Who and What Is Coinhive?

March 26, 2018
113 Comments

Multiple security firms recently identified cryptocurrency mining service Coinhive as the top malicious threat to Web users, thanks to the tendency for Coinhive’s computer code to be used on hacked Web sites to steal the processing power of its visitors’ devices. This post looks at how Coinhive vaulted to the top of the threat list less than a year after its debut, and explores clues about the possible identities of the individuals behind the service.

Coinhive is a cryptocurrency mining service that relies on a small chunk of computer code designed to be installed on Web sites. The code uses some or all of the computing power of any browser that visits the site in question, enlisting the machine in a bid to mine bits of the Monero cryptocurrency.

Monero differs from Bitcoin in that its transactions are virtually untraceble, and there is no way for an outsider to track Monero transactions between two parties. Naturally, this quality makes Monero an especially appealing choice for cybercriminals.

Coinhive released its mining code last summer, pitching it as a way for Web site owners to earn an income without running intrusive or annoying advertisements. But since then, Coinhive’s code has emerged as the top malware threat tracked by multiple security firms. That’s because much of the time the code is installed on hacked Web sites — without the owner’s knowledge or permission.

Much like a malware infection by a malicious bot or Trojan, Coinhive’s code frequently locks up a user’s browser and drains the device’s battery as it continues to mine Monero for as long a visitor is browsing the site.

According to publicwww.com, a service that indexes the source code of Web sites, there are nearly 32,000 Web sites currently running Coinhive’s JavaScript miner code. It’s impossible to say how many of those sites have installed the code intentionally, but in recent months hackers have secretly stitched it into some extremely high-profile Web sites, including sites for such companies as The Los Angeles Times, mobile device maker Blackberry, Politifact, and Showtime.

And it’s turning up in some unexpected places: In December, Coinhive code was found embedded in all Web pages served by a WiFi hotspot at a Starbucks in Buenos Aires. For roughly a week in January, Coinhive was found hidden inside of YouTube advertisements (via Google’s DoubleClick platform) in select countries, including Japan, France, Taiwan, Italy and Spain. In February, Coinhive was found on “Browsealoud,” a service provided by Texthelp that reads web pages out loud for the visually impaired. The service is widely used on many UK government websites, in addition to a few US and Canadian government sites.

What does Coinhive get out of all this? Coinhive keeps 30 percent of whatever amount of Monero cryptocurrency that is mined using its code, whether or not a Web site has given consent to run it. The code is tied to a special cryptographic key that identifies which user account is to receive the other 70 percent.

Coinhive does accept abuse complaints, but it generally refuses to respond to any complaints that do not come from a hacked Web site’s owner (it mostly ignores abuse complaints lodged by third parties). What’s more, when Coinhive does respond to abuse complaints, it does so by invalidating the key tied to the abuse.

But according to Troy Mursch, a security expert who spends much of his time tracking Coinhive and other instances of “cryptojacking,” killing the key doesn’t do anything to stop Coinhive’s code from continuing to mine Monero on a hacked site. Once a key is invalidated, Mursch said, Coinhive keeps 100 percent of the cryptocurrency mined by sites tied to that account from then on.

Mursch said Coinhive appears to have zero incentive to police the widespread abuse that is leveraging its platform.

“When they ‘terminate’ a key, it just terminates the user on that platform, it doesn’t stop the malicious JavaScript from running, and it just means that particular Coinhive user doesn’t get paid anymore,” Mursch said. “The code keeps running, and Coinhive gets all of it. Maybe they can’t do anything about it, or maybe they don’t want to. But as long as the code is still on the hacked site, it’s still making them money.”

Reached for comment about this apparent conflict of interest, Coinhive replied with a highly technical response, claiming the organization is working on a fix to correct that conflict.

“We have developed Coinhive under the assumption that site keys are immutable,” Coinhive wrote in an email to KrebsOnSecurity. “This is evident by the fact that a site key can not be deleted by a user. This assumption greatly simplified our initial development. We can cache site keys on our WebSocket servers instead of reloading them from the database for every new client. We’re working on a mechanism [to] propagate the invalidation of a key to our WebSocket servers.”

AUTHEDMINE

Coinhive has responded to such criticism by releasing a version of their code called “AuthedMine,” which is designed to seek a Web site visitor’s consent before running the Monero mining scripts. Coinhive maintains that approximately 35 percent of the Monero cryptocurrency mining activity that uses its platform comes from sites using AuthedMine.

