Adobe, Microsoft Push Critical Security Fixes

May 8, 2012

Adobe and Microsoft today each issued updates to address critical security flaws in their software. Adobe’s patch plugs at least five holes in its Shockwave Player, while Microsoft has released a bundle of seven updates to correct 23 vulnerabilities in Windows and other products.

Microsoft’s May patch batch includes fixes for vulnerabilities that could be exploited via Web browsing, file-sharing, or email. Eight of the 23 flaws earned Microsoft’s “critical” rating, meaning no user interaction is required for vulnerable systems to be hacked. At least three of the flaws were publicly disclosed before today.

According to Microsoft, the two updates are the most dire: The first is one related to a critical flaw in Microsoft Word (MS12-029); the second is an unusually ambitious update that addresses flaws present in Microsoft Office, Windows, .NET Framework and Silverlight. In a blog post published today, Microsoft explained why it chose to patch all of these seemingly disparate products all in one go. But the short version is that Microsoft is addressing the ghost of Duqu, a sophisticated malware family discovered last year that was designed to attack industrial control systems and is thought to be related to the infamous Stuxnet worm. A patch Microsoft issued last year addressed the underlying Windows vulnerability exploited by Duqu, but the company found that the same vulnerable code resided in a slew of other Microsoft applications.

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At the Crossroads of eThieves and Cyberspies

May 8, 2012

Lost in the annals of campy commercials from the 1980s is a series of ads that featured improbable scenes between two young people (usually of the opposite sex) who always somehow caused the inadvertent collision of peanut butter and chocolate. After the mishap, one would complain, “Hey you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!,” and the other would shout, “You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!” The youngsters would then sample the product of their happy accident and be amazed to find someone had already combined the two flavors into a sweet and salty treat that is commercially available.

It may be that the Internet security industry is long overdue for its own “Reese’s moment.” Many security experts who got their start analyzing malware and tracking traditional cybercrime recently have transitioned to investigating malware and attacks associated with so-called advanced persistent threat (APT) incidents. The former centers on the theft of financial data that can be used to quickly extract cash from victims; the latter refers to often prolonged attacks involving a hunt for more strategic information, such as intellectual property, trade secrets and data related to national security and defense.

Experts steeped in both areas seem to agree that there is little overlap between the two realms, neither in the tools the two sets of attackers use, their methods, nor in their motivations or rewards. Nevertheless, I’ve heard some of these same experts remark that traditional cyber thieves could dramatically increase their fortunes if they only took the time to better understand the full value of the PCs that get ensnared in their botnets.

In such a future, Chinese nationalistic hackers, for example, could avoid spending weeks or months trying to break into Fortune 500 companies using carefully targeted emails or zero-day software vulnerabilities; instead, they could just purchase access to PCs at these companies that are already under control of traditional hacker groups.

Every now and then, evidence surfaces to suggest that bridges between these two disparate worlds are under construction. Last month, I had the opportunity to peer into a botnet of more than 3,400 PCs — most of them in the United States. The systems were infected with a new variant of the Citadel Trojan, an offshoot of the ZeuS Trojan whose chief distinguishing feature is a community of users who interact with one another in a kind of online social network. This botnet was used to conduct cyberheists against several victims, but it was a curious set of scripts designed to run on each infected PC that caught my eye.

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Critical Flash Update Fixes Zero-day Flaw

May 4, 2012

Adobe Systems Inc. today issued a security update to its Flash Player software. The company stressed that the update fixes a critical vulnerability that malicious actors have been using in targeted attacks.

Adobe classifies a security flaw as critical if it can be used to break into vulnerable machines without any help from users. The company said the vulnerability (CVE-2012-0779) fixed in the version released today has been exploited in targeted attacks designed to trick the user into clicking on a malicious file delivered in an email message, and that the exploit used in the attacks seen so far target Flash Player on Internet Explorer for Windows only.

Nevertheless, there are updates available for Flash Player versions designed for all operating systems that Adobe supports, including Mac, Linux and Android devices.

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Microsoft to Botmasters: Abandon Your Inboxes

May 4, 2012

If the miscreants behind the ZeuS botnets that Microsoft sought to destroy with a civil lawsuit last month didn’t already know that the software giant also wished to unmask them, they almost certainly do now. Google, and perhaps other email providers, recently began notifying the alleged botmasters that Microsoft was requesting their personal details.

Page 1 of a subpoena Microsoft sent to Google.

Microsoft’s unconventional approach to pursuing dozens of ZeuS botmasters offers a rare glimpse into how email providers treat subpoenas for account information. But the case also is once again drawing fire from a number of people within the security community who question the wisdom and long-term consequences of Microsoft’s strategy for combating cybercrime without involving law enforcement officials.

