Category Archives: Vulnerabilities

More IoT insecurity: This Blu-ray disc pwns PCs and DVD players

For more than a decade, malicious hackers have used booby-trapped USB sticks to infect would-be victims, in rare cases to spread virulent, self-replicating malware on air-gapped computers inside a uranium enrichment plant. Now, a security researcher says he has found a way to build malicious Blu-ray discs that could do much the same thing—without any outward signs that an attack was underway.

Stephen Tomkinson, a security consultant at NCC Group, said he has devised a proof-of-concept exploit that allows a Blu-ray disc to compromise both a PC running Microsoft Windows and most standalone Blu-ray players. He spoke about the exploit on Friday at the Securi-Tay conference at the Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, during a keynote titled “Abusing Blu-ray players.”

“By combining different vulnerabilities in Blu-ray players, we have built a single disc which will detect the type of player it’s being played on and launch a platform-specific executable from the disc before continuing on to play the disc’s video to avoid raising suspicion,” Tomkinson wrote in an accompanying blog post. “These executables could be used by an attacker to provide a tunnel into the target network or to exfiltrate sensitive files, for example.”

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Playing NSA, Hardware Hackers Build USB Cable That Can Attack

Just over a year ago, Jacob Appelbaum and Der Spiegel revealed pages from the National Security Agency’s ANT catalog, a sort of “wish book” for spies that listed technology that could be used to exploit the computer and network hardware of targets for espionage. One of those tools was a USB cable with embedded hardware called Cottonmouth-I—a cable that can turn the computer’s USB connections into a remote wiretap or even a remote control.

Cottonmouth-I is the sort of man-in-the-middle attack that hackers dream of. Built into keyboard or accessory cables, it allows an attacker to implant and communicate with malware even on a computer that’s “airgapped”—completely off a network. And its hardware all fit neatly into a USB plug. Because of the sophistication of the hardware, the advertised price for Cottonmouth-I was over $1 million per lot of 50—meaning each single device cost $20,000.

But soon, you’ll be able to make one in your basement for less than $20 in parts, plus a little bit of solder. At Shmoocon in Washington, DC, this past weekend, Michael Ossman, a wireless security researcher and founder of Great Scott Gadgets, and a contributor to the NSA Playset–a set of projects seeking to duplicate in open source the capabilities in the NSA’s toolbox, showed off his progress on TURNIPSCHOOL, a man-in-the-middle USB cable project under development that fits a USB hub-on-a-chip and a microprocessor with a built-in radio onto a circuit board that fits into a molded USB plug.

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Wireless Device in Two Million Cars Wide Open to Hacking

An electronic dongle used to connect to the onboard diagnostic systems of more than two million cars and trucks contains few defenses against hacking, an omission that makes them vulnerable to wireless attacks that take control of a vehicle, according to published reports.

US-based Progressive Insurance said it has used the SnapShot device in more than two million vehicles since 2008. The dongle tracks users’ driving to help determine if they qualify for lower rates. According to security researcher Corey Thuen, it performs no validation or signing of firmware updates, has no secure boot mechanism, no cellular communications authentication, and uses no secure communications protocols. SnapShot connects to the OBDII port of Thuen’s 2013 Toyota Tundra pickup truck, according to Forbes. From there, it runs on the CANbus networks that control braking, park assist and steering, and other sensitive functions.

“Anything on the bus can talk to anything [else] on the bus,” Thuen was quoted as saying in an article from Dark Reading. “You could do a cellular man-in-the-middle attack” assuming the attacker had the ability to spoof a cellular tower that transmits data to and from the device.

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How Installing League of Legends and Path of Exile Left Some With a RAT

Official releases for the League of Legends and Path of Exile online games were found laced with a nasty trojan after attackers compromised an Internet platform provider that distributed them to users in Asia.

The compromise of consumer Internet platform Garena allowed the attackers to attach malicious software components to the official installation files for the two games, according to a blog post published Monday by antivirus provider Trend Micro. In addition to the legitimate game launcher, the compromised executable file also included a dropper that installed a remote access tool known as PlugX and a cleaner file that overwrote the infected file after it ran.

According to Trend Micro, the attackers took care to conceal their malware campaign, an effort that may have made it hard for victims to know they were infected. The cleaner file most likely was included to remove evidence that would tip users off to a compromise or the origin of the attack. The cryptographic hash that was included with the tampered game files was valid, so even people who took care to verify the authenticity of the game installer would have no reason to think it was malicious, Trend Micro researchers said. The researchers linked to this December 31 post from Garena. Translated into English, one passage stated: “computers and patch servers were infected with trojans. As a result, all the installation files distributed for the games League of Legends and Path of Exile are infected.”

