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DDoS trojan ferrets SMB data

A new distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) bot has been discovered targeting real estate companies and other small and medium-sized businesses. Arbor Networks researcher Dennis Schwarz found the malware after receiving a tip-off from a Twitter user. A relatively small number of unique samples and command and control servers were uncovered, making it difficult to judge just how dangerous the new threat could be. These samples are written in the Delphi programming language but most likely originate from Russia, said Schwarz, who added that the bot’s self-preservation tools include UPX packing, string obfuscation, anti-virtual machine, anti-bugging measures, self-modifying code and process hollowing. Command and control is done over HTTP. The analyst firm has a ‘fairly complete picture’ of what the bot represents, but admitted concerns on how Trojan.Ferret is being distributed. “Trojan.Ferret is a new Russian DDoS bot. It stood out to me due to the silly ferret theme and that we have a fairly complete picture of it,” said Schwarz, adding that the company had tracked a sample of bot, the C&C panel view and live C&C traffic. “It is a traditional DDoS bot focusing on the ‘core’ set of DDoS attacks, such as HTTP, UDP and TCP. It lacks the common application layer attacks such as Slowloris, Apache Killer, and RUDY. “A major missing component that we’re unsure of is how this particular Trojan is being distributed–whether by exploit kit, malware-laced spam, or via one of the many ‘dropper/downloader’ networks.” Schwarz said that the Trojan is targeting the UK, the US, Germany, Russia and the Netherlands, as well as Kazakhstan, and said that attacks have hit property companies, an electronics shop, a wedding dress shop and even a politician in Panama. Malwarebytes malware intelligence analyst Adam Kujawa said the information security industry is still coming to grips with the threat posed by the new DDoS bot. “It is likely of Russian origin, uses an array of specialised malware tricks to hide it from detection and of course is used as a DDOS bot,” said Kujawa. “Ferret will infect as many systems as it can to recruit them into the Botnet and then use each of those systems to attack a single server at the same time,” he added, commenting, “A single system cannot perform a successful DDOS attack but a botnet of thousands can.” Source: http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/368168,ddos-trojan-ferrets-smb-data.aspx

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DDoS trojan ferrets SMB data

7 Security Trends to Expect in 2014

Computer systems, in many peoples’ eyes, are there to be hacked — and that means fraudsters are always working on new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. So what does 2014 have in store? Here are seven security predictions for the New Year. DDoS Attacks Get Sneaky DDoS attackers will go from simple volumetric attacks to ones which take advantage of a site’s specific performance characteristics. That’s the prediction of security researchers at Neohapsis, a security and risk management consulting company. DDoS attacks that intelligently target bottlenecks in performance, such as pages with a high server load (like database writes) or specific network bottlenecks (like login and session management), can magnify the impact over attacks which are simply volume-based and request the homepage of a site. So it’s likely that we will begin to see the spread of tools which profile specific targets. The result? DDoS attacks that have more impact, and involve less network traffic, than the ones enterprises have become accustomed to mitigating against. Insider Threats Remain Major Security Problem According to a CyberSecurity Watch survey insiders were found to be the cause in 21 percent of security breaches, and a further 21 percent may have been due to the actions of insiders. More than half of respondents to another recent survey said it’s more difficult today to detect and prevent insider attacks than it was in 2011, and 53 percent were increasing their security budgets in response to insider threats. While a significant number of breaches are caused by malicious or disgruntled employees – or former employees – many are caused by well-meaning employees who are simply trying to do their job. BYOD programs and file sharing and collaboration services like Dropbox mean that it will be harder than ever to keep corporate data under corporate control in the face of these well-meaning but irresponsible employees. Defending against insider threats requires a multi-layered use of technological controls, including system-wide use of data encryption and establishment of policies stressing prevention of data loss. Security Worries Drive Cloud Consolidation Organizations will look to buy more solutions from a single vendor and demand greater integration between solutions to automate security, according to Eric Chiu, president of HyTrust, a cloud security company. The fact that securing cloud environments is very different from securing traditional physical environments will drive greater consolidation in the market, he says. Legacy Systems Cause More Security Headaches The spate of IT failures in banks and other high profile companies highlights a simple fact: Many of them are running legacy systems which are so old and out of date that they are becoming almost impossible to maintain. That’s because there are few people with the skills and expert knowledge that would be needed to run them securely – even if they were updated to eliminate know vulnerabilities, which they frequently are not. They often aren’t updated because no-one knows what impact that would have. It’s inevitable that we’ll see hackers going after such systems, exploiting vulnerabilities that can’t easily be fixed. Encryption Will Be Revisited In the wake of revelations about the NSA, many companies are realizing that encryption many be the only thing that is protecting their data, and it may not be as strong as they imagined. What’s more, if hackers are led to believe there is a weakness in a particular system – either accidental or intentional – they will pound on it until they find it. As a result, many companies will look to improve the way they use encryption. Look for particular attention to be paid to cryptographic block modes like CBC and OFB, and authenticated modes like EAX, CCM and GCM, advise the experts at Neohapsis. In addition to the encryption methods themselves, look for insights and innovations around key management and forward security. ‘Stuxnets’ Become More Common State-sponsored malware like Stuxnet – which is widely attributed to the United States, Israel or both – has proved to be far more sophisticated and effective than anything that a couple of hackers can develop. Expect more of this type of malware from the likes of China, Russia, Iran, India, Brazil and Pakistan. It’s probably already out there, even if it hasn’t yet been detected. 2014 could be the year that its prevalence becomes apparent. Bitcoin Drives New Malware The Bitcoin virtual currency is growing in popularity with legitimate businesses, and that’s likely to continue. That’s because Bitcoin payments offer significant attractions: They are quick and cheap, and there is no possibility of a chargeback. But Bitcoin wallets make attractive targets for criminals, because stolen coins can be cashed out instantly, without a middleman or launderer taking a cut. And many Bitcoin users are relatively unsophisticated, protecting their wallets with very little security. So expect Trojans and other malware that specifically look for and target Bitcoin stashes, as well as ransomware that demands Bitcoins in return for decrypting data. Source: http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/7-security-trends-to-expect-in-2014.html

