Why It’s Still A Bad Idea to Post or Trash Your Airline Boarding Pass

August 24, 2017
28 Comments

An October 2015 piece published here about the potential dangers of tossing out or posting online your airline boarding pass remains one of the most-read stories on this site. One reason may be that the advice remains timely and relevant: A talk recently given at a Czech security conference advances that research and offers several reminders of how being careless with your boarding pass could jeopardize your privacy or even cause trip disruptions down the road.

In What’s In a Boarding Pass Barcode? A Lot, KrebsOnSecurity told the story of a reader whose friend posted a picture of a boarding pass on Facebook. The reader was able to use the airline’s Web site combined with data printed on the boarding pass to discover additional information about his friend. That data included details of future travel, the ability to alter or cancel upcoming flights, and a key component need to access the traveler’s frequent flyer account.

A search on Instagram for "boarding pass" returned 91,000+ results.

A search on Instagram for “boarding pass” returned 91,000+ results.

More recently, security researcher Michal Špaček gave a talk at a conference in the Czech Republic in which he explained how a few details gleaned from a picture of a friend’s boarding pass posted online give him the ability to view passport information on his friend via the airline’s Web site, and to change the password for another friend’s United Airlines frequent flyer account.

Working from a British Airways boarding pass that a friend posted to Instagram, Špaček found he could log in to the airline’s passenger reservations page using the six-digit booking code (a.k.a. PNR or passenger name record) and the last name of the passenger (both are displayed on the front of the BA boarding pass).

Once inside his friend’s account, Špaček saw he could cancel future flights, and view or edit his friend’s passport number, citizenship, expiration date and date of birth. In my 2015 story, I showed how this exact technique permitted access to the same information on Lufthansa customers (this still appears to be the case).

Špaček also reminds readers about the dangers of posting boarding pass barcodes or QR codes online, noting there are several barcode scanning apps and Web sites that can extract text data stored in bar codes and QR codes. Boarding pass bar codes and QR codes usually contain all of the data shown on the front of a boarding pass, and some boarding pass barcodes actually conceal even more personal information than what’s printed on the boarding pass.

As I noted back in 2015, United Airlines treats its customers’ frequent flyer numbers as secret access codes. For example, if you’re looking for your United Mileage Plus number, and you don’t have the original document or member card they mailed to you, good luck finding this information in your email correspondence with the company.

When United does include this code in correspondence, all but the last three characters are replaced with asterisks. The same is true with United’s boarding passes. However, the customer’s full Mileage Plus number is available if you take the time to decode the barcode on any United boarding pass.

Until very recently, if you knew the Mileage Plus number and last name of a United customer, you would have been able to reset their frequent flyer account password simply by guessing the multiple-choice answer to two secret questions about the customer. However, United has since added a third step — requiring the customer to click a link in an email that gets generated when someone successfully guesses the multiple-choice answers to the two secret questions. Continue reading →

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Dumping Data from Deep-Insert Skimmers

August 22, 2017
56 Comments

I recently heard from a police detective who was seeking help identifying some strange devices found on two Romanian men caught maxing out stolen credit cards at local retailers. Further inspection revealed the devices to be semi-flexible data transfer wands that thieves can use to extract stolen ATM card data from “deep-insert skimmers,” wafer-thin fraud devices made to be hidden inside of the card acceptance slot on a cash machine.

The investigator agreed to share the photos if I kept his identity out of this story. He told KrebsOnSecurity that the two men were thought to be part of a crime gang active in the northeast United States, and that the almost 4-inch orange plastic wands allow thieves to download data from a deep insert skimmer. Depending on how the deep-insert skimmer is built, thieves may be able to use the wands to retrieve card data without having to remove the skimmer from the throat of the ATM.

Deep insert skimmers are different from typical insert skimmers in that they are placed in various positions within the card reader transport, behind the shutter of a motorized card reader and completely hidden from the consumer at the front of the ATM.

Here’s a look at these insert skimmer wands (for want of a better term):

These plastic wands allow thieves to extract stolen card data stored by insert skimmers.

These plastic wands allow thieves to extract stolen card data stored by insert skimmers.

This is what the wand (left) looks like when inserted into a deep-insert skimmer (right):

A data transfer wand inserted into a deep-insert skimmer.

A data transfer wand inserted into a deep-insert skimmer.

