Monthly Archives: April 2017

Discovery of 8,800 servers sends warning to Asian cybercriminals

In one of the more curious cybercrime announcements of recent times, Interpol’s Asian centre says it has “identified” 8,800 servers used as command & control (C2) for all sorts of bad things including DDoS attacks and distributing ransomware and spam. You read that correctly. Interpol hasn’t disrupted these servers, merely passed information on their whereabouts and malevolent purpose to police forces in eight countries, including Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The operation isolated the C2 by working back from 270 websites infected with malware, assisted by intelligence and know-how from a number of cybersecurity companies. Added Interpol: Among them were several government websites which may have contained personal data of their citizens. Individual criminals were also identified in Nigeria and Indonesia, which hints that arrests might be forthcoming. It sounds like a modest achievement until you remember that Asia is a favoured geography for malware hosting infrastructure (including servers used to attack other parts of the globe) but, historically, underwhelming levels of cross-border co-operation. If action at national level in the countries affected eventually sees the servers disappear forever, it’s not something to be sniffed at. The bigger picture is that Interpol’s Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI), opened in Singapore in 2015, is signalling that it’s up and running and able to make a difference – however emblematic. Cybercrime can be mitigated by technology, of course, but few doubt importance of going after it at the roots, both the servers and the people who run and profit from them. It’s a massive challenge because these people can base themselves anywhere in the world, and introducing legal hazard into their lives requires the sort of co-operation police forces and governments aren’t used to. Founded as long ago as 1923 as the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), Interpol is turning out to be a useful tool in the battle against cybercrime. Cybersecurity companies like it because its regional centres act as an independent broker that allows them to put aside commercial considerations. Police forces value it because it means they can have a relationship with one centre instead of possibly dozens of national operations. But its biggest significance is it gets the private and public sectors to work together, the former with intel and the latter with legal authority. Recent Interpol cybercrime operations have included disrupting the Avalanche botnet late last year, and the takedown of the Simda botnet two years ago. Between times were the arrests of individuals accused of being behind the infamous DD4BC DDoS extortion racket, and a global operation across Interpol’s divisions to rid the world of the one-million strong Dorkbot botnet. Only days ago, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) announced it had coordinated an operation between UK and Spanish police that saw the arrest of five people accused of distributing Remote Access Trojans (RATs) and keyloggers. We should interpret the identification of 8,800 C2 servers as good PR for Interpol but also, to quote Interpol’s chief superintendent Chan, “a blueprint for future operations”. Source: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/04/27/discovery-of-8800-c2-servers-sends-warning-to-asian-cybercriminals/

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Discovery of 8,800 servers sends warning to Asian cybercriminals

How to securely deploy medical devices within a healthcare facility

The risks insecure medical devices pose to patient safety are no longer just theoretical, and compromised electronic health records may haunt patients forever. A surgical robot, pacemaker, or other life critical device being rendered non-functional would give a whole new, and wholly undesirable, meaning to denial of service. Malware like MEDJACK has been used to infect medical devices and use them as staging grounds to attack medical records systems. IoT ransomware is on the rise … More ?

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How to securely deploy medical devices within a healthcare facility

More than 400 DDos attacks identified using new attack vector – LDAP

Hackers use misconfigured LDAP servers – Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP) – to provide a means to launch DDoS attacks. More than 400 DDoS attacks taking advantage of misconfigured LDAP servers have been spotted by security researchers. CLDAP DDoS attacks use an amplification technique, which takes advantage of the Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP): LDAP is one of the most widely used protocols for accessing username and password information in databases like Active Directory, which is integrated in many online servers. When an Active Directory server is incorrectly configured and exposes the CLDAP service to the Internet it is vulnerable to be leveraged to perform DDoS attacks. Since its discovery in October 2016, researchers at Corero Network Security have observed a total of 416 CLDAP DDoS attacks, most of which are hosting and internet service providers. The largest attack volume recorded was 33 Gbps, with an average volume of 10 Gbps. The attacks averaged 14 minutes long in duration. “These powerful short duration attacks are capable of impacting service availability, resulting in outages, or acting as a smoke screen for other types of cyber-attacks, including those intended for breach of personally identifiable data,” said Stephanie Weagle, vice president of marketing at Corero Network Security, in a blog post. Stephen Gates, chief research intelligence analyst from NSFOCUS, told SC Media UK that in the quest to find new means of launching DDoS attacks, hackers have once again found open devices on the Internet running weak protocols that can be exploited for their personal gain. “However, like any other reflective DDoS attack campaign, the number of available reflectors is of critical importance. In addition, the amplification factor those reflectors afford is the second stipulation,” he said. “In this case, the number of open devices on the Internet running CLDAP is relatively small, in comparison to open DNS and NTP reflectors; yet the amplification factor is respectable (~70x). Surely, this attack technique is new, but it is not the worse seen so far. This vector will likely be used in combination with other reflective attack techniques, and rarely used on its own. Until the world’s service providers fully implement BCP-38, similar discoveries and resulting campaigns will continue to plague us all.” Bogdan Botezatu, senior E-Threat analyst at Bitdefender, told SC that a CLDAP attack is designed around third parties: an entity running a misconfigured instance of CLDAP, a victim and an attacker. “The attacker would ask the CLDAP infrastructure to retrieve all the users registered in the Active Directory. Because the attacker makes this query look like it was initiated by the victim by replacing the originating IP address with the victim’s, the CLADP service will actually send the answer to the victim,” he said. “Subsequently, the victim finds itself being bombarded with the information they did not request. If the attacker can harness enough power, the victim’s infrastructure will crash under a load of unsolicited information.” He said that organisations could deploy strong, restrictive firewall policies for inbound traffic. “Load balancing and specialised hardware can also help organisations absorb the impact,” said Botezatu. Source: https://www.scmagazineuk.com/more-than-400-ddos-attacks-identified-using-new-attack-vector–ldap/article/652939/