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7 Security Trends to Expect in 2014

Companies still ignore DDoS attacks

Just days after NatWest Bank suffered a debilitating DDoS attack, a new survey has revealed that most businesses are still unprepared for this kind of threat. Some companies are unprepared for DDoS attacks Just days after NatWest Bank suffered a debilitating DDoS attack, a new survey has revealed that most businesses are still unprepared for this kind of threat. More than half the respondents to a survey by Corero lack adequate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) defence technology. The study also reveals a lack of DDoS defence planning on multiple levels: nearly half of businesses have no formal DDoS response plan, 54 percent have outdated or non-existent network maps, and around one in three lack any clear idea of their normal network traffic volume. Furthermore, the survey slates businesses for under-investing in their security infrastructures, with around 40 percent of respondents still relying on firewalls, while nearly 60 percent do not test their DDoS defences regularly with network and application-layer tests. However, experts warn that DDos attacks are escalating and say that they can cause not only business disruption but also loss of IP, significant brand damage and a loss of customer confidence. Mike Loginov, CEO and CISO at independent security consultancy Ascot Barclay Group, told SCMagazineUK.com that figures from his firm and others show sharply rising numbers of successful DDoS attacks, adding: “These attacks are not necessarily undertaken by the perpetrator with financial gain in mind. However, they still leave the targeted business suffering costly damage repairs, loss of business and an undermining of the organisation’s capability to defend itself. Many attacks go unreported for fear of brand damage.” Andrew Miller, CFO and COO at Corero, which carried out the latest survey, agreed the threat is growing but stressed that companies are still not doing enough to protect themselves. “These denial-of-service-attacks (DDoS) are increasing and becoming more complex, but we’re still not seeing companies increasing their vigilance, investment and planning,” he told SCMagazineUK.com. “Across the board companies really need a combination of infrastructure investment, but more importantly putting in place plans to be able to detect what’s traversing companies’ networks.” Loginov agreed: “Generally speaking, IT departments, as the report suggests, are just not geared up to defend organisations against what cyber security professionals these days consider rudimentary attacks.” Miller said companies need “hybrid DDoS and cloud protection” but added that currently only “a small percentage” of companies have these defences in place. “What we’re seeing the more proactive customers doing is deploying a combination of both on-premises technology to provide 24/7 protection from denial of service attacks, as well as cloud protection services to deal with the high-volume ‘fill the pipe’ network-layer DDoS attacks – a combination of solutions rather than a single solution.” These warnings come just days after NatWest Bank was hit by a DDoS attack that left customers unable to access their accounts online. The 6 December attack disrupted NatWest’s website for about an hour and briefly hit the websites of the other banks in the RBS Group – RBS and Ulster Bank. The attack was focused on disruption rather than accessing account details. But Miller said organisations need to “understand it’s not just inconvenience, we’re talking about some loss of IPR. In the case of RBS, it’s obviously a significant issue from a brand and customer satisfaction perspective”. Miller added: “Denial of service attacks are often used as a smokescreen, a way of initially gaining entry into IT systems through a brute force-type attack, then following on from that the more sophisticated attacks which are aimed either at stealing customer information or intellectual property. We’re seeing banks in the US we’re talking to subject to these types of attacks on a daily basis.” In a statement to journalists, Jag Bains, CTO of DOSarrest Internet Security , said: “The transparency shown by RBS in admitting that they failed to invest properly in their IT systems is a common refrain amongst many enterprises, large and small. While each organisation may have multiple reasons for failing to invest, they all share the same notion that they won’t be a target until they get attacked. “With DDoS tools becoming more advanced and pervasive, all IT operations should work under the premise that they will be attacked and plan accordingly. Every stack and layer within their purview should be reviewed and they should identify cost-effective cloud solutions for their DDoS which provides much better performance and mitigation than expensive hardware.” The DDoS attacks on RBS came in the same week as an unrelated major IT failure, which hit the Group’s online and mobile banking, ATMs and debit card payments. As SCMagazineUK.com reported, RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank customers were unable to use their cards to draw cash or pay for goods or services. RBS CEO Ross McEwan branded the outage as “unacceptable” and blamed decades of failure to invest adequately in new technology. Source: http://www.scmagazineuk.com/companies-still-ignore-ddos-attacks/article/324844/