Continue reading →

Carbon Emissions: Oversharing Bug Puts Security Vendor Back in Spotlight

August 18, 2017
22 Comments

Last week, security firm DirectDefense came under fire for over-hyping claims that Cb Response, a cybersecurity product sold by competitor Carbon Black, was leaking proprietary data from customers who use it. Carbon Black responded that the bug identified by its competitor was a feature, and that customers were amply cautioned in advance about the potential privacy risks of using the feature. Now Carbon Black is warning that an internal review has revealed a wholly separate bug in Cb Response that could in fact result in some customers unintentionally sharing sensitive files.

cblogoAs noted in last week’s story, DirectDefense warned about a problem with Cb Response’s use of Google’s VirusTotal — a free tool that lets anyone submit a suspicious file and have it scanned against dozens of commercial anti-malware tools. There is also a paid version of VirusTotal that allows customers to examine any file uploaded to the service.

Specifically, DirectDefense claimed that Cb Response’s sharing of suspicious files with VirusTotal could expose sensitive data because VirusTotal allows paying customers to download any files submitted by other users. DirectDefense labeled the bug “the world’s largest pay-for-play data exfiltration botnet.”

Numerous industry analysts leapt to Carbon Black’s defense — with some even calling “bullshit” on the findings — pointing out that plenty of other vendors submit files through Virustotal and that DirectDefense was merely trying to besmirch a competitor’s product.

But earlier this week, Carbon Black began quietly notifying customers that an internal review of the claims revealed a completely different bug that could result in some benign customer files being miscategorized as executable files and inadvertently uploaded to Virustotal for scanning.

“On Thursday, we discovered a bug affecting a small percentage of our Cb Response customers,” said Mike Viscuso, co-founder and chief technology officer at Carbon Black. “Our review is still ongoing, but based on what we learned to date it requires a very specific customer configuration, and we have already taken steps to remediate the bug and protect our customers.” Continue reading →

Blowing the Whistle on Bad Attribution

August 18, 2017
41 Comments

The New York Times this week published a fascinating story about a young programmer in Ukraine who’d turned himself in to the local police. The Times says the man did so after one of his software tools was identified by the U.S. government as part of the arsenal used by Russian hackers suspected of hacking into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last year. It’s a good read, as long as you can ignore that the premise of the piece is completely wrong.

The story, “In Ukraine, a Malware Expert Who Could Blow the Whistle on Russian Hacking,” details the plight of a hacker in Kiev better known as “Profexer,” who has reportedly agreed to be a witness for the FBI. From the story:

“Profexer’s posts, already accessible to only a small band of fellow hackers and cybercriminals looking for software tips, blinked out in January — just days after American intelligence agencies publicly identified a program he had written as one tool used in Russian hacking in the United States. American intelligence agencies have determined Russian hackers were behind the electronic break-in of the Democratic National Committee.”

The Times’ reasoning for focusing on the travails of Mr. Profexer comes from the “GRIZZLYSTEPPE” report, a collection of technical indicators or attack “signatures” published in December 2016 by the U.S. government that companies can use to determine whether their networks may be compromised by a number of different Russian cybercrime groups.

The only trouble is nothing in the GRIZZLYSTEPPE report said which of those technical indicators were found in the DNC hack. In fact, Prefexer’s “P.A.S. Web shell” tool — a program designed to insert a digital backdoor that lets attackers control a hacked Web site remotely — was specifically not among the hacking tools found in the DNC break-in.

The P.A.S. Web shell, as previously offered for free on the now-defunct site profexer[dot]name.

The P.A.S. Web shell, as previously offered for free on the now-defunct site profexer[dot]name.

That’s according to Crowdstrike, the company called in to examine the DNC’s servers following the intrusion. In a statement released to KrebsOnSecurity, Crowdstrike said it published the list of malware that it found was used in the DNC hack, and that the Web shell named in the New York Times story was not on that list.

Robert M. Lee is founder of the industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos, Inc. and an expert on the challenges associated with attribution in cybercrime. In a post on his personal blog, Lee challenged The Times on its conclusions.

“The GRIZZLYSTEPPE report has nothing to do with the DNC breach though and was a collection of technical indicators the government compiled from multiple agencies all working different Russian related threat groups,” Lee wrote.

“The threat group that compromised the DNC was Russian but not all Russian groups broke into the DNC,” he continued. “The GRIZZLYSTEPPE report was also highly criticized for its lack of accuracy and lack of a clear message and purpose. I covered it here on my blog but that was also picked up by numerous journalists and covered elsewhere [link added]. In other words, there’s no excuse for not knowing how widely criticized the GRIZZLYSTEPPE report was before citing it as good evidence in a NYT piece.”