But according to a report published in February by security firm Malwarebytes, the AuthedMine code is “barely used” compared to the use of Coinhive’s mining code that does not seek permission from Web site visitors. Malwarebytes’ telemetry data (drawn from antivirus alerts when users browse to a site running Coinhive’s code) determined that AuthedMine is used in a little more than one percent of all cases that involve Coinhive’s mining code.

Image: Malwarebytes. The statistic above refer to the number of times per day between Jan. 10 and Feb. 7 that Malwarebytes blocked connections to AuthedMine and Coinhive, respectively.

Asked to comment on the Malwarebytes findings, Coinhive replied that if relatively few people are using AuthedMine it might be because anti-malware companies like Malwarebytes have made it unprofitable for people to do so.

“They identify our opt-in version as a threat and block it,” Coinhive said. “Why would anyone use AuthedMine if it’s blocked just as our original implementation? We don’t think there’s any way that we could have launched Coinhive and not get it blacklisted by Antiviruses. If antiviruses say ‘mining is bad,’ then mining is bad.”

Similarly, data from the aforementioned source code tracking site publicwww.com shows that some 32,000 sites are running the original Coinhive mining script, while the site lists just under 1,200 sites running AuthedMine.

WHO IS COINHIVE?

[Author’s’ note: Ordinarily, I prefer to link to sources of information cited in stories, such as those on Coinhive’s own site and other entities mentioned throughout the rest of this piece. However, because many of these links either go to sites that actively mine with Coinhive or that include decidedly not-safe-for-work content, I have included screenshots instead of links in these cases. For these reasons, I would strongly advise against visiting pr0gramm’s Web site.]

According to a since-deleted statement on the original version of Coinhive’s Web site — coin-hive[dot]com — Coinhive was born out of an experiment on the German-language image hosting and discussion forum pr0gramm[dot]com.

A now-deleted “About us” statement on the original coin-hive[dot]com Web site. This snapshop was taken on Sept. 15, 2017. Image courtesy archive.org.

Indeed, multiple discussion threads on pr0gramm[dot]com show that Coinhive’s code first surfaced there in the third week of July 2017. At the time, the experiment was dubbed “pr0miner,” and those threads indicate that the core programmer responsible for pr0miner used the nickname “int13h” on pr0gramm. In a message to this author, Coinhive confirmed that “most of the work back then was done by int13h, who is still on our team.”

I asked Coinhive for clarity on the disappearance of the above statement from its site concerning its affiliation with pr0gramm. Coinhive replied that it had been a convenient fiction:

“The owners of pr0gramm are good friends and we’ve helped them with their infrastructure and various projects in the past. They let us use pr0gramm as a testbed for the miner and also allowed us to use their name to get some more credibility. Launching a new platform is difficult if you don’t have a track record. As we later gained some publicity, this statement was no longer needed.”

Asked for clarification about the “platform” referred to in its statement (“We are self-funded and have been running this platform for the past 11 years”) Coinhive replied, “Sorry for not making it clearer: ‘this platform’ is indeed pr0gramm.”

After receiving this response, it occurred to me that someone might be able to find out who’s running Coinhive by determining the identities of the pr0gramm forum administrators. I reasoned that if they were not one and the same, the pr0gramm admins almost certainly would know the identities of the folks behind Coinhive. Continue reading →

San Diego Sues Experian Over ID Theft Service

March 23, 2018
38 Comments

The City of San Diego, Calif. is suing consumer credit bureau Experian, alleging that a data breach first reported by KrebsOnSecurity in 2013 affected more than a quarter-million people in San Diego but that Experian never alerted affected consumers as required under California law.

The lawsuit, filed by San Diego city attorney Mara Elliott, concerns a data breach at an Experian subsidiary that lasted for nine months ending in 2013. As first reported here in October 2013, a Vietnamese man named Hieu Minh Ngo ran an identity theft service online and gained access to sensitive consumer information by posing as a licensed private investigator in the United States.

In reality, the fraudster was running his identity theft service from Vietnam, and paying Experian thousands of dollars in cash each month for access to 200 million consumer records. Ngo then resold that access to more than 1,300 customers of his ID theft service. KrebsOnSecurity first wrote about Ngo’s ID theft service — alternately called Superget[dot]info and Findget[dot]me — in 2011.

