October 10, 2014

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Sears Holding Co. late Friday said it recently discovered that point-of-sale registers at its Kmart stores were compromised by malicious software that stole customer credit and debit card information. The company says it has removed the malware from store registers and contained the breach, but that the investigation is ongoing.

“Yesterday our IT teams detected that our Kmart payment data systems had been breached,” said Chris Brathwaite, spokesman for Sears. “They immediately launched a full investigation working with a leading IT security firm. Our investigation so far indicates that the breach started in early September.”

According to those investigators, Brathwaite said, “our systems were infected with a form of malware that was currently undetectable by anti-malware systems. Our IT teams quickly removed that malware, however we do believe that debit and credit card numbers have been compromised.”

Brathwaite stressed that the data stolen included only “track 2” data from customer credit and debit cards, and did not include customer names, email address, physical address, Social Security numbers, PINs or any other sensitive information.

However, he acknowledged that the information stolen would allow thieves to create counterfeit copies of the stolen cards. So far, he said, Sears has no indication that the cards are yet being fraudulently used.

Sears said it has no indication that any Sears, Roebuck customers were impacted, and that the malware infected the payment data systems at Kmart stores only.

More on this developing story as updates become available. For now, see this notice on Kmart’s home page.

Dairy Queen Confirms Breach at 395 Stores

October 10, 2014

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Nationwide fast-food chain Dairy Queen on Thursday confirmed that malware installed on cash registers at some 395 stores resulted in the theft of customer credit and debit card information. The acknowledgement comes nearly six weeks after this publication first broke the news that multiple banks were reporting indications of a card breach at Dairy Queen locations across the country.

In a statement issued Oct. 9, Dairy Queen listed nearly 400 DQ locations and one Orange Julius location that were found to be infected with the widely-reported Backoff malware that is targeting retailers across the country.

Curiously, Dairy Queen said that it learned about the incident in late August from law enforcement officials. However, when I first reached out to Dairy Queen on Aug. 22 about reports from banking sources that the company was likely the victim of a breach, the company said it had no indication of a card breach at any of its 4,500+ locations. Asked about the apparent discrepancy, Dairy Queen spokesman Dean Peters said that by the time I called the company and inquired about the breach, Dairy Queen’s legal team had indeed already been notified by law enforcement.

“When I told you we had no knowledge, I was being truthful,” Peters said. “However, I didn’t know at that time that someone [from law enforcement] had already contacted Dairy Queen.”

In answer to inquiries from this publication, Dairy Queen said its investigation revealed that the same third-party point-of-sale vendor was used at all of the breached locations, although it declined to name the affected vendor. However, multiple sources contacted by this reporter said the point-of-sale vendor in question was Panasonic Retail Information Systems.

In response to questions from KrebsOnSecurity, Panasonic issued the following non-denial statement:

“Panasonic is proud that we can count Dairy Queen as a point-of-sale hardware customer. We have seen the media reports this morning about the data breaches in a number of Dairy Queen outlets. To the best of our knowledge, these types of malware breaches are generally associated with network security vulnerabilities and are not related to the point-of-sale hardware we provide. Panasonic stands ready to provide whatever assistance we can to our customers in resolving the issue.”

The Backoff malware that was found on compromised Dairy Queen point-of-sale terminals is typically installed after attackers compromise remote access tools that allow users to connect to the systems over the Internet. All too often, the user accounts for these remote access tools are protected by weak or easy-to-guess username and password pairs. Continue reading →

Signed Malware = Expensive “Oops” for HP

October 9, 2014

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Computer and software industry maker HP is in the process of notifying customers about a seemingly harmless security incident in 2010 that nevertheless could prove expensive for the company to fix and present unique support problems for users of its older products.

Earlier this week, HP quietly produced several client advisories stating that on Oct. 21, 2014 it plans to revoke a digital certificate the company previously used to cryptographically sign software components that ship with many of its older products. HP said it was taking this step out of an abundance of caution because it discovered that the certificate had mistakenly been used to sign malicious software way back in May 2010.

Code-signing is a practice intended to give computer users and network administrators additional confidence about the integrity and security of a file or program. Consequently, private digital certificates that major software vendors use to sign code are highly prized by attackers, because they allow those attackers to better disguise malware as legitimate software.

For example, the infamous Stuxnet malware — apparently created as a state-sponsored project to delay Iran’s nuclear ambitions — contained several components that were digitally signed with certificates that had been stolen from well-known companies. In previous cases where a company’s private digital certificates have been used to sign malware, the incidents were preceded by highly targeted attacks aimed at stealing the certificates. In Feb. 2013, whitelisting software provider Bit9 discovered that digital certificates stolen from a developer’s system had been used to sign malware that was sent to several customers who used the company’s software.

But according to HP’s Global Chief Information Security Officer Brett Wahlin, nothing quite so sexy or dramatic was involved in HP’s decision to revoke this particular certificate. Wahlin said HP was recently alerted by Symantec about a curious, four-year-old trojan horse program that appeared to have been signed with one of HP’s private certificates and found on a server outside of HP’s network. Further investigation traced the problem back to a malware infection on an HP developer’s computer.

HP investigators believe the trojan on the developer’s PC renamed itself to mimic one of the file names the company typically uses in its software testing, and that the malicious file was inadvertently included in a software package that was later signed with the company’s digital certificate. The company believes the malware got off of HP’s internal network because it contained a mechanism designed to transfer a copy of the file back to its point of origin.

Continue reading →

Spam Nation Book Offer + Tour Details

October 8, 2014

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As many of you know, my first book — Spam Nation — hits bookstore shelves on Nov. 18. I want to thank those of you who have already pre-ordered the book, and offer a small enticement for those who have yet to secure a copy.

Pre-order two or more copies of Spam Nation and get this “Krebs Edition” branded ZeusGard.

Spam Nation is a true story about organized cybercriminals, some of whom are actively involved in using malware-laced spam to empty bank accounts belonging to small- and medium-sized businesses in the United States and Europe. I’ve written extensively about organizations that have lost tens of millions of dollars from these cyberheists. I’ve also encouraged online banking customers to take advantage of various “Live CD” technologies that allow users to sidestep the very malware that powers these cyberheists.

In July, I wrote about ZeusGard, one such technology that’s designed to streamline the process of adopting the Live CD approach for online banking. The makers of ZeusGard got such a positive response from that story that they offered to partner with Yours Truly in promoting Spam Nation!

I’m pleased to report that the first 1,000 customers to purchase two or more copies of Spam Nation — including any combination of digital, physical and/or audio versions of the book — before the official book launch on Nov. 18 will receive a complimentary KrebsOnSecurity-branded version of ZeusGard (pictured above)! Continue reading →

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