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More than 400 DDos attacks identified using new attack vector – LDAP

Mysterious Hajime botnet has pwned 300,000 IoT devices

The Dark Knight of malware’s purpose remains unknown Hajime – the “vigilante” IoT worm that blocks rival botnets – has built up a compromised network of 300,000 malware-compromised devices, according to new figures from Kaspersky Lab.…

DDoS still the mainstay of Aussie cyber crime

New study finds denial of service still king despite ransomware rise. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are still the tool of choice for cybercriminals targeting Australian organisations despite the recent influx of ransomware. The study from NTT Group found that 22 per cent of all attacks targeting Australia were related to denial of service. This was only topped by service specific attacks at 23 per cent and was above website application attacks at 20 per cent. Locally, three industries were targeted in 81 per cent of all attacks, finance at 34 per cent, retail at 27 per cent and followed by business and professional services at 20 per cent. The study found that more than 93 per cent of malware detected in the country was some form of Trojan. Ransomware falls into the Trojan family and is the most prevalent form of malware attack in Australia. The country is also experiencing a change in attacks on applications according to the report with over 70 per cent of application attacks against local companies attempting remote code execution. The study analysed data collected from NTT Group’s operating companies, including NTT Security, Dimension Data, NTT Communications and NTT Data, and data from the Global Threat Intelligence Center (formerly known as SERT), between 1 October 2015 and 31 September 2016. The combined entities have a view of more than 40 per cent of global internet traffic. The report backed up findings from similar studies which showed ransomware is now the most prevalent form of cybercrime. Further, the study found that 77 per cent of ransomware analysed was targeting one of four market sectors. These Included: business and professional services (28 per cent); government (19 per cent), health care (15 per cent) and retail (15 per cent). The report also found that despite attention being paid to attacks on newer vulnerabilities, many cyber criminals rely on less technical means to achieve their objectives. The phishing email is still by far the dominant method for malware delivery, responsible for 73 per cent of all malware delivered to organisations, with government (65 per cent) and business and professional services (25 per cent) as the industry sectors most likely to be attacked at a global level. In terms of phishing attacks by country, the US leads the pack at 41 per cent, closely followed by The Netherlands with 38 per cent. France was in third place well behind the top two with 5 per cent. For industry specific attacks, finance was the most commonly attacked industry globally, subject to 14 per cent of all attacks. The finance sector was the only sector to appear in the top three across all geographic regions analysed, while manufacturing appeared in the top three in five of the six regions. Government (14 per cent) and manufacturing (13 per cent ) were the next two most commonly attacked industry sectors. “Our end goal is not to create fear, uncertainty and doubt or to over-complicate the current state of the threat landscape, but to make cybersecurity interesting and inclusive for anyone facing the challenges of security attacks, not just security professionals,” NTT Security Vice President Threat Intelligence & Incident Response, Steven Bullitt, said. “We want to ensure everyone is educated about these issues and understands that they have a personal responsibility when it comes to the protection of their organisation, and that the organisation has an obligation to help them do so,” he said. Source: https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/618243/ddos-still-mainstay-aussie-cyber-crime/

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DDoS still the mainstay of Aussie cyber crime