Ngo was arrested after being lured out of Vietnam by the U.S. Secret Service. He later pleaded guilty to identity fraud charges and was sentenced in July 2015 to 13 years in prison.

News of the lawsuit comes from The San Diego Union-Tribune, which says the city attorney alleges that some 30 million consumers could have had their information stolen in the breach, including an estimated 250,000 people in San Diego.

“Elliott’s office cited the Internal Revenue Service in saying hackers filed more than 13,000 false returns using the hacked information, obtaining $65 million in fraudulent tax refunds,” writes Union-Tribune reporter Greg Moran.

Experian did not respond to requests for comment.

Ngo’s Identity theft service, superget.info, which relied on access to consumer databases maintained by a company that Experian purchased in 2012.

In December 2013, an executive from Experian told Congress that the company was not aware of any consumers who had been harmed by the incident. However, soon after Ngo was extradited to the United States, the Secret Service began identifying and rounding up dozens of customers of Ngo’s identity theft service. And most of Ngo’s customers were indeed involved in tax refund fraud with the states and the IRS. Continue reading →

Advertisement

Survey: Americans Spent $1.4B on Credit Freeze Fees in Wake of Equifax Breach

March 22, 2018
55 Comments

Almost 20 percent of Americans froze their credit file with one or more of the big three credit bureaus in the wake of last year’s data breach at Equifax, costing consumers an estimated $1.4 billion, according to a new study. The findings come as lawmakers in Congress are debating legislation that would make credit freezes free in every state.

The figures, commissioned by small business loan provider Fundera and conducted by Wakefield Research, surveyed some 1,000 adults in the U.S. Respondents were asked to self-report how much they spent on the freezes; 32 percent said the freezes cost them $10 or less, but 38 percent said the total cost was $30 or more. The average cost to consumers who froze their credit after the Equifax breach was $23.

A credit freeze blocks potential creditors from being able to view or “pull” your credit file, making it far more difficult for identity thieves to apply for new lines of credit in your name.

Depending on your state of residence, the cost of placing a freeze on your credit file can run between $3 and $10 per credit bureau, and in many states the bureaus also can charge fees for temporarily “thawing” and removing a freeze (according a list published by Consumers Union, residents of four states — Indiana, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina — do not need to pay to place, thaw or lift a freeze).

Image: Wakefield Research.

In a blog post published today, Fundera said the percentage of people who froze their credit in response to the Equifax breach incrementally decreases as people get older.

“Thirty-two percent of millennials, 16 percent of Generation Xers and 12 percent of baby boomers froze their credit,” Fundera explained. “This data is surprising considering that older generations have been working on building their credit for a longer period of time, and thus they have a more established record to protect.”

However, freeze fees could soon be a thing of the past. A provision included in a bill passed by the U.S. Senate on March 14 would require credit-reporting firms to let consumers place a freeze without paying (the measure is awaiting action in the House of Representatives).

But there may be a catch: According to CNBC, the congressional effort to require free freezes is part of a larger measure, S. 2155, which rolls back some banking regulations put in place after the financial crisis that rocked the U.S. economy a decade ago. Continue reading →

15-Year-old Finds Flaw in Ledger Crypto Wallet

March 20, 2018
38 Comments

A 15-year-old security researcher has discovered a serious flaw in cryptocurrency hardware wallets made by Ledger, a French company whose popular products are designed to physically safeguard public and private keys used to receive or spend the user’s cryptocurrencies.

Ledger’s Nano-S cryptocurrency hardware wallet. Source: Amazon.

Hardware wallets like those sold by Ledger are designed to protect the user’s private keys from malicious software that might try to harvest those credentials from the user’s computer.  The devices enable transactions via a connection to a USB port on the user’s computer, but they don’t reveal the private key to the PC.

Yet Saleem Rashid, a 15-year-old security researcher from the United Kingdom, discovered a way to acquire the private keys from Ledger devices. Rashid’s method requires an attacker to have physical access to the device, and normally such hacks would be unremarkable because they fall under the #1 rule of security — namely, if an attacker has physical access to your device, then it is not your device anymore.

The trouble is that consumer demand for Ledger’s products has frequently outpaced the company’s ability to produce them (it has sold over a million of its most popular Nano S models to date). This has prompted the company’s chief technology officer to state publicly that Ledger’s built-in security model is so robust that it is safe to purchase their products from a wide range of third-party sellers, including Amazon and eBay.