Last month, Microsoft made news when it announced a civil lawsuit that it said disrupted a major cybercrime operation that used malware to steal $100 million from consumers and businesses over the past five years. That legal maneuver may have upset some cyber criminal operations, but it also angered many in the security research community who said they felt betrayed by the action. Critics accused Microsoft of exposing sensitive information that a handful of researchers had shared in confidence, and of delaying or derailing international law enforcement investigations into ZeuS Trojan activity.

Part of the controversy stems from the bargain that Microsoft struck with a federal judge in the case. The court granted Microsoft the authority to quietly seize dozens of domain names and Internet servers that miscreants used to control the botnets. In exchange, Microsoft agreed to make every effort to identify the “John Does” that had used those resources, and to give them an opportunity to contest the seizure. The security community was initially upset by Microsoft’s first stab at that effort, in which it published the nicknames, email addresses and other identifying information on the individuals thought to be responsible for renting those servers and domains.

And then the other shoe dropped: Over the past few days, Google began alerting the registrants of more than three dozen Gmail accounts that were the subject of Microsoft’s subpoenas for email records. The email addresses were already named in Microsoft’s initial complaint posted at zeuslegalnotice.com, which listed nicknames and other information tied to 39 separate “John Does” that Microsoft is seeking to identify. But when Microsoft subpoenaed the email account information on those John Does, Google followed its privacy policy, which is to alert each of the account holders that it was prepared to turn over their personal information unless they formally objected to the action by a certain date.

According to sources who received the notices but asked not to be named, the Google alerts read:

“Hello,

Google has received a subpoena for information related to your Google
account in a case entitled Microsoft Corp., FS-ISAC, Inc. and NACHA v.
John Does 1-39 et al., US District Court, Northern District of California,
1:12-cv-01335 (SJ-RLM) (Internal Ref. No. 224623).

To comply with the law, unless you provide us with a copy of a motion
to quash the subpoena (or other formal objection filed in court) via
email at google-legal-support@google.com by 5pm Pacific Time on May
22, 2012, Google may provide responsive documents on this date.

For more information about the subpoena, you may wish to contact the
party seeking this information at:

Jacob M. Heath
Orrick, Herrington, & Sutcliffe, LLP
Jacob M. Heath, 1000 Marsh Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Google is not in a position to provide you with legal advice.

If you have other questions regarding the subpoena, we encourage you
to contact your attorney.

Thank you.”

Unlike most of its competitors in the Webmail industry, Google is exceptionally vocal about its policy for responding to subpoenas. This has earned it top marks from privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which recently ranked ISPs and social media firms on the transparency of their policies about responding to requests for information filed by the government or from law enforcement.

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OpenX Promises Fix for Rogue Ads Bug

May 2, 2012

Hackers are actively exploiting a dangerous security vulnerability in OpenX — an online ad-serving solution for Web sites — to run booby-trapped ads that serve malware and browser exploits across countless Web sites that depend on the solution.

Security experts have been warning for months about mysterious attacks on OpenX installations in which the site owners discovered new rogue administrator accounts. That access allows miscreants to load tainted ads on sites that rely on the software. The bad ads usually try to foist malware on visitors, or frighten them into paying for bogus security software.

OpenX is only now just starting to acknowledge the attacks, as more users are coming forward with unanswered questions about the mysteriously added administrator accounts.

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Global Payments Breach Window Expands

May 1, 2012

A hacker break-in at credit and debit card processor Global Payments Inc. dates back to at least early June 2011, Visa and MasterCard warned in updated alerts sent to card-issuing banks in the past week. The disclosures offer the first additional details about the length of the breach since Global Payments acknowledged the incident on March 30, 2012.

Visa and MasterCard send periodic alerts to card-issuing banks about cards that may need to be re-issued following a security breach at a processor or merchant. Indeed, it was two such alerts — issued within a day of each other in the final week of March — which prompted my reporting that ultimately exposed the incident. Since those initial alerts, Visa and MasterCard have issued at least seven updates, warning of additional compromised cards and pushing the window of vulnerability at Global Payments back further each time.

Initially, MasterCard and Visa warned that hackers may have had access to card numbers handled by the processor between Jan. 21, 2012 and Feb. 25, 2012. Subsequent alerts sent to banks have pushed that exposure window back to January, December, and then August. In an alert sent in the last few days, the card associations warned issuers of even more compromised cards, saying the breach extended back at least eight months, to June 2011.

Security experts say it is common for the tally of compromised cards to increase as forensic investigators gain a better grasp on the extent of a security breach. But so far, Global Payments has offered few details about the incident beyond repeating that less than 1.5 million card numbers may have been stolen from its systems.

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Service Automates Boobytrapping of Hacked Sites

May 1, 2012

Hardly a week goes by without news of some widespread compromise in which thousands of Web sites that share a common vulnerability are hacked and seeded with malware. Media coverage of these mass hacks usually centers on the security flaw that allowed the intrusions, but one aspect of these crimes that’s seldom examined is the method by which attackers automate the booby-trapping and maintenance of their hijacked sites.