8 DDoS Attacks That Made Enterprises Rethink IoT Security

Distributed Denial of Service Disasters The overall frequency of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks increased in 2016 thanks, in part, to Internet of Things botnets, according to information service provider Neustar. The company said it mitigated 40 percent more DDoS attacks from January through November, compared to the year earlier. Neustar warned that as botnet code assemblies are published, dangerous new DDoS developments will continue to emerge, such as persistent device enrollment, which enables botnet operators to maintain control of a device even after it’s rebooted. From colleges to entire U.S. regions, here are eight situations where vulnerable IoT devices brought down networks. DDoS Attack Affects U.S. College For 54 Hours A distributed denial of service attack on a college in February, recently made public by security firm Incapsula, affected that institution’s network for 54 hours straight. Incapsula recently revealed the attack, noting that the attackers seemed adept at launching application layer assaults on vulnerable IoT devices. “Based on a number of signature factors, including header order, header values and traffic sources, our client classification system immediately identified that the attack emerged from a Mirai-powered botnet,” according to an Incapsula spokesperson in a blog post. “Our research showed that the pool of attacking devices included those commonly used by Mirai, including CCTV cameras, DVRs and routers.” DDoS Attack Takes Down Netflix, Twitter An October DDoS attack – which was launched through IoT devices and blocked an array of websites – deepened the industry’s concerns over the security risk of the Internet of Things. The denial of service attack was launched through Internet of Things consumer devices, including webcams, routers and video recorders, to overwhelm servers at Dynamic Network Services (Dyn) and led to the blockage of more than 1,200 websites. The attack on Dyn, which connects users to websites such as Twitter and Netflix, came from tens of millions of addresses on devices infected with malicious software codes, knocking out access by flooding websites with junk data. DDoS Attack Through Vending Machines Hits University Verizon’s preview of its 2017 Data Breach Digest in February revealed that an unnamed university was hit by a DDoS attack launched through vending machines, lights, and 5,000 other IoT devices. According to Verizon, an incident commander noticed that “name servers, responsible for Domain Name Service (DNS) lookups, were producing high-volume alerts and showed an abnormal number of sub-domains related to seafood.” While administrators were locked out, the university intercepted “the clear text password for a compromised IoT device over the wire and then use that information to perform a password change before the next malware update.” DDoS Attacks Attempted Against Campaign Websites of Hillary Clinton And Donald Trump According to security firm Flashpoint, hackers attempted four Mirai botnet DDoS attacks in November against the campaign websites of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. According to Flashpoint, the company observed a 30-second HTTP Layer 7 (application layer) attack against Trump’s website, while the next day, it saw attacks against both Trump and Clinton’s campaign sites. While attacks were attempted, neither website observed or reported outages. “Flashpoint assesses with moderate confidence that the Mirai botnet has been fractured into smaller, competing botnets due to the release of its source code, which has led to the proliferation of actors exploiting the botnet’s devices,” a spokesperson wrote on Flashpoint’s website. BBC Domain Downed By By DDoS Attack On New Year’s Eve 2016, the BBC’s website was hit by a DDoS attack that downed its entire domain – including on-demand television and radio player – for more than three hours. While BBC originally said that it was undergoing a technical issue, the broadcaster’s news organization later said the outage was a result of a DDoS attack, according to “sources within the BBC.” Russian Banks Hit With Waves Of DDoS Attacks In November, at least five Russian banks, including Sberbank and Alfabank banks, were the victims of prolonged DDoS attacks that lasted over two days. According to Security Affairs, the attack came from a wide-scale botnet involving up to 24,000 computers and IoT devices that were located in 30 countries. The banks’ online clients services were not disrupted. According to security firm Kaspersky Lab, the incident was the first time that massive DDoS attacks hit Russian banks in 2016. Rio Olympics Organizations Hit By DDoS Attack Staged By LizardStresser Arbor Networks’ security engineering and response team revealed in a statement that several organizations affiliated with the Olympics came under “large-scale volumetric” DDoS attacks beginning in September 2015. “A large proportion of the attack volume consisted of UDP reflection and amplification attack vectors such as DNS, chargen, ntp, and SSDP, along with direct UDP packet-flooding, SYN-flooding, and application-layer attacks targeting Web and DNS services,” said Arbor Networks in a statement. According to Arbor Networks, a DDoS-for-hire service, called LizardStresser, staged most of the pre-Olympic attacks. Despite the attacks, Arbor Networks performed several mitigation measures to help Olympics administrators keep their systems running. Brian Krebs’ Website Experienced DDoS Attack In September 2016, security investigative reporter Brian Krebs’ information blog experienced a DDoS attack. The attack reportedly placed peak traffic at around 620 Gbps. Krebs determined a Mirai botnet was responsible for the attack: “The source code that powers the IoT botnet responsible for launching the historically large DDoS attack against KrebsOnSecurity last month has been publicly released, virtually guaranteeing that the Internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and other easily hackable devices,” he stated on his blog. “My guess is that (if it’s not already happening) there will soon be many Internet users complaining to their ISPs about slow Internet speeds as a result of hacked IoT devices on their network hogging all the bandwidth. On the bright side, if that happens it may help to lessen the number of vulnerable systems,” said Krebs in the blog post. Source: http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/internet-of-things/300084663/8-ddos-attacks-that-made-enterprises-rethink-iot-security.htm

