Is Your Computer Listed “For Rent”?

April 8, 2011
130 Comments

When it’s time to book a vacation or a quick getaway, many of us turn to travel reservation sites like Expedia, Travelocity and other comparison services. But there’s a cybercrime-friendly booking service that is not well-known. When cyber crooks want to get away — with a crime — increasingly they are turning to underground online booking services that make it easy for crooks to rent hacked PCs that can help them ply their trade anonymously.

We often hear about hacked, remote-controlled PCs or “bots” being used to send spam or to host malicious Web sites, but seldom do security researchers delve into the mechanics behind one of the most basic uses for a bot: To serve as a node in an anonymization service that allows paying customers to proxy their Internet connections through one or more compromised systems.

As I noted in a Washington Post column in 2008, “this type of service is especially appealing to criminals looking to fleece bank accounts at institutions that conduct rudimentary Internet address checks to ensure that the person accessing an account is indeed logged on from the legitimate customer’s geographic region, as opposed to say, Odessa, Ukraine.” Scammers have been using proxies forever it seems, but it’s interesting that it is so easy to find victims, once you are a user of the anonymization service.

Here’s an overview of one of the more advanced anonymity networks on the market, an invite-only subscription service marketed on several key underground cyber crime forums.

When I tested this service, it had more than 4,100 bot proxies available in 75 countries, although the bulk of the hacked PCs being sold or rented were in the United States and the United Kingdom. Also, the number of available proxies fluctuates daily, peaking during normal business hours in the United States. Drilling down into the U.S. map (see image above), users can select proxies by state, or use the “advanced search” box, which allows customers to select bots based on city, IP range, Internet provider, and connection speed. This service also includes a fairly active Russian-language customer support forum. Customers can use the service after paying a one-time $150 registration fee (security deposit?) via a virtual currency such as WebMoney or Liberty Reserve. After that, individual botted systems can be rented for about a dollar a day, or “purchased” for exclusive use for slightly more.

I tried to locate some owners of the hacked machines being rented via this service. Initially this presented a challenge because the majority of the proxies listed are compromised PCs hooked up to home or small business cable modem or DSL connections. As you can see from the screenshot below, the only identifying information for these systems was the IP address and host name. And although so-called “geo-location” services can plot the approximate location of an Internet address, these services are not exact and are sometimes way off.

I started poking through the listings for proxies that had meaningful host names, such as the domain name of a business. It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon the Web site for The Securities Group LLC, a Memphis, Tenn. based privately held broker/dealer firm specializing in healthcare partnerships with physicians. According to the company’s site, “TSG has raised over $100,000,000 having syndicated over 200 healthcare projects including whole hospital exemptions, ambulatory surgery centers, surgical hospitals, PET Imaging facilities, CATH labs and a prostate cancer supplement LLC with up to 400 physician investors.” The proxy being sold by the anonymization service was tied to the Internet address of TSG’s email server, and to the Web site for the Kirby Pines Retirement Community, also in Memphis.

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After Epsilon: Avoiding Phishing Scams & Malware

April 6, 2011
70 Comments

The recent massive data leak from email services provider Epsilon means that it is likely that many consumers will be exposed to an unusually high number of email-based scams in the coming weeks and months. So this is an excellent time to point out some useful resources and tips that can help readers defend against phishing attacks and other nastygrams.

Don’t take the bait: Many people are familiar with the traditional phishing attack, which arrives in an email that appears to have been sent from your bank or ISP, warning that your account will be suspended unless you take some action immediately, usually clicking a link and “verifying” your account information, user name, password, etc. at a fake site. Commercial emails that emphasize urgency should be always considered extremely suspect, and under no circumstances should you do anything suggested in the email. Phishers count on spooking people into acting rashly because they know their scam sites have a finite lifetime; they may be shuttered at any moment (most phishing scams are hosted on hacked, legitimate Web sites). If you’re really concerned, pick up the phone (gasp!) and call the company to find out if there really is anything for you to be concerned about.

Links Lie: You’re a sucker if you take links at face value. For example, this might look like a link to Bank of America, but I assure you it is not. To get an idea of where a link goes, hover over it with your mouse and then look in the bottom left corner of the browser window. Yet, even this information often tells only part of the story, and some links can be trickier to decipher. For instance, many banks like to send links that include ridiculously long URLs which stretch far beyond the browser’s ability to show the entire thing when you hover over the link. The most important part of a link is the “root” domain. To find that, look for the first slash (/) after the “http://” part, and then work backwards through the link until you reach the second dot; the part immediately to the right is the real domain to which that link will take you.  Want to learn more cool stuff about links? Check out this guy’s site and you’ll be a link ninja in no time.

