Krebs on Security

Seleznev Arrest Explains ‘2Pac’ Downtime

October 15, 2014

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 →

Huge Data Leak at Largest U.S. Bond Insurer

October 7, 2014

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On Monday, KrebsOnSecurity notified MBIA Inc. — the nation’s largest bond insurer — that a misconfiguration in a company Web server had exposed countless customer account numbers, balances and other sensitive data. Much of the information had been indexed by search engines, including a page listing administrative credentials that attackers could use to access data that wasn’t already accessible via a simple Web search.

A redacted screenshot of MBIA account information exposed to search engines.

MBIA Inc., based in Purchase, N.Y., is a public holding company that offers municipal bond insurance and investment management products. According to the firm’s Wiki page, MBIA, formerly known as the Municipal Bond Insurance Association, was formed in 1973 to diversify the holdings of several insurance companies, including Aetna, Fireman’s Fund, Travelers, Cigna and Continental.

Notified about the breach, the company quickly disabled the vulnerable site — mbiaweb.com. This Web property contained customer data from Cutwater Asset Management, a fixed-income unit of MBIA that is slated to be acquired by BNY Mellon Corp.

“We have been notified that certain information related to clients of MBIA’s asset management subsidiary, Cutwater Asset Management, may have been illegally accessed,” said MBIA spokesman Kevin Brown. “We are conducting a thorough investigation and will take all measures necessary to protect our customers’ data, secure our systems, and preserve evidence for law enforcement.”

Brown said MBIA notified all current customers about the incident Monday evening, and that it planned to notify former customers today.

Some 230 pages of account statements from Cutwater had been indexed by Google, including account and routing numbers, balances, dividends and account holder names for the Texas CLASS (a local government investment pool) ; the Louisiana Asset Management Pool; the New Hampshire Public Deposit Investment Pool; Connecticut CLASS Plus; and the Town of Richmond, NH.

In some cases, the documents indexed by search engines featured detailed instructions on how to authorize new bank accounts for deposits, including the forms and fax numbers needed to submit the account information.

Bryan Seely, an independent security expert with Seely Security, discovered the exposed data using a search engine. Seely said the data was exposed thanks to a poorly configured Oracle Reports database server. Normally, Seely said, this type of database server is configured to serve information only to authorized users who are accessing the data from within a trusted, private network — and certainly not open to the Web.

Continue reading →

Bugzilla Zero-Day Exposes Zero-Day Bugs

October 6, 2014

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A previously unknown security flaw in Bugzilla — a popular online bug-tracking tool used by Mozilla and many of the open source Linux distributions — allows anyone to view detailed reports about unfixed vulnerabilities in a broad swath of software. Bugzilla is expected today to issue a fix for this very serious weakness, which potentially exposes a veritable gold mine of vulnerabilities that would be highly prized by cyber criminals and nation-state actors.

The Bugzilla mascot.

Multiple software projects use Bugzilla to keep track of bugs and flaws that are reported by users. The Bugzilla platform allows anyone to create an account that can be used to report glitches or security issues in those projects. But as it turns out, that same reporting mechanism can be abused to reveal sensitive information about as-yet unfixed security holes in software packages that rely on Bugzilla.

A developer or security researcher who wants to report a flaw in Mozilla Firefox, for example, can sign up for an account at Mozilla’s Bugzilla platform. Bugzilla responds automatically by sending a validation email to the address specified in the signup request. But recently, researchers at security firm Check Point Software Technologies discovered that it was possible to create Bugzilla user accounts that bypass that validation process.

“Our exploit allows us to bypass that and register using any email we want, even if we don’t have access to it, because there is no validation that you actually control that domain,” said Shahar Tal, vulnerability research team leader for Check Point. “Because of the way permissions work on Bugzilla, we can get administrative privileges by simply registering using an address from one of the domains of the Bugzilla installation owner. For example, we registered as admin@mozilla.org, and suddenly we could see every private bug under Firefox and everything else under Mozilla.”

Continue reading →

Silk Road Lawyers Poke Holes in FBI’s Story

October 2, 2014

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New court documents released this week by the U.S. government in its case against the alleged ringleader of the Silk Road online black market and drug bazaar suggest that the feds may have some ‘splaining to do.

The login prompt and CAPTCHA from the Silk Road home page.

Prior to its disconnection last year, the Silk Road was reachable only via Tor, software that protects users’ anonymity by bouncing their traffic between different servers and encrypting the traffic at every step of the way. Tor also lets anyone run a Web server without revealing the server’s true Internet address to the site’s users, and this was the very technology that the Silk road used to obscure its location.

Last month, the U.S. government released court records claiming that FBI investigators were able to divine the location of the hidden Silk Road servers because the community’s login page employed an anti-abuse CAPTCHA service that pulled content from the open Internet — thus leaking the site’s true Internet address.

But lawyers for alleged Silk Road captain Ross W. Ulbricht (a.k.a. the “Dread Pirate Roberts”) asked the court to compel prosecutors to prove their version of events. And indeed, discovery documents reluctantly released by the government this week appear to poke serious holes in the FBI’s story.

Continue reading →

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