Google-translated version of iFrameservice's homepage

Regular readers of this blog may be unsurprised to learn that this is another aspect of the cybercriminal economy that can be outsourced to third-party services. Often known as “iFramers,” such services can simplify the task of managing large numbers of hacked sites that are used to drive traffic to sites that serve up malware and browser exploits.

At the very least, a decent iFramer service will allow customers to verify large lists of file transfer protocol (FTP) credentials used to administer hacked Web sites, scrubbing those lists of invalid credential pairs. The service will then upload the customer’s malware and malicious scripts to the hacked site, and check each link to ensure the trap is properly set.

A huge percentage of malware in the wild today has the built-in ability to steal FTP credentials from infected PCs. This is possible because people who administer Web sites often use FTP software to upload files and images, and allow those programs to store their FTP passwords. Thus, many modern malware variants will simply search for popular FTP programs on the victim’s system and extract any stored credentials.

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Correction to Java Update Story

April 27, 2012

An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly stated that Oracle had shipped security updates for its Java software. Oracle did push out an update for Java earlier this month — Java 6 Update 32 — but the new version was a maintenance update that did not include security fixes. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Skimtacular: All-in-One ATM Skimmer

April 25, 2012

I spent the past week vacationing (mostly) in Southern California, traveling from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and on to the wine country in Santa Ynez. Along the way, I received some information from a law enforcement source in the area about a recent ATM skimmer attack that showcased a well-designed and stealthy all-in-one skimmer.

The skimmer pictured below is the backside of a card acceptance slot overlay. It was recovered by a customer at a bank in the San Fernando Valley who called the cops upon her discovery. Police in the region still have no leads on who might have placed the device. The numeral “5” engraved in the upper right portion of this skimmer suggests that it was one in a series of fraud devices produced by this skimmer maker.

Backside of an all-in-one ATM skimmer found this year at a bank in the San Fernando Valley area of California.

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Help Kickstart a Film on Cybercrime

April 23, 2012

A deep sense of doubt and dread began to sink in halfway through our journey down a long, lonely desert highway from just outside Austin to coastal Texas. We were racing against the clock (we’d just scarfed down our third meal in a row at a roadside Subway shop), yet my minivan companions — a filmmaker from California and a husband-and-wife camera crew — seemed pleased with the footage we’d collected so far. I was far less sanguine about our prospects, and was almost certain that our carefully-laid plans to ambush a money mule on camera were about to unravel.

‘Money mule’ Geridana heading home.

The scheme was hatched by Berkeley writer/director Charles Koppelman, who’d emailed me in mid-2011 about the possibility of catching some money mules on camera for a documentary he’s working on called Zero Day. Koppelman said the money shot would be a mule coming out of a bank with a wad of cash in hand, but that he’d settle for an old-fashioned sit-down interview.

At the time, I was working with a source who was injected into the communications networks of several money mule recruitment gangs. These miscreants specialize in hiring willing and unwitting “mules” through work-at-home job scams. The mules then are asked to process bank transfers that help organized cyber thieves launder money stolen from small businesses victimized by cybercrime. The networks my source was monitoring indicated the gang was grooming between 75 and 100 mules across the country on any given day, and that they were sending fraudulent transfers to mules almost daily.

I told Charles that for such a plan to work, we’d need to focus on areas that typically held the most number of mules per capita, and that meant somewhere in Florida or Texas. When my source indexed the mules and sorted them by hometown, we discovered that there were five mules being groomed for payments within about 200 miles of Austin, Texas. If we rented a car and checked in with my source on a regular basis, we might be able to secure the footage he was after, I suggested.

But I cautioned Koppelman that I gave our plan about a 20 percent chance of working. I predicted that most of the mules would quit, screw up the transfer task, or be used and discarded by the time we flew down there and actually hit the road. Indeed, when we reached our fleabag motel just south of Austin on Aug. 3, 2011, my prognostication had almost come true entirely: We were down to one last money mule: Geridana, a young, unemployed single mother of two from Webster, a small town of about 9,000 residents in southeastern Texas.

On the morning of Aug. 4, we piled into the minivan again and raced down to Webster. We didn’t attempt to make contact with her until we were parked outside of her apartment complex, which was next door to a bail bonds shop. Turns out that Geridana was a bit of an oddity: The $9,000+ the thieves had just sent her was actually the fourth such transfer that Geridana had processed in as many weeks. The most pathetic aspect of the whole scheme? She never got paid her promised monthly salary or per-task commissions.

I’ll stop the story here, because I don’t want to spoil the movie. That is, if it ever attracts enough funding to be finished. The film is co-financed by BBC Storyville, but Koppelman and his son Walker just launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 to ensure  continued filming of the project. A short introduction to their effort (including a scene starring Yours Truly) is available in the teaser video clip below. The filmmakers are also working with New York Times reporter John Markoff, Reuters reporter Joe Menn, and author Misha Glenny.