Krebs on Security

SWATting Incidents Tied to ID Theft Sites?

April 17, 2013

Many readers have been asking for an update on the “SWATting” incident at my home last month, in which someone claiming to be me fraudulently reported a home invasion in progress at my address, prompting a heavily armed police response. There are two incremental developments on this story. The first is I’ve learned more about how the hoax was perpetrated. The second is that new clues suggest that the same individual(s) responsible also have been SWATting Hollywood celebrities and posting their personal information on site called exposed.re.

The day before my SWATting, I wrote a story about a site called exposed.su, which was posting the Social Security numbers, previous addresses, phone numbers and other sensitive information on a slew of high-profile individuals, from the director of the FBI to Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates and First Lady Michelle Obama. I wrote about the site by way of explaining that — as painful as it may be to admit — this information should no longer be considered private, because it is available quite cheaply via a number of shady services advertised in underground cybercrime forums.

[Swatted] notations were added to celebrity names after Exposed.su became Exposed.re

To illustrate this reality, I pointed to one underground site in particular — the now-defunct ssndob.ru (it is now at another domain) — that could be used to pull all of this information on just about anyone, including all of those whose information was listed at the time on exposed.su. In a follow-up investigation I posted on Mar. 18, 2013, I cited sources who claimed that the DDoS against my site and the simultaneous SWATting attack on my home was in retaliation for my writing about ssndob.ru, which allegedly some of those involved in the attacks prized and did not wish to see shuttered.

Specifically, two different sources placed blame for the attacks on a young hacker named “Phobia,” who they said was part of a group of Xbox gaming enthusiasts who used ssndob.ru to look up Social Security numbers belonging to high-value Xbox account holders — particularly those belonging to Microsoft Xbox Live employees. Armed with that information, and some social engineering skills, the hackers could apparently trick Microsoft’s tech support folks into transferring control over the accounts to the hackers. “I heard he got pissed that you released the site he uses,” one of the sources told me, explaining why he thought Phobia was involved.

Incidentally, two days after my story ran, several news outlets reported that Microsoft had confirmed it is investigating the hacking of Xbox Live accounts belonging to some “high-profile” Microsoft employees, and that it is actively working with law enforcement on the matter.

A little digging suggested that Phobia was a 20-year-old Ryan Stevenson from in Milford, Ct. In that Mar. 18 story, I interviewed Phobia, who confessed to being the hacker who broke into and deleted the Apple iCloud account of wired.com reporter Mat Honan. In subsequent postings on Twitter, Honan expressed surprise that no one else had drawn the connections between Phobia and Stevenson earlier, based on the amount of open source information linking the two identities. In his own reporting on the attack that wiped his iCloud data, Honan had agreed not to name Phobia in return for an explanation of how the hack was carried out.

Geographic distribution of servers observed in Mar. 14, 2013 attack on KrebsOnSecurity. Source: Prolexic

The week after my story ran, I heard from someone who lives in Stevenson’s neighborhood and who watched federal agents and police descend on Stevenson’s home on Mar. 20. I was later able to corroborate that information with a police officer in Connecticut, who confirmed that authorities had seized several boxes of items from the Stevenson residence that day.

If Stevenson was as involved as his erstwhile gaming buddies claim, I can’t say that I’m sad to learn that he got his own police raid. However, I do not believe he was the one responsible for sending the emergency response team to my home. I believe that the person or persons responsible is/are still at large, and that Stevenson was merely thrown under the bus as a convenient diversion. But more on that at another time.

At the end of March, exposed.su was shut down, and the content there was migrated over to a new domain — exposed.re. The curator(s) of this site has been adding more celebrities and public figures, but there is another, far more curious, notation on some of the listings at the new version of the site: Several of those named have the designation [Swatted] next to them, including P. Diddy, Justin Timberlake and Ryan Seacrest (see the collage above). It’s worth noting that not all of those listed on exposed.re who were SWATted recently are designated as such on the site.

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Java Update Plugs 42 Security Holes

April 16, 2013

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Oracle Corp. today released an update for its Java SE software that fixes at least 42 security flaws in the widely-installed program and associated browser plugin. The Java update also introduces new features designed to alert users about the security risks of running certain Java content.