Perhaps in response to Lee’s blog post, The Times issued a correction to the story, re-writing the above-quoted and indented paragraph to read:

“It is the first known instance of a living witness emerging from the arid mass of technical detail that has so far shaped the investigation into the election hacking and the heated debate it has stirred. The Ukrainian police declined to divulge the man’s name or other details, other than that he is living in Ukraine and has not been arrested.”

[Side note: Profexer may well have been doxed by this publication just weeks after the GRIZZLYSTEPPE report was released.] Continue reading →

Beware of Security by Press Release

August 10, 2017
45 Comments

On Wednesday, the security industry once again witnessed an all-too-familiar cycle: I call it “security by press release.” It goes a bit like this: A security firm releases a report claiming to have unearthed a major flaw in a competitor’s product; members of the trade press uncritically republish the claims without adding much clarity or waiting for responses from the affected vendor; blindsided vendor responds in a blog post showing how the issue is considerably less dire than originally claimed.

At issue are claims made by Denver-based security company DirectDefense, which published a report this week warning that Cb Response — a suite of security tools sold by competitor Carbon Black (formerly Bit9) — was leaking potentially sensitive and proprietary data from customers who use its product.

snm

DirectDefense warned about a problem with Cb Response’s use of “a cloud-based multiscanner” to scan suspicious files for malware. DirectDefense didn’t name the scanner in question, but it’s Google’s VirusTotal — a free tool that lets anyone submit a suspicious file and have it scanned against dozens of commercial anti-malware tools. There’s also a paid version of VirusTotal that allows customers to examine any file uploaded to the service.

Specifically, DirectDefense claimed that Cb Response’s sharing of suspicious files with VirusTotal could expose sensitive data because VirusTotal allows paying customers to download any files submitted by other users. This is the full extent of the “vulnerability” that DirectDefense labeled “the world’s largest pay-for-play data exfiltration botnet.”

Carbon Black responded with its own blog post noting that the feature DirectDefense warned about was not turned on by default, and that Carbon Black informs customers of the privacy risks that may be associated with sharing files with VirusTotal.

ANALYSIS

Adrian Sanabria, a security expert and co-founder of Savage Security, published a blog post that called “bullshit” on DirectDefense’s findings, noting that the company inexplicably singles out a competitor when many other security firms similarly allow customers to submit files to VirusTotal.

“Dozens of other security vendors either have an option to automatically submit binaries (yes, whole binaries, not just the hash) to VirusTotal or do it without the customers knowledge altogether,” Sanabria wrote. “In singling out Carbon Black, DirectDefense opens itself up to criticism and closer scrutiny.”

Such as shilling for a partner firm (Cylance) that stands to gain from taking Carbon Black down a few notches in the public eye, Sanabria observed [link added].

“I personally don’t believe DirectDefense is a shill for Cylance, but in singling out one of many vendors that do the same thing, they’ve stepped into a classic PR gaffe that makes them look like one,” he wrote. Continue reading →

Alleged vDOS Operators Arrested, Charged

August 9, 2017
20 Comments

Two young Israeli men alleged by this author to have co-founded vDOS — until recently the largest and most profitable cyber attack-for-hire service online — were arrested and formally indicted this week in Israel on conspiracy and hacking charges.

On Sept. 8, 2016, KrebsOnSecurity published a story about the hacking of vDOS, a service that attracted tens of thousands of paying customers and facilitated more than two million distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the four year period it was in business.

That story named two then 18-year-old Israelis — Yarden “applej4ck” Bidani and Itay “p1st” Huri — as the likely owners and operators of vDOS. Within hours of that story’s publication the two were detained by Israeli police, placed on house arrest for 10 days, and forbidden from using the Internet for a month.

vDOS as it existed on Sept. 8, 2016.

vDOS as it existed on Sept. 8, 2016.

On Tuesday, Israeli prosecutors announced they had formally arrested and charged two 19-year-olds with conspiring to commit a felony, prohibited activities, tampering with or disrupting a computer, and storing or disseminating false information. A statement from a spokesman for the Israeli state attorney’s office said prosecutors couldn’t name the accused because their alleged crimes were committed while they were minors.

But a number of details match perfectly with previous reporting on Bidani and Huri. As noted in the original Sept. 2016 expose’ on vDOS’s alleged founders, Israeli prosecutors say the two men made more than $600,000 in two of the four years the service was in operation. vDOS was shuttered for good not longer after Bidani and Huri’s initial detention in Sept. 2016.