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Companies still ignore DDoS attacks

$183,000 fine for man who joined Anonymous attack for ‘one minute’

Authorities in the US have shown their intolerance for so-called ‘hacktivism’ by sentencing a 38-year-old Wisconsin man to two years’ probation and an $183,000 fine for joined an online attack for just a single minute. Eric J. Rosol participated in a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) against the website for American multinational Koch Industries. DDoS attacks ‘take down’ websites by repeatedly loading them using automatic software. The attack was organised by the hacker group Anonymous and succeed in taking the website offline for only 15 minutes. Rosol pleaded guilty to one misdemeanour count of accessing a protect computer, and although both parties agree that the direct loss to Koch Industries (the second largest privately owned company in the US) was less than $5,000, because the corporation had hired a consulting group to protect its web territory for fees of $183,000 – this was the sum that Rosol must now pay. Koch Industries works in a number of industries including petroleum and manufacturing and reported revenues of $115 billion in 2013. The company is controlled by brothers Charles and David Koch (the world’s sixth and seventh richest men) who inherited it from their deceased father Fred C. Koch, the company’s founder. Koch Industries is often the subject of controversy in the US for its financial support of right-wing Tea Party and its opposition to the green energy industry. The brothers have also donated more than $120m to groups working to discredit climage change science. The DDoS attack which Rosol took part in was organized in opposition to Koch Industries’ reported weakening of trade unions. Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/183000-fine-for-man-who-joined-anonymous-attack-for-one-minute-8995609.html

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$183,000 fine for man who joined Anonymous attack for ‘one minute’