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NSA Secretly Hijacked Existing Malware to Spy on N. Korea, Others

A new wave of documents from Edward Snowden’s cache of National Security Agency data published by Der Spiegel demonstrates how the agency has used its network exploitation capabilities both to defend military networks from attack and to co-opt other organizations’ hacks for intelligence collection and other purposes. In one case, the NSA secretly tapped into South Korean network espionage on North Korean networks to gather intelligence.

The documents were published as part of an analysis by Jacob Appelbaum and others working for Der Spiegel of how the NSA has developed an offensive cyberwarfare capability over the past decade. According to a report by the New York Times, the access the NSA gained into North Korea’s networks—which initially leveraged South Korean “implants” on North Korean systems, but eventually consisted of the NSA’s own malware—played a role in attributing the attack on Sony Pictures to North Korean state-sponsored actors.

Included with the documents released by Der Spiegel are details on how the NSA built up its Remote Operations Center to carry out “Tailored Access Operations” on a variety of targets, while also building the capability to do permanent damage to adversaries’ information systems, including internal NSA newsletter interviews and training materials. Also included was a malware sample for a keylogger, apparently developed by the NSA and possibly other members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence community, which was also included in the dump. The code appears to be from the Five Eyes joint program “Warriorpride,” a set of tools shared by the NSA, the United Kingdom’s GCHQ, the Australian Signals Directorate, Canada’s Communications Security Establishment, and New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau.

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Surprise! North Korea’s Official News Site Delivers Malware, Too

A security researcher examining the website of North Korea’s official news service, the Korean Central News Agency, has discovered that the site delivers more than just the latest photo spread of Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea leader Kim Jong Un inspecting mushroom farms. There’s a little extra surprise hidden in the site’s code—malware. The news site appears to double as a way for North Korea to deliver a “watering hole” attack against individuals who want to keep tabs on the “activities” of the DPRK’s dear leader.

Ars has independently verified a reference within part of the site’s JavaScript code called from the home page to a download named “FlashPlayer10.zip.” The file, which is set as a JavaScript variable “FlashPlayer” on the site’s main page and on other site pages, contains two files labeled as Windows executable installers containing updates for the long-since obsolete Flash Player 10—one for an alleged ActiveX control, and the other for a browser plug in. Both are identical files, and they contain a well-known Windows malware dropper, based on an analysis through the malware screening site Virustotal.

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When Google Squares Off With Microsoft on Bug Disclosure, Only Users Lose

The perennial problem of bug disclosure has provoked a new squabble between Microsoft and Google. On Sunday, Google disclosed the existence of a Windows elevation of privilege flaw that the company reported privately in October. That flaw hasn’t been patched yet. It will be very soon—the update is due to land on Patch Tuesday, tomorrow—but Google’s publication of the flaw means that, for a couple of days, Windows users are vulnerable to an unfixed flaw.

In response, Chris Betz, senior director of the Microsoft Security Response Center, published a lengthy complaint calling for “better coordinated vulnerability disclosure.”

Microsoft has been promoting “coordinated vulnerability disclosure” since 2010, but the security community has long been split on how best to disclose security flaws. On one extreme is the full disclosure crowd; security flaws are documented and described in full, in public, typically onto a mailing list. In the early days, that disclosure was typically the first time the software developer responsible even heard of the flaw, though some researchers promised to disclose to vendors first.

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DDoS Service Targeting PSN and Xbox Powered by Home Internet Routers

The miscreants taking credit for knocking image board site 8chan offline, and earlier for taking down Sony’s and Microsoft’s gaming networks, operates an attack platform powered mostly by thousands of hacked home Internet routers, according to a published report.

The revelation, in an article posted Friday by KrebsOnSecurity, is the latest evidence documenting a big uptick in the hacking of Internet routers. Over the past 18 months, researchers have uncovered several other large-scale attacks on routing devices, including those made by Asus, Linksys, and many other manufacturers. Routers are often ripe targets because users fail to change default passwords, and the devices often contain security vulnerabilities that can easily be exploited by attackers halfway around the globe.

Those compromising routers for financial gain appear to be members of the Lizard Squad, a group that operates an online attack service that promises to take down any site a paying customer has requested. KrebsOnSecurity namesake Brian Krebs cited security researchers assisting law enforcement officials investigating the group. The researchers asked to remain anonymous. According to Krebs, the for-hire denial-of-service service is powered by a network of compromised devices that mostly include home routers from around the world that are protected by little more than default usernames and passwords. Krebs wrote:

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Heads Up, Dear Leader: Security Hole Found in North Korea’s Home-Grown OS

North Korea is a technological island in many ways. Almost all of the country’s “Internet” is run as a private network, with all connections to the greater global Internet through a collection of proxies. And the majority of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who have access to that network rely on the country’s official operating system: a Linux variant called Red Star OS.