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8 DDoS Attacks That Made Enterprises Rethink IoT Security

Teenage hacker jailed for masterminding attacks on Sony and Microsoft

Adam Mudd jailed for two years for creating attack-for-hire business responsible for more than 1.7m breaches worldwide. A man has been jailed for two years for setting up a computer hacking business that caused chaos worldwide. Adam Mudd was 16 when he created the Titanium Stresser program, which carried out more than 1.7m attacks on websites including Minecraft, Xbox Live and Microsoft and TeamSpeak, a chat tool for gamers. He earned the equivalent of more than £386,000 in US dollars and bitcoins from selling the program to cyber criminals. Mudd pleaded guilty and was sentenced at the Old Bailey. The judge, Michael Topolski QC, noted that Mudd came from a “perfectly respectable and caring family”. He said the effect of Mudd’s crimes had wreaked havoc “from Greenland to New Zealand, from Russia to Chile”. Topolski said the sentence must have a “real element of deterrent” and refused to suspend the jail term. “I’m entirely satisfied that you knew full well and understood completely this was not a game for fun,” he told Mudd. “It was a serious money-making business and your software was doing exactly what you created it to do.” Mudd showed no emotion as he was sent to a young offender institution. During the two-day hearing, Jonathan Polnay, prosecuting, said the effect of Mudd’s hacking program was “truly global”, adding: “Where there are computers, there are attacks – in almost every major city in the world – with hotspots in France, Paris, around the UK.” The court heard that Mudd, who lived with his parents, had previously undiagnosed Asperger syndrome and was more interested in status in the online gaming community than the money. The court heard that the defendant, now 20, carried out 594 of the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against 181 IP addresses between December 2013 and March 2015. He has admitted to security breaches against his college while he was studying computer science. The attacks on West Herts College crashed the network, cost about £2,000 to investigate and caused “incalculable” damage to productivity, the court heard. On one occasion in 2014, the college hacking affected 70 other schools and colleges, including Cambridge, Essex and East Anglia universities as well as local councils. Mudd’s explanation for one of the attacks was that he had reported being mugged to the college but claimed no action was taken. Polnay said there were more than 112,000 registered users of Mudd’s program who hacked about 666,000 IP addresses. Of those, nearly 53,000 were in the UK. Among the targets was the fantasy game RuneScape, which had 25,000 attacks. Its owner company spent £6m trying to defend itself against DDoS attacks, with a revenue loss of £184,000. The court heard that Mudd created Titanium Stresser in September 2013 using a fake name and address in Manchester. He offered a variety of payment plans to his customers, including discounts for bulk purchases of up to $309.99 for 30,000 seconds over five years as well as a refer-a-friend scheme. Polnay said: “This is a young man who lived at home. This is not a lavish lifestyle case. The motivation around this we tend to agree is about status. The money-making is by the by.” When he was arrested in March 2015, Mudd was in his bedroom on his computer, which he refused to unlock before his father intervened. Mudd, from Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, pleaded guilty to one count of committing unauthorised acts with intent to impair the operation of computers; one count of making, supplying or offering to supply an article for use in an offence contrary to the Computer Misuse Act; and one count of concealing criminal property. Ben Cooper, defending, appealed for his client to be given a suspended sentence. He said Mudd had been “sucked into” the cyber world of online gaming and was “lost in an alternate reality” after withdrawing from school because of bullying. Mudd, who was expelled from college and now works as a kitchen porter, had been offline for two years, which was a form of punishment for any computer-obsessed teenager, Cooper said. The “bright and high-functioning” defendant understood what he did was wrong but at the time he lacked empathy due to his medical condition, the court heard. Cooper said: “This was an unhappy period for Mr Mudd, during which he suffered greatly. This is someone seeking friendship and status within the gaming community.” But the judge said: “I have a duty to the public who are worried about this, threatened by this, damaged by this all the time … It’s terrifying.” Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/teenage-hacker-adam-mudd-jailed-masterminding-attacks-sony-microsoft

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Teenage hacker jailed for masterminding attacks on Sony and Microsoft

Brit behind Titanium Stresser DDoS malware sent to chokey

20-year-old Herts man slapped with two years’ stripey suntan time A Hertfordshire man has been jailed for two years after netting nearly £400,000 from the malware he wrote as a 15-year-old student.…

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Brit behind Titanium Stresser DDoS malware sent to chokey

How can you prepare for a cyber attack?