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Epsilon Breach Raises Specter of Spear Phishing

April 4, 2011
160 Comments

Security experts are warning consumers to be especially alert for targeted email scams in the coming weeks and months, following a breach at a major email marketing firm that exposed names and email addresses for customers of some of the nation’s largest banks and corporate brand names.

Late last week, Irving, Texas based Epsilon issued a brief statement warning that hackers had stolen customer email addresses and names belonging to a “subset of its clients.” Epsilon didn’t name the clients that had customer data lost in the breach; that information would come trickling out over the weekend, as dozens of major corporations began warning customers to be wary of unsolicited email scams that may impersonate their brands as a result.

Among Epsilon’s clients affected are three of the top ten U.S. banks – JP Morgan Chase, Citibank and U.S. Bank — as well as Barclays Bank and Capital One. More than two dozen other brands have alerted customers to data lost in the Epsilon breach (a list of companies known to have been impacted is at the bottom of this post).

Rod Rasmussen, chief technology officer at Internet Identity and the industry liaison for the Anti-Phishing Working Group, believes that the Epsilon breach will lead to an increase in “spear phishing” attacks, those that take advantage of known trust relationships between corporations and customers by crafting personalized messages that address recipients by name, thereby increasing the apparent authenticity of the email.

“I think this is going to make a big difference in spear phishing, where you may not be targeting an individual, but you know that that person has a bank account with US Bank and recently stayed at Disney,” Rasmussen said. “You now can automate spam based on things people have actually done, so your missive that they need to log into your phishing site is much more affective. You can also correlate across your data to see all the services someone is using, phish them for a user/password on something innocuous, and then re-use the same password for the bank they use, since there’s such rampant password re-use out there.”

Crooks used very similar spear phishing methods to steal customer contact information from dozens of email marketing firms late last year, as KrebsOnSecurity.com first reported in detail. In the wake of that assault, data spills at other email marketing firms like SilverPop have prompted disclosures from clients such as TripAdvisor and Play.com.

Neil Schwartzman, executive director of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) and a former executive at email service provider ReturnPath, said his organization plans to release a document later today spelling out security measures that providers should be taking, such as encrypting customer data.

“There are best practices that the major of the industry should have implemented a year ago, but never did, and it’s just disgusting and reprehensible that they haven’t done this stuff yet,” Schwartzman said. “I’ve talked to people in other industrial sectors who said if my external auditors found out we were treating customer data this way, we’d be in serious trouble.”

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Spammers Target Kroger Customers

April 1, 2011
58 Comments

Supermarket giant Kroger Co. is the latest major business to disclose that its customer email list has fallen into into the hands of spammers and scam artists.

In a communication sent to customers today, Kroger said its database of customer names and email addresses had been breached by someone outside the company. A call to the 1-800 number included in the missive connects to a lengthy recorded message warning customers about an increase in phishing attacks and spam targeting Kroger customers. Kroger’s media relations folks have not yet returned calls seeking comment.

The disclosure comes close on the heels of similar acknowledgments from McDonalds, Walgreens, Honda, deviantART, and most recently TripAdvisor and play.com. They appear to be the lingering fallout from a series of sophisticated, targeted attacks against dozens of email service providers (ESPs) that manage communications between some of the world’s top brands and customers that have opted-in to receive messages from these companies.

In most cases, the spam sent to customers of these companies pushed recipients to buy dodgy services and software. It’s not clear which email service provider may have leaked the Kroger customer information, but it seems that few — if any — ESPs have escaped injury.

According to the CEO of play.com, that breach involved an attack against marketing firm SilverPop Systems. SilverPop did not respond to requests for comment.

I called SilverPop today because a source forwarded a junk email message to me that appears to have been sent directly from SilverPop’s internal email systems (the text and headers from that email are here). The missive is an offer to download Adobe Reader, and recipients who click the included link are brought to a page that tries to charge them for the free software. This approach is almost identical to the scam emails sent out directly after the successful attacks against email services providers in November of last year.

