Entries Tagged "cyberattack"

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USB “Rubber Ducky” Attack Tool

The USB Rubber Ducky is getting better and better.

Already, previous versions of the Rubber Ducky could carry out attacks like creating a fake Windows pop-up box to harvest a user’s login credentials or causing Chrome to send all saved passwords to an attacker’s webserver. But these attacks had to be carefully crafted for specific operating systems and software versions and lacked the flexibility to work across platforms.

The newest Rubber Ducky aims to overcome these limitations. It ships with a major upgrade to the DuckyScript programming language, which is used to create the commands that the Rubber Ducky will enter into a target machine. While previous versions were mostly limited to writing keystroke sequences, DuckyScript 3.0 is a feature-rich language, letting users write functions, store variables, and use logic flow controls (i.e., if this… then that).

That means, for example, the new Ducky can run a test to see if it’s plugged into a Windows or Mac machine and conditionally execute code appropriate to each one or disable itself if it has been connected to the wrong target. It also can generate pseudorandom numbers and use them to add variable delay between keystrokes for a more human effect.

Perhaps most impressively, it can steal data from a target machine by encoding it in binary format and transmitting it through the signals meant to tell a keyboard when the CapsLock or NumLock LEDs should light up. With this method, an attacker could plug it in for a few seconds, tell someone, “Sorry, I guess that USB drive is broken,” and take it back with all their passwords saved.

Posted on August 18, 2022 at 6:45 AM • View Comments

Attacking the Performance of Machine Learning Systems

Interesting research: “Sponge Examples: Energy-Latency Attacks on Neural Networks“:

Abstract: The high energy costs of neural network training and inference led to the use of acceleration hardware such as GPUs and TPUs. While such devices enable us to train large-scale neural networks in datacenters and deploy them on edge devices, their designers’ focus so far is on average-case performance. In this work, we introduce a novel threat vector against neural networks whose energy consumption or decision latency are critical. We show how adversaries can exploit carefully-crafted sponge examples, which are inputs designed to maximise energy consumption and latency, to drive machine learning (ML) systems towards their worst-case performance. Sponge examples are, to our knowledge, the first denial-of-service attack against the ML components of such systems. We mount two variants of our sponge attack on a wide range of state-of-the-art neural network models, and find that language models are surprisingly vulnerable. Sponge examples frequently increase both latency and energy consumption of these models by a factor of 30×. Extensive experiments show that our new attack is effective across different hardware platforms (CPU, GPU and an ASIC simulator) on a wide range of different language tasks. On vision tasks, we show that sponge examples can be produced and a latency degradation observed, but the effect is less pronounced. To demonstrate the effectiveness of sponge examples in the real world, we mount an attack against Microsoft Azure’s translator and show an increase of response time from 1ms to 6s (6000×). We conclude by proposing a defense strategy: shifting the analysis of energy consumption in hardware from an average-case to a worst-case perspective.

Attackers were able to degrade the performance so much, and force the system to waste so many cycles, that some hardware would shut down due to overheating. Definitely a “novel threat vector.”

Posted on June 16, 2022 at 6:02 AM • View Comments

15.3 Million Request-Per-Second DDoS Attack

Cloudflare is reporting a large DDoS attack against an unnamed company “operating a crypto launchpad.”

While this isn’t the largest application-layer attack we’ve seen, it is the largest we’ve seen over HTTPS. HTTPS DDoS attacks are more expensive in terms of required computational resources because of the higher cost of establishing a secure TLS encrypted connection. Therefore it costs the attacker more to launch the attack, and for the victim to mitigate it. We’ve seen very large attacks in the past over (unencrypted) HTTP, but this attack stands out because of the resources it required at its scale.

The attack only lasted 15 seconds. No word on motive. Was this a test? Or was that 15-second delay critical for some other fraud?

News article.

Posted on May 5, 2022 at 6:02 AM • View Comments

Microsoft Issues Report of Russian Cyberattacks against Ukraine

Microsoft has a comprehensive report on the dozens of cyberattacks—and even more espionage operations—Russia has conducted against Ukraine as part of this war:

At least six Russian Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors and other unattributed threats, have conducted destructive attacks, espionage operations, or both, while Russian military forces attack the country by land, air, and sea. It is unclear whether computer network operators and physical forces are just independently pursuing a common set of priorities or actively coordinating. However, collectively, the cyber and kinetic actions work to disrupt or degrade Ukrainian government and military functions and undermine the public’s trust in those same institutions.