Keeping your data secure is more important than ever, but it seems like there’s a new wide-scale data breach every other week. In this article, David Mytton discusses what developers can do to prepare for what’s fast becoming inevitable. Cyber security isn’t something that can be ignored anymore or treated as a luxury concern: recent cyber attacks in the UK have shown that no one is immune. The stats are worrying – in 2016, two thirds of large businesses had a cyber attack or breach, according to Government research. Accenture paints a bleaker picture suggesting that two thirds of companies globally face these attacks weekly, or even daily. According to the Government’s 2016 cyber security breaches survey, only a third of firms have cyber security policies in place and only 10% have an emergency plan. Given management isn’t handling the threat proactively, developers and operations specialists are increasingly having to take the initiative on matters of cybersecurity. This article covers some essential priorities developers should be aware of if they want their company to be prepared for attack. Know your plan There’s no predicting when a cyber attack might come, whether it be in the form of a DDoS, a virus, malware or phishing. It’s therefore important to be constantly vigilant, and prepared for incidents when they do occur. Senior leadership in your company should be proactive when laying out a plan in the event of an attack or other breach, however this might not always be the case. No matter what your position is within your company, there are preemptive actions you can take on a regular basis to ensure that you’re adequately prepared. If you’re in an Ops team, make sure you’re encouraging your team to test your backups regularly. There’s little use having backups if you’re unable to actually restore from them, as GitLab learned to their detriment earlier in the year. Use simulations and practice runs to ensure that everyone on your team knows what they’re doing, and have a checklist in place for yourself and your colleagues to make sure that nothing gets missed. For example, a DDoS attack may begin with a monitoring alert to let you know your application is slow. Your checklist would start with the initial diagnostics to pinpoint the cause, but as soon as you discover it is a DDoS attack then the security response plan should take over. If you happen to be on-call, make sure you’ve got all the tools you need to act promptly to handle the issue. This might involve letting your more senior colleagues know about the issue, as well as requesting appropriate assistance from your security vendors. Communication is always one of the deciding factors in whether a crisis can be contained effectively. As a developer or operations specialist, it’s important to be vocal with your managers about any lack of clarity in your plan, and ensure that there are clear lines of communication and responsibility so that, when the worst does occur, you and your colleagues feel clear to jump into action quickly. Remember your limits It might sound obvious, but it’s worth remembering: in a cyber attack or catastrophic incident, there is only so much you yourself can do. Too many developers and operations staff fall prey to a culture of being ‘superheroes’, encouraged (often through beer and pizza) to stay as late as they can and work as long as possible on fixes to particular issues. The truth is, humans make mistakes. Amazon’s recent AWS S3 outage is a good example: swathes of the internet were taken offline due to one typo. If you’re on-call while a cyber attack occurs there’s no denying you’re likely to work long hours at odd times of the day, and this can put a real strain on you, both mentally and physically. This strain can make it much harder for you to actually concentrate on what you’re doing, and no amount of careful contingency planning can compensate for that. At Server Density we’re keenly aware that employee health and well being is critical to maintaining business infrastructure, especially in the event of a crisis. That’s why we support movements like HumanOps, which promote a wider awareness of the importance of employee health, from the importance of taking regular breaks to ergonomic keyboards. All too often people working in IT forget that the most business-critical hardware they look after isn’t servers or routers, it’s the health and well being of the people on the front lines looking after these systems. Cyber attacks are stressful on everyone working in an organisation, and the IT teams take the brunt of the strain. However, with careful planning, clear lines of delegation and an appreciation of the importance of looking after each other’s health, developers and operations specialists should be able to weather the storm effectively and recover business assets effectively. Source: https://jaxenter.com/can-prepare-cyber-attack-133447.html

Locky ransomware makes a comeback, courtesy of Necurs botnet

The Necurs botnet has, once again, begun pushing Locky ransomware on unsuspecting victims. The botnet, which flip-flops from sending penny stock pump-and-dump emails to booby-trapped files that lead to malware (usually Locky or Dridex), has been spotted slinging thousand upon thousand of emails in the last three or four days. “Talos has seen in excess of 35K emails in the last several hours associated with this newest wave of Locky,” Cisco Talos researchers noted on … More ?

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Locky ransomware makes a comeback, courtesy of Necurs botnet