My initial reporting on this attack against the email service provider industry indicates that most of the providers in the industry had client customer data stolen. I’m left wondering how long we have to keep watching this stream of disclosures trickle out, and how long it might take for email service providers like SilverPop to get their houses in order?

Update, 6:55 p.m. ET: A story in the Cincinnati Business Courier says the breach occurred at Epsilon, an email service provider headquartered in Dallas.

Update, 9:45 p.m. ET: Several readers have reported receiving similar disclosures today from gift store Brookstone.

Update, Apr. 2, 9:35 a.m. ET: Another reader wrote in to say he’d received a notification (PDF) from U.S. bank, which said the financial institution’s customer email list was stolen due to a breach at Epsilon.

Update, Apr. 2, 5:41 p.m. ET: The Epsilon breach extends to JP Morgan Chase, McKinsey Quarterly, and apparel chain New York & Co, according to new disclosures from those companies.

Update, Apr. 2, 8:45 p.m. ET: And the list of disclosures continues: The Home Shopping Network just issued a release (PDF) saying its customer list was compromised via the Epsilon breach.

Update, Apr. 2, 9:00 p.m. ET: Looks like we can add TiVo to the list, although the company’s disclosure doesn’t say which email service provider was responsible.

Update, Apr. 3, 9:11 a.m. ET: According to SecurityWeek.com, the brands impacted by the Epsilon breach include Capital One, City Market, Dillons, Jay C, Food 4 Less, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, King Soopers, Marriott Rewards, QFC, Ralphs, Ritz Carlton, and Smith Brands and Walgreens.

Domains Used in RSA Attack Taunted U.S.

March 30, 2011
60 Comments

Details about the recent cyber attacks against security firm RSA suggest the assailants may have been taunting the industry giant and the United States while they were stealing secrets from a company whose technology is used to secure many banks and government agencies.

Earlier this month, RSA disclosed that “an extremely sophisticated cyber attack” targeting its business unit “resulted in certain information being extracted from RSA’s systems that relates to RSA’s SecurID two-factor authentication products.” The company was careful to caution that while data gleaned did not enable a successful direct attack on any of its SecurID customers, the information “could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack.”

That disclosure seems to have only fanned the flames of speculation swirling around this story, and a number of bloggers and pundits have sketched out scenarios of what might have happened. Yet, until now, very little data about the attack itself has been made public.

Earlier today, I had a chance to review an unclassified document from the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), which includes a tiny bit of attack data: A list of domains that were used in the intrusion at RSA.

Some of the domain names on that list suggest that the attackers had (or wanted to appear to have) contempt for the United States. Among the domains used in the attack (extra spacing is intentional in the links below, which should be considered hostile):

A partial list of the domains used in the attack on RSA

www usgoodluck .com

obama .servehttp .com

prc .dynamiclink .ddns .us

Note that the last domain listed includes the abbreviation “PRC,” which could be a clever feint, or it could be Chinese attackers rubbing our noses in it, as if to say, “Yes, it was the People’s Republic of China that attacked you: What are you going to do about it?”

Most of the domains trace back to so-called dynamic DNS providers, usually free services that allow users to have Web sites hosted on servers that frequently change their Internet addresses. This type of service is useful for people who want to host a Web site on a home-based Internet address that may change from time to time, because dynamic DNS services can be used to easily map the domain name to the user’s new Internet address whenever it happens to change.

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Test Your Browser’s Patch Status

March 30, 2011
40 Comments

With new security updates from vendors like Adobe, Apple and Java coming out on a near-monthly basis, keeping your Web browser patched against the latest threats can be an arduous, worrisome chore. But a new browser plug-in from security firm Qualys makes it quick and painless to identify and patch outdated browser components.

Qualys Browser Check plug-inThe Qualys BrowserCheck plug-in works across multiple browsers — including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera, on multiple operating systems. Install the plug-in, restart the browser, click the blue “Scan Now” button, and the results should let you know if there are any security or stability updates available for your installed plug-ins (a list of the plug-ins and add-ons that this program can check is available here). Clicking the blue “Fix It” button next to each action item listed fetches the appropriate installer from the vendor’s site and prompts you to download and install it. Re-scan as needed until the browser plug-ins are up to date.