Java 7 Update 21 contains 42 new security fixes for Oracle Java SE. A majority of these flaws are browse-to–a-hacked-site-and-get-infected vulnerabilities. According to Oracle, “39 of these vulnerabilities may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password” [emphasis mine].

There does not appear to be any update for Java 6. Oracle was to stop shipping security fixes for Java 6 in February, but it broke from that schedule last month when it shipped an emergency update for Java 6 to fix a flaw that was being used in active attacks. When I updated a machine running the latest Java 6 version (Update 43) it prompted me to install Java 7 Update 21. Update, 5:42 p.m. ET: Twitter follower @DonaldOJDK notes that Java 6 Update 45 is indeed available here.

Java 7 Update 21 also introduces some new security warnings and message prompts for users who keep the program plugged into a Web browser (on installation and updating, Java adds itself as an active browser plugin). Oracle said the messages that will be presented depend upon different risk factors, such as using old versions of Java or running applet code that is not signed from a trusted Certificate Authority.

Apps that present a lower risk display a simple informational message. This includes an option to prevent showing similar messages for apps from the same publisher in the future. Java applications considered to be higher risk — such as those that use an untrusted or expired certificate — will be accompanied by a prompt with a yellow exclamation point in a yellow warning triangle.

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Brute Force Attacks Build WordPress Botnet

April 12, 2013

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Security experts are warning that an escalating series of online attacks designed to break into poorly-secured WordPress blogs is fueling the growth of an unusually powerful botnet currently made up of more than 90,000 Web servers.

Source: Cloudflare.com

Over the past week, analysts from a variety of security and networking firms have tracked an alarming uptick in so-called “brute force” password-guessing attacks against Web sites powered by WordPress, perhaps the most popular content management system in use today (this blog also runs WordPress).

According to Web site security firm Incapsula, those responsible for this crime campaign are scanning the Internet for WordPress installations, and then attempting to log in to the administrative console at these sites using a custom list of approximately 1,000 of the most commonly-used username and password combinations.

Incapsula co-founder Marc Gaffan told KrebsOnSecurity that infected sites will be seeded with a backdoor the lets the attackers control the site remotely (the backdoors persist regardless of whether the legitimate site owner subsequently changes his password). The infected sites then are conscripted into the attacking server botnet, and forced to launch password-guessing attacks against other sites running WordPress.

Gaffan said the traffic being generated by all this activity is wreaking havoc for some Web hosting firms.

“It’s hurting the service providers the most, not just with incoming traffic,” Gaffan said. “But as soon as those servers get hacked, they are now bombarding other servers with attack traffic. We’re talking about Web servers, not home PCs. PCs maybe connected to the Internet with a 10 megabit or 20 megabit line, but the best hosting providers have essentially unlimited Internet bandwidth. We think they’re building an army of zombies, big servers to bombard other targets for a bigger cause down the road.”

Indeed, this was the message driven home Thursday in a blog post from Houston, Texas based HostGator, one of the largest hosting providers in the United States. The company’s data suggests that the botnet of infected WordPress installations now includes more than 90,000 compromised sites.

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Microsoft: Hold Off Installing MS13-036

April 12, 2013

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Microsoft is urging users to who haven’t installed it yet to hold off on MS13-036, a security update that the company released earlier this week to fix a dangerous security bug in its Windows operating system. The advice comes in response to a spike in complaints from Windows users who found their machines unbootable after applying the update.

The MS13-036 update, first released on Tuesday, fixes four vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel-mode driver. In an advisory released April 9, the company said it had removed the download links to the patch while it investigates the source of the problem:

“Microsoft is investigating behavior wherein systems may fail to recover from a reboot or applications fails to load after security update 2823324 is applied. Microsoft recommends that customers uninstall this update. As an added precaution, Microsoft has removed the download links to the 2823324 update while we investigate.”

The problems with the patch appear to be centered around Windows 7 and certain applications on Windows 7, such as Kaspersky Anti-Virus. Microsoft has issued instructions on how to uninstall this update in the “resolution” section of this advisory.

Update, Apr. 23: Microsoft has re-released the problematic security update to address the problems that some Windows users were experiencing with the MS13-036 patch. The new update, KB62840149, replaces the faulty one, which was KB2823324.