Ledger’s message to users regarding the lack of anti-tampering mechanisms on its cryptocurrency hardware wallets.

But Rashid discovered that a reseller of Ledger’s products could update the devices with malicious code that would lie in wait for a potential buyer to use it, and then siphon the private key and drain the user’s cryptocurrency account(s) when the user goes to use it.

The crux of the problem is that Ledger’s devices contain a secure processor chip and a non-secure microcontroller chip. The latter is used for a variety of non-security related purposes, from handling the USB connections to displaying text on the Ledger’s digital display, but the two chips still pass information between each other. Rashid found that an attacker could compromise the insecure processor (the microcontroller) on Ledger devices to run malicious code without being detected.

Ledger’s products do contain a mechanism for checking to ensure the code powering the devices has not been modified, but Rashid’s proof-of-concept code — being released today in tandem with an announcement from Ledger about a new firmware update designed to fix the bug — allows an attacker to force the device to sidestep those security checks.

“You’re essentially trusting a non-secure chip not to change what’s displayed on the screen or change what the buttons are saying,” Rashid said in an interview with KrebsOnSecurity. “You can install whatever you want on that non-secure chip, because the code running on there can lie to you.”

Kenneth White, director of the Open Crypto Audit Project, had an opportunity to review Rashid’s findings prior to their publication today. White said he was impressed with the elegance of the proof-of-concept attack code, which Rashid sent to Ledger approximately four months ago. A copy of Rashid’s research paper on the vulnerability is available here (PDF). A video of Rashid demonstrating his attack is below.

White said Rashid’s code subverts the security of the Ledger’s process for generating a backup code for a user’s private key, which relies on a random number generator that can be made to produce non-random results.

“In this case [the attacker] can set it to whatever he wants,” White said. “The victim generates keys and backup codes, but in fact those codes have been predicted by the attacker in advance because he controls the Ledger’s random number generator.”

Rashid said Ledger initially dismissed his findings as implausible. But in a blog post published today, Ledger says it has since fixed the flaw Rashid found — as well as others discovered and reported by different security researchers — in a firmware update that brings Ledger Nano S devices from firmware version 1.3.1 to version 1.4.1 (the company actually released the firmware update on March 6, potentially giving attackers time to reverse engineer Rashid’s method).

The company is still working on an update for its pricier Ledger Blue devices, which company chief security officer Charles Guillemet said should be ready soon. Guillemet said Nano-S devices should alert users that a firmware update is available when the customer first plugs the device into a computer.

“The vulnerability he found was based on the fact that the secure element tries to authenticate the microcontroller, and that authentication is not strong enough,” Guillemet told KrebsOnSecurity. “This update does authentication more tightly so that it’s not possible to fool the user.” Continue reading →

Adrian Lamo, ‘Homeless Hacker’ Who Turned in Chelsea Manning, Dead at 37

March 18, 2018
72 Comments

Adrian Lamo, the hacker probably best known for breaking into The New York Times‘s network and for reporting Chelsea Manning‘s theft of classified documents to the FBI, was found dead in a Kansas apartment on Wednesday. Lamo was widely reviled and criticized for turning in Manning, but that chapter of his life eclipsed the profile of a complex individual who taught me quite a bit about security over the years.

Adrian Lamo, in 2006. Source: Wikipedia.

I first met Lamo in 2001 when I was a correspondent for Newsbytes.com, a now-defunct tech publication that was owned by The Washington Post at the time. A mutual friend introduced us over AOL Instant Messenger, explaining that Lamo had worked out a simple method allowing him to waltz into the networks of some of the world’s largest media companies using nothing more than a Web browser.

The panoply of alternate nicknames he used on instant messenger in those days shed light on a personality not easily grasped: Protagonist, Bitter Geek, AmINotMerciful, Unperceived, Mythos, Arcane, truefaith, FugitiveGame.

In this, as in so many other ways, Lamo was a study in contradictions: Unlike most other hackers who break into online networks without permission, he didn’t try to hide behind the anonymity of screen names or Internet relay chat networks.