Red Star OS, first introduced in 2003, was originally derived from Red Hat Linux. In theory, it gave North Korea an improved level of security against outside attack—a Security Enhanced Linux operating system based on Red Hat that could enforce strict government access controls on the few who got to use it.

However, because Red Star has had so few people with access to it, one of the ironic side effects has been that security holes in the operating system may have gone undetected. And as a security researcher who tested the latest release of Red Star’s desktop version reported today, one flaw in the system would allow any user to elevate their privileges to those of the system’s root account and bypass all those security policies put in place by the North Korean regime.

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FBI Director says Sony Hackers “Got Sloppy,” Exposed North Korea Connection [Updated]

In a speech at the International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS) today in New York, FBI Director James Comey reiterated the bureau’s confidence that North Korea was involved in the cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. “There’s not much I have high confidence about,” Comey said, as reported by the FBI New York field office’s official Twitter feed. “I have very high confidence… on North Korea.” And he downplayed suggestions by outsiders that others might be responsible, saying that critics “don’t have the facts that I have, they don’t see what I see.”

In a separate speech today at the ICCS, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that the attack on Sony demonstrated a new type of threat posed by North Korea. During a meeting last year with a North Korean general to negotiate the release of two American prisoners in North Korea, Clapper said that the general told him the regime is “deadly serious” about perceived insults by the US to its “supreme leader” and that North Koreans feel that the US has put their country under siege.

While the Sony attackers had largely concealed their identity by using proxy servers, Comey said that on several occasions they “got sloppy” and connected directly, revealing their own IP address. It was those slip-ups, he said, that provided evidence linking North Korea to the attack on Sony’s network. Comey also said that analysts at the FBI found the patterns of writing and other identifying data from the attack matched previous attacks attributed to North Korea. Additionally, there was other evidence, Comey said, that he could not share publicly.

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FBI Director: Sony’s ‘Sloppy’ North Korean Hackers Revealed Their IP Addresses

FBI Director: Sony’s ‘Sloppy’ North Korean Hackers Revealed Their IP Addresses

Comey now says that the hackers in the attack failed on multiple occasions to use the proxy servers that bounce their Internet connection through an obfuscating computer somewhere else in the world, revealing IP addresses that tied them to the North Korean government.

The post FBI Director: Sony’s ‘Sloppy’ North Korean Hackers Revealed Their IP Addresses appeared first on WIRED.



Browsing in Privacy Mode? Super Cookies Can Track You Anyway

For years, Chrome, Firefox, and virtually all other browsers have offered a setting that doesn’t save or refer to website cookies, browsing history, or temporary files. Privacy-conscious people rely on it to help cloak their identities and prevent websites from tracking their previous steps. Now, a software consultant has devised a simple way websites can in many cases bypass these privacy modes unless users take special care.

Ironically, the chink that allows websites to uniquely track people’s incognito browsing is a much-needed and relatively new security mechanism known as HTTP Strict Transport Security. Websites use it to ensure that an end user interacts with their servers only when using secure HTTPS connections. By appending a flag to the header a browser receives when making a request to a server, HSTS ensures that all later connections to a website are encrypted using one of the widely used HTTPS protocols. By requiring all subsequent connections to be encrypted, HSTS protects users against downgrade attacks, in which hackers convert an encrypted connection back into plain-text HTTP.

Sam Greenhalgh, a technology and software consultant who operates RadicalResearch, has figured out a way to turn this security feature into a potential privacy hazard. His proof of concept is known as HSTS Super Cookies. Like normal cookies, they allow him to fingerprint users who browse to his site in non-privacy mode, so if they return later, he will know what pages they looked at. There are two things that give his cookies super powers. The first is that once set and depending on the specific browser and platform it runs on, the cookies will be visible even if a user has switched to incognito browsing. The second is that the cookies can be read by websites from multiple domain names, not just the one that originally set the identifier. The result: unless users take special precautions, super cookies will persist in their browser even when private browsing is turned on and will allow multiple websites to track user movements across the Web.

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The Year’s Worst Hacks, From Sony to Celebrity Nude Pics

The Year’s Worst Hacks, From Sony to Celebrity Nude Pics

With each passing year, data breaches get bigger and more invasive. But 2014 saw a new twist to the breach phenomenon with the Sony hack. The attackers didn’t just steal data, they scorched Sony’s digital earth as they exited its networks, wiping data from servers and leaving administrators to clean up the mess and restore systems.

The post The Year’s Worst Hacks, From Sony to Celebrity Nude Pics appeared first on WIRED.