Hay Maker Seeks Cyberheist Bale Out

April 11, 2013

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An Oregon agricultural products company is suing its bank to recover nearly a quarter-million dollars stolen in a 2010 cyberheist. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges seeking to hold financial institutions more accountable for costly corporate account takeovers tied to cybercrime.

On Sept. 1, 2010, unidentified computer crooks began making unauthorized wire transfers out of the bank accounts belonging to Oregon Hay Products Inc., a hay compressing facility in Boardman, Oregon. In all, the thieves stole $223,500 in three wire transfers of just under $75,000 over a three day period.

According to a complaint filed in Umatilla County Circuit Court, the transfers were sent from Oregon Hay’s checking account at Joseph, Ore. based Community Bank to JSC Astra Bank in Ukraine. Oregon Hay’s lawyers say the company had set a $75,000 daily limit on outgoing wires, so the thieves initiated transfers of $74,800, $74,500 and $74,200 on three consecutive days.

Unfortunately for both parties in this dispute, neither Oregon Hay nor Community Bank detected anything amiss until almost two weeks after the fraud began; on Sept. 14, the victim firm found it was unable to access its accounts online. But by that time, the money was long gone.

Both Oregon Hay and Community Bank declined to be interviewed for this story.

Businesses do not enjoy the same legal protections afforded to consumer banking customers hit by cyber thieves, and most organizations can be held responsible for any losses due to phishing or account takeovers. But as cyberheists have ramped up dramatically over the past several years, a number of victim companies have opted to sue their financial institutions in the hopes of recovering the losses.

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Critical Fixes for Windows, Flash & Shockwave

April 9, 2013

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The second Tuesday of the month is upon us, and that means it’s once again time to get your patches on, people (at least for readers running Windows or Adobe products). Microsoft today pushed out nine patch bundles to plug security holes in Windows and its other products. Separately, Adobe issued updates for its Flash and Shockwave media players that address four distinct security holes in each program.

Microsoft called special attention to a cumulative update for Internet Explorer that fixes two critical vulnerabilities present in virtually every version of IE ever produced, including IE 9, 10 and IE on Windows RT, the operating system for mobile devices and tablets.

The other critical patch in the bunch addresses a dangerous vulnerability in the Windows Remote Desktop Client, which allows systems to be managed remotely. For a rundown of the other updates released today, check out the Qualys blog, the Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for April 2013 and the Microsoft Security Response Blog.

Adobe’s update brings Adobe Flash Player to v. 11.7.700.169 on Windows and Mac devices (the latest version numbers for other operating systems are listed in the chart below). Internet Explorer 10 and Google Chrome should automatically update to the latest version. Google has already pushed out the Flash update with Chrome v. 26.0.1410.63 for Mac and Linux, and v. 26.0.1410.64 for Windows; if your Chrome version isn’t at the latest (you can check which version by clicking the customize tab to the right of the address bar and then “About Google Chrome’), try closing and restarting the browser. Continue reading →

Phoenix Exploit Kit Author Arrested In Russia?

April 8, 2013

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The creator of a popular crimeware package known as the Phoenix Exploit Kit was arrested in his native Russia for distributing malicious software and for illegally possessing multiple firearms, according to underground forum posts from the malware author himself.

The last version of the Phoenix Exploit Kit. Source: Xylibox.com

The Phoenix Exploit Kit is a commercial crimeware tool that until fairly recently was sold by its maker in the underground for a base price of $2,200. It is designed to booby-trap hacked and malicious Web sites so that they foist drive-by downloads on visitors.

Like other exploit packs, Phoenix probes the visitor’s browser for the presence of outdated and insecure versions of browser plugins like Java, and Adobe Flash and Reader. If the visitor is unlucky enough to have fallen behind in applying updates, the exploit kit will silently install malware of the attacker’s choosing on the victim’s PC (Phoenix targets only Microsoft Windows computers).

The author of Phoenix — a hacker who uses the nickname AlexUdakov on several forums — does not appear to have been overly concerned about covering his tracks or hiding his identity. And as we’ll see in a moment, his online persona has been all-too-willing to discuss his current legal situation with former clients and fellow underground denizens.

Exploit.in forum member AlexUdakov selling his Phoenix Exploit Kit.