By the time I met him, Adrian had already earned the nickname “the homeless hacker” because he had no fixed address, and found shelter most evenings in abandoned buildings or on friend’s couches. He launched the bulk of his missions from Internet cafes or through the nearest available dial-up connections, using an old Toshiba laptop that was missing seven keys. His method was the same in every case: find security holes; offer to fix them; refuse payment in exchange for help; wait until hole is patched; alert the media.

Lamo had previously hacked into the likes of AOL Time Warner, Comcast, MCI Worldcom, Microsoft, SBC Communications and Yahoo after discovering that these companies had enabled remote access to their internal networks via Web proxies, a kind of security by obscurity that allowed anyone who knew the proxy’s Internet address and port number to browse internal shares and other network resources of the affected companies.

By 2002, Lamo had taken to calling me on the phone frequently to relate his various exploits, often spoofing his phone number to make it look like the call had come from someplace ominous or important, such as The White House or the FBI. At the time, I wasn’t actively taking any measures to encrypt my online communications, or to suggest that my various sources do likewise. After a few weeks of almost daily phone conversations with Lamo, however, it became abundantly clear that this had been a major oversight.

In February 2002, Lamo told me that he’d found an open proxy on the network of The New York Times that allowed him to browse the newsroom’s corporate intranet. A few days after that conversation, Lamo turned up at Washingtonpost.com’s newsroom (then in Arlington, Va.). Just around the corner was a Kinkos, and Adrian insisted that I follow him to the location so he could get online and show me his discovery firsthand.

While inside the Times’ intranet, he downloaded a copy of the Times’ source list, which included phone numbers and contact information for such household names as Yogi Berra, Warren Beatty, and Robert Redford, as well as high-profile political figures – including Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lamo also added his own contact information to the file. My exclusive story in Newsbytes about the Times hack was soon picked up by other news outlets.

In August 2003, federal prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Lamo in connection with the New York Times hack, among other intrusions. The next month, The Washington Post’s attorneys received a letter from the FBI urging them not to destroy any correspondence I might have had with Lamo, and warning that my notes may be subpoenaed.

In response, the Post opted to take my desktop computer at work and place it in storage. We also received a letter from the FBI requesting an interview (that request was summarily denied). In October 2003, the Associated Press ran a story saying the FBI didn’t follow proper procedures when it notified reporters that their notes concerning Lamo might be subpoenaed (the DOJ’s policy was to seek materials from reporters only after all other investigative steps had been exhausted, and then only as a last resort).

In 2004, Lamo pleaded guilty to one felony count of computer crimes against the Times, as well as LexisNexis and Microsoft. He was sentenced to six month’s detention and two years probation, an ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution.

Several months later while attending a formal National Press Foundation dinner at the Washington Hilton, my bulky Palm Treo buzzed in my suit coat pocket, signaling a new incoming email message. The missive was blank save for an unusually large attachment. Normally, I would have ignored such messages as spam, but this one came from a vaguely familiar address: adrian.lamo@us.army.mil. Years before, Lamo had told me he’d devised a method for minting his own .mil email addresses.

The attachment turned out to be the Times’ newsroom source list. The idea of possessing such information was at once overwhelming and terrifying, and for the rest of the evening I felt certain that someone was going to find me out (it didn’t help that I was seated adjacent to a table full of NYT reporters and editors). It was difficult not to stare at the source list and wonder at the possibilities. But ultimately, I decided the right thing to do was to simply delete the email and destroy the file. Continue reading →

Who Is Afraid of More Spams and Scams?

March 16, 2018
62 Comments

Security researchers who rely on data included in Web site domain name records to combat spammers and scammers will likely lose access to that information for at least six months starting at the end of May 2018, under a new proposal that seeks to bring the system in line with new European privacy laws. The result, some experts warn, will likely mean more spams and scams landing in your inbox.

On May 25, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes effect. The law, enacted by the European Parliament, requires companies to get affirmative consent for any personal information they collect on people within the European Union. Organizations that violate the GDPR could face fines of up to four percent of global annual revenues.

In response, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — the nonprofit entity that manages the global domain name system — has proposed redacting key bits of personal data from WHOIS, the system for querying databases that store the registered users of domain names and blocks of Internet address ranges (IP addresses).

Under current ICANN rules, domain name registrars should collect and display a variety of data points when someone performs a WHOIS lookup on a given domain, such as the registrant’s name, address, email address and phone number. Most registrars offer a privacy protection service that shields this information from public WHOIS lookups; some registrars charge a nominal fee for this service, while others offer it for free.