Secunia has long had a very similar capability built into its free Personal Software Inspector program, but I realize not everyone wants to install a new program + Windows service to stay abreast of the latest patches (Secunia also offers a Web-based scan, but it requires Java, a plug-in that I have urged users to ditch if possible). The nice thing about Qualys’ plug-in approach is that it works not only on Windows, but also on Mac and Linux machines. On Windows 64-bit systems, only the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer is supported, and the plug-in thankfully nudges IE6 and IE7 users to upgrade to at least IE8.

Having the latest browser updates in one, easy-to-manage page is nice, but remember that the installers you download may by default come with additional programs bundled by the various plug-in makers. For example, when I updated Adobe’s Shockwave player on my test machine, the option to install  Registry Mechanic was pre-checked. The same thing happened when I went to update my Foxit Reader plug-in, which wanted to set Ask.com as my default search provider, set ask.com as my home page, and have the Foxit toolbar added.

IRS Scam: Phishing by Fax

March 29, 2011
12 Comments

Scammers typically kick into high gear during tax season in the United States, which tends to bring with it a spike in phishing attacks that spoof the Internal Revenue Service.   Take, for example, a new scam making the rounds via email, which warns of discrepancies on the recipient’s income tax return and requests that personal information be sent via fax to a toll-free number.

A new phishing campaign that began sometime in the last 24 hours is made to look like it was sent from irs@irsonline.gov, and urges recipients to fill out, print, and fax an attached PDF tax form. From the scam email:

*This is in reference to your 2010 U.S. Individual Income Tax Return we seem to have some discrepancies with your filing. If you have already filed for your 2010  tax refund please get hold of a new form 1040 and
mail it to the  Department of the Treasury in your region.*

*If for any reason you have not yet filed for your 2010  Individual
Income Tax Return please print out the attached PDF form, fill it and
fax it to the IRS data center on (866) 513-7982 within 24 hours.*

*This has no bearing on your 2010 U.S. Individual Income Tax Return,
this to update our data and survey while we prepare to close the 2010
tax filing season.*

*Thank you *

That 866- phone number is currently returning a fast-busy signal, which suggests either that a lot of people are falling for this scam, or that anti-scammers are speed-dialing the number in a bid to prevent would-be victims from faxing in their forms. My guess is that this scam is tied to some kind of automated service that scans faxes and then emails the phishers copies of the scanned images.

It’s worth noting that the data requested in this bogus IRS form includes the Social Security number, e-File PIN and adjusted gross income, all of which are crucial pieces of information that the IRS uses to authenticate taxpayers.

The IRS has been careful to note that while it may conduct follow-up correspondence with taxpayers via email if the taxpayer chooses to communicate that way, it will never reach out to taxpayers via email. Consumers can report any tax-related phishing scams to phishing@irs.gov.

Microsoft Hunting Rustock Controllers

March 28, 2011
22 Comments

Who controlled the Rustock botnet? The question remains unanswered: Microsoft’s recent takedown of the world’s largest spam engine offered tantalizing new clues to the identity and earnings of the Rustock botmasters. The data shows that Rustock’s curators made millions by pimping rogue Internet pharmacies, but also highlights the challenges that investigators still face in tracking down those responsible for building and profiting from this complex crime machine.

Earlier this month, Microsoft crippled Rustock by convincing a court to let it seize dozens of Rustock control servers that were scattered among several U.S.-based hosting providers. Shortly after that takedown, I began following the money trail to learn who ultimately paid the botnet controllers’ hosts for their services.

According to interviews with investigators involved in the Rustock takedown, approximately one-third of the control servers were rented from U.S. hosting providers by one entity: A small business in Eastern Europe that specializes in reselling hosting services to shadowy individuals who frequent underground hacker forums.

KrebsOnSecurity.com spoke to that reseller. In exchange for the agreement that I not name his operation or his location, he provided payment information about the customer who purchased dozens of servers that were used to manipulate the day-to-day operations of the massive botnet.

The reseller was willing to share information about his client because the customer turned out to be a deadbeat: The customer walked out on two months worth of rent, an outstanding debt of $1,600. The reseller also seemed willing to talk to me because I might be able bend the ear of Spamhaus.org, the anti-spam group that urged ISPs worldwide to block his Internet addresses (several thousand dollars worth of rented servers) shortly after Microsoft announced the Rustock takedown.