For example, AlexUdakov was a member of Darkode.com, a fairly exclusive English-language cybercrime forum that I profiled last week. That post revealed that the administrator accounts for Darkode had been compromised in a recent break-in, and that the intruders were able to gain access to private communications of the administrators. That access included authority to view full profiles of Darkode members, as well as the private email addresses of Darkode members.

AlexUdakov registered at Darkode using the address “nrew89@gmail.com”. That email is tied to a profile at Vkontakte.ru (a Russian version of Facebook) for one Andrey Alexandrov, a 23-year-old male (born May 20, 1989) from Yoshkar-Ola, a historic city of about a quarter-million residents situated on the banks of the Malaya Kokshaga river in Russia, about 450 miles east of Moscow.

ASK-74u rifles. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

AKS-74u rifles. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

That nrew89@gmail.com address also is connected to accounts at several Russian-language forums and Web sites dedicated to discussing guns, including talk.guns.ru and popgun.ru. This is interesting because, as I was searching AlexUdakov’s Phoenix Exploit kit sales postings on various cybercrime forums, I came across him discussing guns on one of his sales threads at exploit.in, a semi-exclusive underground forum. There, a user with the nickname AlexUdakov had been selling Phoenix Exploit Kit for many months, until around July 2012, when customers on exploit.in began complaining that he was no longer responding to sales and support requests. Meanwhile, AlexUdakov account remained silent for many months.

Then, in February 2013, AlexUdakov began posting again, explaining his absence by detailing his arrest by the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian equivalent of the FBI. The Phoenix Exploit Kit author explained that he was arrested by FSB officers for distributing malware and the illegal possession of firearms, including two AKS-74U assault rifles, a Glock, a TT (Russian-made pistol), and a PM (also known as a Makarov).

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Who Wrote the Flashback OS X Worm?

April 3, 2013

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A year ago today, Apple released a software update to halt the spread of the Flashback worm, a malware strain that infected more than 650,000 Mac OS X systems using a vulnerability in Apple’s version of Java. This somewhat dismal anniversary is probably as good a time as any to publish some clues I’ve gathered over the past year that point to the real-life identity of the Flashback worm’s creator.

Before I delve into the gritty details, a little background on this insidious contagion is in order. A keenly detailed research paper (PDF) published last year by Finnish security firm F-Secure puts the impact and threat from Flashback in perspective, noting that the malware boasted a series of “firsts” for its kind. For starters, Flashback was the first OS X malware to be “VMware aware” — or to know when it was being run in a virtual environment (a trick designed to frustrate security researchers). It also was the first to disable XProtect, OS X’s built-in malware protection program. These features, combined with its ability to spread through a then-unpatched vulnerability in Java made Flashback roughly as common for Macs as the Conficker Worm was for Windows PCs.

“This means Flashback is not only the most advanced, but also the most successful OS X malware we’ve ever seen,” wrote F-Secure’s Broderick Ian Aquilino.

The F-Secure writeup answers an important question not found in other analyses: Namely, what was the apparent intended purpose of Flashback? Put simply: to redirect Google results to third-party advertisers, all for the author’s profit. It’s name was derived from the fact that it spread using a social engineering trick of presenting the OS X user with a bogus Flash Player installation prompt. F-Secure notes that this same behavior — both the Flash social engineering trick and the redirection to fake Google sites that served search results for third-party advertisers that benefited the author — was also found in the QHost malware, suggesting that Flashback may have been the next evolution of the Mac QHost malware.

BLACK SEO

A year ago, I published a series that sought to identify the real-life hackers behind the top spam botnets. Using much the same methodology, I was able to identify and locate a young man in Russia who appears (and privately claims) to be the author of Flashback. As it happens, this individual hangs out on many of the same forums as the world’s top spammers (but more on that at another time).

Given Flashback’s focus on gaming Google’s ad networks, I suspected that the worm’s author probably was a key member of forums that focus on so-called “black hat SEO,” (search engine optimization), or learned in illicit ways to game search engines and manipulate ad revenues. Sure enough, this individual happens to be a very active and founding member of BlackSEO.com, a closely guarded Russian language forum dedicated to this topic.

Below is a screen shot taken from a private message between a “VIP” user named “Mavook” and a top forum member on BlackSEO.com. The conversation took place on July 14, 2012. A rough translation of their conversation is superimposed on the redacted screen grab, but basically it shows Mavook asking the senior member for help in gaining access to Darkode.com, a fairly exclusive English-language cybercrime forum (and one that I profiled in a story earlier this week).