But in a bid to help registrars comply with the GDPR, ICANN is moving forward on a plan to remove critical data elements from all public WHOIS records. Under the new system, registrars would collect all the same data points about their customers, yet limit how much of that information is made available via public WHOIS lookups.

The data to be redacted includes the name of the person who registered the domain, as well as their phone number, physical address and email address. The new rules would apply to all domain name registrars globally.

ICANN has proposed creating an “accreditation system” that would vet access to personal data in WHOIS records for several groups, including journalists, security researchers, and law enforcement officials, as well as intellectual property rights holders who routinely use WHOIS records to combat piracy and trademark abuse.

But at an ICANN meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Thursday, ICANN representatives conceded that a proposal for how such a vetting system might work probably would not be ready until December 2018. Assuming ICANN meets that deadline, it could be many months after that before the hundreds of domain registrars around the world take steps to adopt the new measures.

Gregory Mounier, head of outreach at EUROPOL‘s European Cybercrime Center and member of ICANN’s Public Safety Working Group, said the new WHOIS plan could leave security researchers in the lurch — at least in the short run.

“If you don’t have an accreditation system by 25 May then there’s no means for cybersecurity folks to get access to this information,” Mounier told KrebsOnSecurity. “Let’s say you’re monitoring a botnet and have 10.000 domains connected to that and you want to find information about them in the WHOIS records, you won’t be able to do that anymore. It probably won’t be implemented before December 2018 or January 2019, and that may mean security gaps for many months.”

Rod Rasmussen, chair of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee, said ICANN does not have a history of getting things done before or on set deadlines, meaning it may be well more than six months before researchers and others can get vetted to access personal information in WHOIS data.

Asked for his take on the chances that ICANN and the registrar community might still be designing the vetting system this time next year, Rasmussen said “100 percent.”

“A lot of people who are using this data won’t be able to get access to it, and it’s not going to be pretty,” Rasmussen said. “Once things start going dark it will have a cascading effect. Email deliverability is going to be one issue, and the amount of spam that shows up in peoples’ inboxes will be climbing rapidly because a lot of anti-spam technologies rely on WHOIS for their algorithms.”

As I noted in last month’s story on this topic, WHOIS is probably the single most useful tool we have right now for tracking down cybercrooks and/or for disrupting their operations. On any given day I probably perform 20-30 different WHOIS queries; on days I’ve set aside for deep-dive research, I may run hundreds of WHOIS searches. Continue reading →

Flash, Windows Users: It’s Time to Patch

March 13, 2018
50 Comments

Adobe and Microsoft each pushed critical security updates to their products today. Adobe’s got a new version of Flash Player available, and Microsoft released 14 updates covering more than 75 vulnerabilities, two of which were publicly disclosed prior to today’s patch release.

The Microsoft updates affect all supported Windows operating systems, as well as all supported versions of Internet Explorer/Edge, Office, Sharepoint and Exchange Server.

All of the critical vulnerabilities from Microsoft are in browsers and browser-related technologies, according to a post from security firm Qualys.

“It is recommended that these be prioritized for workstation-type devices,” wrote Jimmy Graham, director of product management at Qualys. “Any system that accesses the Internet via a browser should be patched.”

The Microsoft vulnerabilities that were publicly disclosed prior to today involve Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 through 2016 editions (CVE-2018-0940) and ASP.NET Core 2.0 (CVE-2018-0808), said Chris Goettl at Ivanti. Microsoft says it has no evidence that attackers have exploited either flaw in active attacks online.

But Goettl says public disclosure means enough information was released publicly for an attacker to get a jump start or potentially to have access to proof-of-concept code making an exploit more likely. “Both of the disclosed vulnerabilities are rated as Important, so not as severe, but the risk of exploit is higher due to the disclosure,” Goettl said. Continue reading →

Checked Your Credit Since the Equifax Hack?

March 11, 2018
71 Comments

A recent consumer survey suggests that half of all Americans still haven’t checked their credit report since the Equifax breach last year exposed the Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and other personal information on nearly 150 million people. If you’re in that fifty percent, please make an effort to remedy that soon.

Credit reports from the three major bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — can be obtained online for free at annualcreditreport.com — the only Web site mandated by Congress to serve each American a free credit report every year.

