Entries Tagged "malware"

Page 14 of 49

Malware Installed in Asus Computers through Hacked Update Process

Kaspersky Labs is reporting on a new supply chain attack they call “Shadowhammer.”

In January 2019, we discovered a sophisticated supply chain attack involving the ASUS Live Update Utility. The attack took place between June and November 2018 and according to our telemetry, it affected a large number of users.

[…]

The goal of the attack was to surgically target an unknown pool of users, which were identified by their network adapters’ MAC addresses. To achieve this, the attackers had hardcoded a list of MAC addresses in the trojanized samples and this list was used to identify the actual intended targets of this massive operation. We were able to extract more than 600 unique MAC addresses from over 200 samples used in this attack. Of course, there might be other samples out there with different MAC addresses in their list.

We believe this to be a very sophisticated supply chain attack, which matches or even surpasses the Shadowpad and the CCleaner incidents in complexity and techniques. The reason that it stayed undetected for so long is partly due to the fact that the trojanized updaters were signed with legitimate certificates (eg: “ASUSTeK Computer Inc.”). The malicious updaters were hosted on the official liveupdate01s.asus[.]com and liveupdate01.asus[.]com ASUS update servers.

The sophistication of the attack leads to the speculation that a nation-state—and one of the cyber powers—is responsible.

As I have previously written, supply chain security is “an incredibly complex problem.” These attacks co-opt the very mechanisms we need to trust for our security. And the international nature of our industry results in an array of vulnerabilities that are very hard to secure.

Kim Zetter has a really good article on this. Check if your computer is infected here, or use this diagnostic tool from Asus.

Another news article.

Posted on March 28, 2019 at 6:42 AM • View Comments

Cybersecurity Insurance Not Paying for NotPetya Losses

This will complicate things:

To complicate matters, having cyber insurance might not cover everyone’s losses. Zurich American Insurance Company refused to pay out a $100 million claim from Mondelez, saying that since the U.S. and other governments labeled the NotPetya attack as an action by the Russian military their claim was excluded under the “hostile or warlike action in time of peace or war” exemption.

I get that $100 million is real money, but the insurance industry needs to figure out how to properly insure commercial networks against this sort of thing.

Posted on March 8, 2019 at 5:57 AM • View Comments

Clever Smartphone Malware Concealment Technique

This is clever:

Malicious apps hosted in the Google Play market are trying a clever trick to avoid detection—they monitor the motion-sensor input of an infected device before installing a powerful banking trojan to make sure it doesn’t load on emulators researchers use to detect attacks.

The thinking behind the monitoring is that sensors in real end-user devices will record motion as people use them. By contrast, emulators used by security researchers­—and possibly Google employees screening apps submitted to Play­—are less likely to use sensors. Two Google Play apps recently caught dropping the Anubis banking malware on infected devices would activate the payload only when motion was detected first. Otherwise, the trojan would remain dormant.

Posted on January 21, 2019 at 6:47 AM • View Comments

Banks Attacked through Malicious Hardware Connected to the Local Network

Kaspersky is reporting on a series of bank hacks—called DarkVishnya—perpetrated through malicious hardware being surreptitiously installed into the target network:

In 2017-2018, Kaspersky Lab specialists were invited to research a series of cybertheft incidents. Each attack had a common springboard: an unknown device directly connected to the company’s local network. In some cases, it was the central office, in others a regional office, sometimes located in another country. At least eight banks in Eastern Europe were the targets of the attacks (collectively nicknamed DarkVishnya), which caused damage estimated in the tens of millions of dollars.

Each attack can be divided into several identical stages. At the first stage, a cybercriminal entered the organization’s building under the guise of a courier, job seeker, etc., and connected a device to the local network, for example, in one of the meeting rooms. Where possible, the device was hidden or blended into the surroundings, so as not to arouse suspicion.

The devices used in the DarkVishnya attacks varied in accordance with the cybercriminals’ abilities and personal preferences. In the cases we researched, it was one of three tools:

  • netbook or inexpensive laptop
  • Raspberry Pi computer
  • Bash Bunny, a special tool for carrying out USB attacks

Inside the local network, the device appeared as an unknown computer, an external flash drive, or even a keyboard. Combined with the fact that Bash Bunny is comparable in size to a USB flash drive, this seriously complicated the search for the entry point. Remote access to the planted device was via a built-in or USB-connected GPRS/3G/LTE modem.

Slashdot thread.

Posted on December 7, 2018 at 10:50 AM • View Comments

Distributing Malware By Becoming an Admin on an Open-Source Project

The module “event-stream” was infected with malware by an anonymous someone who became an admin on the project.

Cory Doctorow points out that this is a clever new attack vector:

Many open source projects attain a level of “maturity” where no one really needs any new features and there aren’t a lot of new bugs being found, and the contributors to these projects dwindle, often to a single maintainer who is generally grateful for developers who take an interest in these older projects and offer to share the choresome, intermittent work of keeping the projects alive.

Ironically, these are often projects with millions of users, who trust them specifically because of their stolid, unexciting maturity.

This presents a scary social-engineering vector for malware: A malicious person volunteers to help maintain the project, makes some small, positive contributions, gets commit access to the project, and releases a malicious patch, infecting millions of users and apps.

Posted on November 28, 2018 at 6:48 AM • View Comments

The Pentagon Is Publishing Foreign Nation-State Malware

This is a new thing:

The Pentagon has suddenly started uploading malware samples from APTs and other nation-state sources to the website VirusTotal, which is essentially a malware zoo that’s used by security pros and antivirus/malware detection engines to gain a better understanding of the threat landscape.

This feels like an example of the US’s new strategy of actively harassing foreign government actors. By making their malware public, the US is forcing them to continually find and use new vulnerabilities.

EDITED TO ADD (11/13): This is another good article. And here is some background on the malware.

Posted on November 9, 2018 at 1:52 PM • View Comments

Pegasus Spyware Used in 45 Countries

Citizen Lab has published a new report about the Pegasus spyware. From a ZDNet article:

The malware, known as Pegasus (or Trident), was created by Israeli cyber-security firm NSO Group and has been around for at least three years—when it was first detailed in a report over the summer of 2016.

The malware can operate on both Android and iOS devices, albeit it’s been mostly spotted in campaigns targeting iPhone users primarily. On infected devices, Pegasus is a powerful spyware that can do many things, such as record conversations, steal private messages, exfiltrate photos, and much much more.

From the report:

We found suspected NSO Pegasus infections associated with 33 of the 36 Pegasus operators we identified in 45 countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zambia. As our findings are based on country-level geolocation of DNS servers, factors such as VPNs and satellite Internet teleport locations can introduce inaccuracies.

Six of those countries are known to deploy spyware against political opposition: Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Also note:

On 17 September 2018, we then received a public statement from NSO Group. The statement mentions that “the list of countries in which NSO is alleged to operate is simply inaccurate. NSO does not operate in many of the countries listed.” This statement is a misunderstanding of our investigation: the list in our report is of suspected locations of NSO infections, it is not a list of suspected NSO customers. As we describe in Section 3, we observed DNS cache hits from what appear to be 33 distinct operators, some of whom appeared to be conducting operations in multiple countries. Thus, our list of 45 countries necessarily includes countries that are not NSO Group customers. We describe additional limitations of our method in Section 4, including factors such as VPNs and satellite connections, which can cause targets to appear in other countries.

Motherboard article. Slashdot and Boing Boing posts.

Posted on September 19, 2018 at 5:19 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.