[…]

Threat groups with known or suspected ties to the GRU have continuously developed and used destructive wiper malware or similarly destructive tools on targeted Ukrainian networks at a pace of two to three incidents a week since the eve of invasion. From February 23 to April 8, we saw evidence of nearly 40 discrete destructive attacks that permanently destroyed files in hundreds of systems across dozens of organizations in Ukraine.

Posted on April 28, 2022 at 9:15 AM • View Comments

Industrial Control System Malware Discovered

The Department of Energy, CISA, the FBI, and the NSA jointly issued an advisory describing a sophisticated piece of malware called Pipedream that’s designed to attack a wide range of industrial control systems. This is clearly from a government, but no attribution is given. There’s also no indication of how the malware was discovered. It seems not to have been used yet.

More information. News article.

Posted on April 14, 2022 at 10:46 AM • View Comments

Russian Cyberattack against Ukrainian Power Grid Prevented

A Russian cyberweapon, similar to the one used in 2016, was detected and removed before it could be used.

Key points:

  • ESET researchers collaborated with CERT-UA to analyze the attack against the Ukrainian energy company
  • The destructive actions were scheduled for 2022-04-08 but artifacts suggest that the attack had been planned for at least two weeks
  • The attack used ICS-capable malware and regular disk wipers for Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems
  • We assess with high confidence that the attackers used a new version of the Industroyer malware, which was used in 2016 to cut power in Ukraine
  • We assess with high confidence that the APT group Sandworm is responsible for this new attack

News article.

EDITED TO ADD: Better news coverage from Wired.

Posted on April 13, 2022 at 6:32 AM • View Comments

White House Warns of Possible Russian Cyberattacks

News:

The White House has issued its starkest warning that Russia may be planning cyberattacks against critical-sector U.S. companies amid the Ukraine invasion.

[…]

Context: The alert comes after Russia has lobbed a series of digital attacks at the Ukrainian government and critical industry sectors. But there’s been no sign so far of major disruptive hacks against U.S. targets even as the government has imposed increasingly harsh sanctions that have battered the Russian economy.

  • The public alert followed classified briefings government officials conducted last week for more than 100 companies in sectors at the highest risk of Russian hacks, Neuberger said. The briefing was prompted by “preparatory activity” by Russian hackers, she said.
  • U.S. analysts have detected scanning of some critical sectors’ computers by Russian government actors and other preparatory work, one U.S. official told my colleague Ellen Nakashima on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. But whether that is a signal that there will be a cyberattack on a critical system is not clear, Neuberger said.
  • Neuberger declined to name specific industry sectors under threat but said they’re part of critical infrastructure ­—a government designation that includes industries deemed vital to the economy and national security, including energy, finance, transportation and pipelines.

President Biden’s statement. White House fact sheet. And here’s a video of the extended Q&A with deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger.

EDITED TO ADD (3/23): Long—three hour—conference call with CISA.

Posted on March 22, 2022 at 9:57 AM • View Comments

US Critical Infrastructure Companies Will Have to Report When They Are Hacked

This will be law soon:

Companies critical to U.S. national interests will now have to report when they’re hacked or they pay ransomware, according to new rules approved by Congress.

[…]

The reporting requirement legislation was approved by the House and the Senate on Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by President Joe Biden soon. It requires any entity that’s considered part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, which includes the finance, transportation and energy sectors, to report any “substantial cyber incident” to the government within three days and any ransomware payment made within 24 hours.

Even better would be if they had to report it to the public.

Posted on March 15, 2022 at 6:01 AM • View Comments

New DeadBolt Ransomware Targets NAS Devices

There’s a new ransomware that targets NAS devices made by QNAP:

The attacks started today, January 25th, with QNAP devices suddenly finding their files encrypted and file names appended with a .deadbolt file extension.

Instead of creating ransom notes in each folder on the device, the QNAP device’s login page is hijacked to display a screen stating, “WARNING: Your files have been locked by DeadBolt”….

[…]

BleepingComputer is aware of at least fifteen victims of the new DeadBolt ransomware attack, with no specific region being targeted.

As with all ransomware attacks against QNAP devices, the DeadBolt attacks only affect devices accessible to the Internet.

As the threat actors claim the attack is conducted through a zero-day vulnerability, it is strongly advised that all QNAP users disconnect their devices from the Internet and place them behind a firewall.

Posted on January 26, 2022 at 10:04 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.