BlackSEO.com member “Mavook” claims responsibility for creating Flashback to a senior forum member.

Mavook asks the other member to get him an invitation to Darkode, and Mavook is instructed to come up with a brief bio stating his accomplishments, and to select a nickname to use on the forum if he’s invited. Mavook replies that the Darkode nick should be not be easily tied back to his BlackSEO persona, and suggests the nickname “Macbook.” He also states that he is the “Creator of Flashback botnet for Macs,” and that he specializes in “finding exploits and creating bots.”

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Fool Me Once…

April 2, 2013

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When you’re lurking in the computer crime underground, it pays to watch your back and to keep your BS meter set to ‘maximum.’ But when you’ve gained access to an elite black market section of a closely guarded crime forum to which very few have access, it’s easy to let your guard down. That’s what I did earlier this year, and it caused me to chase a false story. This blog post aims to set the record straight on that front, and to offer a cautionary (and possibly entertaining) tale to other would-be cybersleuths.

On Jan. 16, 2013, I published a post titled, “New Java Exploit Fetches $5,000 Per Buyer.” The details in that story came from a sales thread posted to an exclusive subforum of Darkode.com, a secretive underground community that has long served as a bazaar for all manner of cybercriminal wares, including exploit kits, spam services, ransomware programs, and stealthy botnets. I’ve maintained a presence on this forum off and on (mostly on) for the past three years, in large part because Darkode has been a reliable place to find information about zero-days, or highly valuable threats that exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in software — threats that are shared or used by attackers before the developer of the target software knows about the vulnerability.

I had previously broken several other stories about zero-day exploits for sale on Darkode that later showed up “in-the-wild” and confirmed by the affected vendors, and this sales thread was posted by one of the forum’s most trusted members. The sales thread also was created during a time in which Java’s maker Oracle Corp. was struggling with multiple zero-days in Java.

What I didn’t know at the time was that this particular sales thread was little more than a carefully laid trap by the Darkode administrators to discover which accounts I was using to lurk on their forum. Ironically, I recently learned of this snare after white/grey hat hackers compromised virtually all of the administrator accounts and private messages on Darkode.

“Looks like Krebs swallowed the bait, and i got an idea how to catch him now for the next thread,” wrote Darkode administrator “Mafi” in a Jan. 16 private message to a co-admin who uses the nickname “sp3cial1st”.

Following this post, the administrators compared notes as to which users had viewed the fake Java zero-day sales thread during the brief, two-day period it was live on a restricted portion of Darkode. “I have taken a careful examination of the logs related to the java 0day thread,” sp3cial1st wrote to a Darkode administrator who used the nick “187”.

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DHS Warns of ‘TDos’ Extortion Attacks on Public Emergency Networks

April 1, 2013

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As if emergency responders weren’t already overloaded: Increasingly, extortionists are launching debilitating attacks designed to overwhelm the telephone networks of emergency communications centers and personnel, according to a confidential alert jointly issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

“TDos” warning

The alert, a copy of which was obtained by KrebsOnSecurity, warns public safety answering points (PSAPs) and emergency communications centers and personnel about a recent spike in so-called “telephony denial-of-service” (TDoS) attacks:

“Information received from multiple jurisdictions indicates the possibility of attacks targeting the telephone systems of public sector entities. Dozens of such attacks have targeted the administrative PSAP lines (not the 911 emergency line). The perpetrators of the attack have launched high volume of calls against the target network, tying up the system from receiving legitimate calls. This type of attack is referred to as a TDoS or Telephony Denial of Service attack. These attacks are ongoing. Many similar attacks have occurred targeting various businesses and public entities, including the financial sector and other public emergency operations interests, including air ambulance, ambulance and hospital communications.”

According to the alert, these recent TDoS attacks are part of a bizarre extortion scheme that apparently starts with a phone call to an organization from an individual claiming to represent a collections company for payday loans. The caller usually has a strong accent of some sort and asks to speak with a current or former employee concerning an outstanding debt. Failing to get payment from an individual or organization, the perpetrator launches a TDoS attack. The organization will be inundated with a continuous stream of calls for an unspecified, but lengthy period of time.

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