Annualcreditreport.com is run by a Florida-based company, but its data is supplied by the major credit bureaus, which struggled mightily to meet consumer demand for free credit reports in the immediate aftermath of the Equifax breach. Personally, I was unable to order a credit report for either me or my wife even two weeks after the Equifax breach went public: The site just kept returning errors and telling us to request the reports in writing via the U.S. Mail.

Based on thousands of comments left here in the days following the Equifax breach disclosure, I suspect many readers experienced the same but forgot to come back and try again. If this describes you, please take a moment this week to order your report(s) (and perhaps your spouse’s) and see if anything looks amiss. If you spot an error or something suspicious, contact the bureau that produced the report to correct the record immediately.

Of course, keeping on top of your credit report requires discipline, and if you’re not taking advantage of all three free reports each year you need to get a plan. My strategy is to put a reminder on our calendar to order a new report every four months or so, each time from a different credit bureau. Continue reading →

Look-Alike Domains and Visual Confusion

March 8, 2018
104 Comments

How good are you at telling the difference between domain names you know and trust and impostor or look-alike domains? The answer may depend on how familiar you are with the nuances of internationalized domain names (IDNs), as well as which browser or Web application you’re using.

For example, how does your browser interpret the following domain? I’ll give you a hint: Despite appearances, it is most certainly not the actual domain for software firm CA Technologies (formerly Computer Associates Intl Inc.), which owns the original ca.com domain name:

https://www.са.com/

Go ahead and click on the link above or cut-and-paste it into a browser address bar. If you’re using Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari, or some recent version of Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer or Edge browsers, you should notice that the address converts to “xn--80a7a.com.” This is called “punycode,” and it allows browsers to render domains with non-Latin alphabets like Cyrillic and Ukrainian.

Below is what it looks like in Edge on Windows 10; Google Chrome renders it much the same way. Notice what’s in the address bar (ignore the “fake site” and “Welcome to…” text, which was added as a courtesy by the person who registered this domain):

The domain https://www.са.com/ as rendered by Microsoft Edge on Windows 10. The rest of the text in the image (beginning with “Welcome to a site…”) was added by the person who registered this test domain, not the browser.

IE, Edge, Chrome and Safari all will convert https://www.са.com/ into its punycode output (xn--80a7a.com), in part to warn visitors about any confusion over look-alike domains registered in other languages. But if you load that domain in Mozilla Firefox and look at the address bar, you’ll notice there’s no warning of possible danger ahead. It just looks like it’s loading the real ca.com:

What the fake ca.com domain looks like when loaded in Mozilla Firefox. A browser certificate ordered from Comodo allows it to include the green lock (https://) in the address bar, adding legitimacy to the look-alike domain. The rest of the text in the image (beginning with “Welcome to a site…”) was added by the person who registered this test domain, not the browser. Click to enlarge.

The domain “xn--80a7a.com” pictured in the first screenshot above is punycode for the Ukrainian letters for “s” (which is represented by the character “c” in Russian and Ukrainian), as well as an identical Ukrainian “a”.

It was registered by Alex Holden, founder of Milwaukee, Wis.-based Hold Security Inc. Holden’s been experimenting with how the different browsers handle punycodes in the browser and via email. Holden grew up in what was then the Soviet Union and speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, and he’s been playing with Cyrillic letters to spell English words in domain names.

Letters like A and O look exactly the same and the only difference is their Unicode value. There are more than 136,000 Unicode characters used to represent letters and symbols in 139 modern and historic scripts, so there’s a ton of room for look-alike or malicious/fake domains.

For example, “a” in Latin is the Unicode value “0061” and in Cyrillic is “0430.”  To a human, the graphical representation for both looks the same, but for a computer there is a huge difference. Internationalized domain names (IDNs) allow domain names to be registered in non-Latin letters (RFC 3492), provided the domain is all in the same language; trying to mix two different IDNs in the same name causes the domain registries to reject the registration attempt.

So, in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian/Ukrainian), we can spell АТТ, УАНОО, ХВОХ, and so on. As you can imagine, the potential opportunity for impersonation and abuse are great with IDNs. Here’s a snippet from a larger chart Holden put together showing some of the more common ways that IDNs can be made to look like established, recognizable domains:

Image: Hold Security.