I found the reseller advertising his services on a Russian-language forum that caters exclusively to spammers, where he describes the hardware, software and connection speed capabilities of the very servers that he would later rent out to the Rustock botmaster. That solicitation, which was posted on a major spammer forum in January 2010, offered prospective clients flexible terms without setting too many boundaries on what they could do with the servers. A translated version of part of his message:

“I am repeating again that the servers are legitimate, funded by us and belong to our company. To the datacenters, we are responsible to ensure that you are our client, and that you will not break the terms of use. Also, to you we are responsible to make sure that the servers are not going to be closed down because of credit card chargebacks, as it happens with servers funded with stolen credit cards. In conclusion, they do not have an abuse report center, they are suitable for legitimate projects, VPNs and everything else that does not lead to problems and complaints to the data center from active Internet users. Please, take it in consideration, so that nobody is pissed off and there is no bad impression from our partnership.”

The reseller said he had no idea that his customer was using the servers to control the Rustock botnet, but he hastened to add that this particular client didn’t attract too much attention to himself. According to the reseller, the servers he resold to the Rustock botmaster generated just two abuse complaints from the Internet service providers (ISPs) that hosted those servers. Experts say this makes sense because botnet control servers typically generate few abuse complaints, because they are almost never used for the sort of activity that usually prompts abuse reports, such as sending spam or attacking others online. Instead, the servers only were used to coordinate the activities of hundreds of thousands of PCs infected with Rustock, periodically sending them program updates and new spamming instructions.

The reseller was paid for the servers from an account at WebMoney, a virtual currency similar to PayPal but more popular among Russian and Eastern European consumers. The reseller shared the unique numeric ID attached to that WebMoney account — WebMoney purse “Z166284889296.” That purse belonged to an “attested” WebMoney account, meaning that the account holder at some point had to verify his identity by presenting an official Russian passport at a WebMoney office. A former law enforcement officer involved in the Rustock investigation said the name attached to that attested account was “Vladimir Shergin.” According to the reseller, the client stated in an online chat that he was from Saint Petersburg, Russia.

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Big Scores and Hi-Scores

March 23, 2011
15 Comments

Business gurus have long maintained that time = $$, but that doesn’t mean that playtime necessarily decreases the bottom line. Many corporations have discovered that their employees tend to be more productive when they have time to give their brains a break, and gameplay is the perfect escape. So it’s not surprising that some cyber criminals have taken this lesson to heart, and are crafting crime machines to include games that allow their evildoing customers to steal money and set their hi-scores at the same time.

I had a laugh when I stumbled upon the administrative panel shown in the video below. It’s a back-end Web database designed to interact with a collection of Windows PCs infected by the ZeuS Trojan. This panel receives financial data stolen from victim machines, including PayPal and Bank of America account credentials. This video shows the Bank of America tab of the tool, which also allows the criminal to inject specific “challenge/response” questions into BofA’s Web page as displayed in the victim’s browser, as a way to steal the answers to these questions should the criminal later be asked for them when later logging in to victim accounts.

Directly to the right of an option to export all stolen credentials to an easy-to-read .csv file is a button labeled “Pacman”. Clicking launches a playable, exact replica of the 1980s arcade game (enlarge the video by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner of the video panel):

I can’t help but wonder whether we will witness some perverse kind of Moore’s law with future criminal Web administration panels. I can just see it now: In 18 months, crooks writing these panels will be bundling Halo 3 and Counter-Strike with their creations!

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Critical Security Updates for Adobe Acrobat, Flash, Reader

March 21, 2011
33 Comments

Adobe today released a software update to plug a critical security hole in its Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat and PDF Reader products. The patch comes a week after the software maker warned that miscreants were exploiting the Flash vulnerability to launch targeted attacks on users.

The Flash update addresses a critical vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.152.33 and earlier; versions (Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.154.18 and earlier versions for Chrome users) for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems; and Adobe Flash Player 10.1.106.16 and earlier versions for Android.

Adobe is urging all users to upgrade to the latest version — Flash v. 10.2.153.1 (Chrome users want v. 10.2.154.25, although Google is likely to auto-update it soon, given their past speediness in applying Flash updates). Update: According to The Register’s Dan Goodin, Google updated Chrome to patch this Flash flaw a full three days ago!

Original post: Click this link to find out what version of Flash you have installed. If something goes wrong in your update, or if you’re just a stickler for following directions, Adobe recommends uninstalling the current version of Flash before proceeding with the update (Mac users see this link).

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