“The defendants were constantly improving the attack code and finding different network security weaknesses that would enable them to offer increased attack services that could overcome existing defenses and create real damage to servers and services worldwide,” Israeli prosecutors alleged of the accused and their enterprise. Continue reading →

Critical Security Fixes from Adobe, Microsoft

August 8, 2017
19 Comments

Adobe has released updates to fix dozens of vulnerabilities in its Acrobat, Reader and Flash Player software. Separately, Microsoft today issued patches to plug 48 security holes in Windows and other Microsoft products. If you use Windows or Adobe products, it’s time once again to get your patches on.

brokenwindowsMore than two dozen of the vulnerabilities fixed in today’s Windows patch bundle address “critical” flaws that can be exploited by malware or miscreants to assume complete, remote control over a vulnerable PC with little or no help from the user.

Security firm Qualys recommends that top priority for patching should go to a vulnerability in the Windows Search service, noting that this is the third recent Patch Tuesday to feature a vulnerability in this service.

Qualys’ Jimmy Graham observes that many of the vulnerabilities in this month’s release involve the Windows Scripting Engine, which can impact both browsers and Microsoft Office, and should be considered for prioritizing for workstation-type systems.

According to Microsoft, none of flaws in August’s Patch Tuesday are being actively exploited in the wild, although Bleeping Computer notes that three of the bugs were publicly detailed before today’s patch release.

Case in point: This month’s patch batch from Microsoft does not address the recently-detailed SMBLoris flaw, a vulnerability in all versions of Windows that can be used to remotely freeze up vulnerable systems or cause them to crash. Continue reading →

Flash Player is Dead, Long Live Flash Player!

August 2, 2017
39 Comments

Adobe last week detailed plans to retire its Flash Player software, a cross-platform browser plugin so powerful and so packed with security holes that it has become the favorite target of malware developers. To help eradicate this ubiquitous liability, Adobe is enlisting the help of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. But don’t break out the bubbly just yet: Adobe says Flash won’t be put down officially until 2020.

brokenflash-aIn a blog post about the move, Adobe said more sites are turning away from proprietary code like Flash toward open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly, and that these components now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins pioneered.

“Over time, we’ve seen helper apps evolve to become plugins, and more recently, have seen many of these plugin capabilities get incorporated into open web standards,” Adobe said. “Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating plugins.”

It’s remarkable how quickly Flash has seen a decline in both use and favor, particularly among the top browser makers. Just three years ago, at least 80 percent of desktop Chrome users visited a site with Flash each day, according to Google. Today, usage of Flash among Chrome users stands at just 17 percent and continues to decline (see Google graphic below).

For Mac users, the turning away from Flash began in 2010, when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs famously penned his “Thoughts on Flash” memo that outlined the reasons why the technology would not be allowed on the company’s iOS products. Apple stopped pre-installing the plugin that same year.

The percentage of Chrome users over time that have used Flash on a Web site. Image: Google.

The percentage of Chrome users over time that have used Flash on a Web site. Image: Google.

“Today, if users install Flash, it remains off by default,” a post by Apple’s WebKit Team explains. “Safari requires explicit approval on each website before running the Flash plugin.”

Mozilla said that starting this month Firefox users will choose which websites are able to run the Flash plugin.

“Flash will be disabled by default for most users in 2019, and only users running the Firefox Extended Support Release will be able to continue using Flash through the final end-of-life at the end of 2020,” writes Benjamin Smedberg for Mozilla. “In order to preserve user security, once Flash is no longer supported by Adobe security patches, no version of Firefox will load the plugin.” Continue reading →

New Bill Seeks Basic IoT Security Standards

August 1, 2017
45 Comments

Lawmakers in the U.S. Senate today introduced a bill that would set baseline security standards for the government’s purchase and use of a broad range of Internet-connected devices, including computers, routers and security cameras. The legislation, which also seeks to remedy some widely-perceived shortcomings in existing cybercrime law, was developed in direct response to a series of massive cyber attacks in 2016 that were fueled for the most part by poorly-secured “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices.

iotc

The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 seeks to use the government’s buying power to signal the basic level of security that IoT devices sold to Uncle Sam will need to have. For example, the bill would require vendors of Internet-connected devices purchased by the federal government make sure the devices can be patched when security updates are available; that the devices do not use hard-coded (unchangeable) passwords; and that vendors ensure the devices are free from known vulnerabilities when sold.

The bill, introduced by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), directs the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to develop alternative network-level security requirements for devices with limited data processing and software functionality. In addition, it requires each executive agency to inventory all Internet-connected devices in use by the agency.

The bill’s provisions would seem to apply to virtually any device that has an Internet connection and can transmit data. Under the proposal, an IoT device has a fairly broad definition, being described as “a physical object that is capable of connecting to and is in regular connection with the Internet;” and one that “has computer processing capabilities that can collect, send or receive data.” Continue reading →