Holden also was able to register a valid SSL encryption certificate for https://www.са.com from Comodo.com, which would only add legitimacy to the domain were it to be used in phishing attacks against CA customers by bad guys, for example. Continue reading →

What Is Your Bank’s Security Banking On?

March 6, 2018
93 Comments

A large number of banks, credit unions and other financial institutions just pushed customers onto new e-banking platforms that asked them to reset their account passwords by entering a username plus some other static identifier — such as the first six digits of their Social Security number (SSN), or a mix of partial SSN, date of birth and surname. Here’s a closer look at what may be going on (spoiler: small, regional banks and credit unions have grown far too reliant on the whims of just a few major online banking platform providers).

You might think it odd that any self-respecting financial institution would seek to authenticate customers via static data like partial SSN for passwords, and you’d be completely justified for thinking that, too. Nobody has any business using these static identifiers for authentication because they are for sale on most Americans quite cheaply in the cybercrime underground. The Equifax breach might have “refreshed” some of those data stores for identity thieves, but most U.S. adults have had their static details (DOB/SSN/MMN, address, previous address, etc) on sale for years now.

On Feb. 16, KrebsOnSecurity reader Brent Hoeft shared a copy of an email he’d just received from his financial institution Associated Bank, which at $30+ billion in assets happens to be Wisconsin’s largest by asset size.

The notice advised:

“Please read and save this information (including the password below) to prepare for your online and mobile banking upgrade.

Our refreshed online and mobile banking experience is officially launching on Monday, February 26, 2018.

We’re excited to share it with you, and want you to be aware of some important details about the transition.

TEMPORARY PASSWORD

Use this temporary password the first time you sign in after the upgrade. Your temporary password is the first four letters of your last name plus the last four digits of your Social Security Number.

XXXX#### [redacted by me but included in the email]

Note: your password is all lowercase without spaces.

Once the upgrade is complete, you will need your temporary password to begin the re-enrollment process.
• Beginning Monday, February 26, you will need to sign in using your existing user ID and the temporary password included above in this email. Please note that you are only required to reenroll in online or mobile banking but can access both using the same user ID and password.
• Once you sign in, you will be prompted to create a new password and establish other security features. Your user ID will remain the same.”

Hoeft said Associated Bank seems to treat the customer username as a secret, something to be protected along with the password.

“I contacted Associated’s customer service via email and received a far less satisfying explanation that the user name is required for re-activation and, that since [the username] was not provided in the email, the process they are using is in fact secure,” Hoeft said.

After speaking with Hoeft, I tweeted about whether to name and shame the bank before it was too late, or perhaps to try and talk some sense into them privately. Most readers advised that calling attention to the problem before the transition could cause more harm than good, and that at least until after Feb. 26 contacting some of the banks privately was the best idea (which is what I did).

Associated Bank wouldn’t say who their new consumer online banking platform provider was, but they did say it was one of the big ones. I took that to mean either FIS, Fiserv or Jack Henry, which collectively control approximately 70 percent of the market for bank core processors (according to FedFIS.com, Fiserv is by far the largest).

Image: Fedfis.com

The bank’s chief information security officer Joe Smits said Associated’s new consumer online banking platform provider required that new and existing customers log in with a username and a temporary password — which was described as choice among secondary, static data elements about customers — such as the first six digits of the customer’s SSN or date of birth.

Smits added that the bank originally started emailing customers the instructions for figuring out their temporary passwords, but then decided US mail would be a safer option and sent the rest out that way. He said only about 15 percent of Associated Bank customers (~50,000) received instructions about their temporary passwords through email.

I followed up with Hoeft to find out how his online banking upgrade went at Associated Bank. He told me that upon visiting the site, it asked for his username and the temporary password (the first four letters of his last name and the last four digits of his SSN).

“After entering that I was told to re-enter my temporary password and then create a new password,” Hoeft said. “I then was asked to select 5 security questions and provide answers. Next I was asked for a verification phone number. Upon entering that I received a text message with a 4 digit verification code. After entering the code it asked me to finish my profile information including name, email and daytime phone. After that it took me right into my online banking account.”

Hoeft said it seems like the “verification” step that was supposed to create an extra security check didn’t really add any security at all.

“If someone were able to get in with the temporary password, they would be able to create a new password, fill out all the security code information, and then provide their phone number to receive the verification code,” Hoeft said. “Armed with the verification code they then would be able to get right into my online banking account.” Continue reading →