PayPal 14 plea deal a win for DDoS as civil disobedience

Eleven of the fourteen defendants in the PayPal 14 case have reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors. Under the agreement, the defendants will plead guilty to felonies and misdemeanors under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). If they observe good behavior, federal prosecutors will ask that the felonies be dropped. This comes as good news to those who advance the notion that DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are acts of civil disobedience. Two other defendants will serve 90 days in prison after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge pled guilty to a misdemeanor, while the last of the fourteen defendants was not eligible for a plea deal in the case. The PayPal 14 are only a small fraction of the over 1,000 participants identified in a DDoS attack aimed at PayPal, which Anonymous hit as part of “Operation Payback” after the company cut service to WikiLeaks’s donations page. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, which is the parent company of PayPal, called for leniency. Ironic given that PayPal provided the Department of Justice with a list of the participants’ IP addresses, which helped the FBI locate the protesters. “I can understand that the protesters were upset by PayPal’s actions and felt that they were simply participating in an online demonstration of their frustration. That is their right, and I support freedom of expression, even when it’s my own company that is the target,” Omidyar wrote two days ago in a Huffington Post op-ed. “The problem in this case however is that the tools being distributed by Anonymous are extremely powerful. They turn over control of a protester’s computer to a central controller which can order it to make many hundreds of web page requests per second to a target website.” DDoS works by connecting thousands of computers together to bombard websites with traffic until it collapses. As Omidyar noted, it multiplies the power of a single protester, which is something that cannot be done in the physical realm without significant grassroots effort. Nevertheless, the plea deal is significant because it sets a legal precedent that DDoS isn’t just some effort to cause significant financial harm. While the plea deal doesn’t define DDoS as digital protest, it might be the first step in acknowledging the attack as something akin to protesters blocking a road or a business. These physical protests are typically prosecuted as misdemeanors, not felonies that can bring hefty prison terms, high restitution costs, and a lifetime designation as a felon. The PayPal 14 plea deal might also help begin the very necessary process of amending the CFAA, which allows stiff penalties for these non-violent crimes in the first place. Shortly before the news was announced, activist lawyer Stanley Cohen tweeted: “Stay tuned for details. Pay Pal 14 will be resolved today, big win for civil disobedience. Up the Rebels.” And a good win for the internet, which is coming of age as the supreme venue for protest against political and financial power. Source: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/210854/paypal-14-plea-deal-a-win-for-ddos-as-civil-disobedience/

Bitcoin Password Grab Disguised As DDoS Attack

Attacks against bitcoin users continue, as online forum Bitcointalk.org warns users their passwords might have been stolen in distributed denial of service hack. Aficionados of the cryptographic currency known as Bitcoin might have gotten more than they bargained for recently, after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack appeared to be used as a smokescreen for launching a password-stealing attack against users of Bitcointalk.org. Michael Marquardt (a.k.a. “Theymos”), one of the administrators of the popular bitcoin discussion forum, Sunday warned its 176,584 members of the attack. He said the attack had been traced to a flaw in the systems of domain registration firm AnonymousSpeech, which specializes in anonymous email, as well as running hosting servers outside the United States and the European Union. Attackers hacked AnonymousSpeech to change the bitcoin discussion forum’s DNS settings to an attacker-controlled server. According to Marquardt, the DNS redirection attack was spotted Sunday by forum manager Malmi Martti (a.k.a. Sirius), who immediately moved the domain to a different registrar. “However, such changes take about 24 hours to propagate,” he warned, meaning that users remained at risk unless they logged on to the forum using its IP address, rather than trusting domain name servers to resolve to the non-malicious site. What was the risk to forum users? “Because the HTTPS protocol is pretty terrible, this alone could have allowed the attacker to intercept and modify encrypted forum transmissions, allowing them to see passwords sent during login, authentication cookies, [personal messages], etc.,” Marquardt said. “Your password only could have been intercepted if you actually entered it while the forum was affected. I invalidated all security codes, so you’re not at risk of having your account stolen if you logged in using the ‘remember me’ feature without actually entering your password.” In other words, anyone who logged into the forum between Sunday and Monday, and who entered a password, should assume that it was compromised by attackers. What were the bitcoin forum attackers gunning for? The most likely explanation would be participants’ usernames and passwords, which — if reused on other sites — might have allowed attackers to drain people’s online bitcoin wallets. Likewise, attackers might have been interested in gathering email addresses of people who are interested in bitcoins to target them — via phishing attacks — with malware designed to find and steal bitcoins from their PCs. The DNS hack and DDoS attack against Bitcointalk are just the latest exploits in a long string of attacks targeting bitcoin e-wallet services and payment systems. Last month, Denmark-based bitcoin payment processor Bitcoin Internet Payment System suffered a DDoS attack that allowed the attackers to hide their real target: online wallets storing 1,295 bitcoins, which they successfully stole. At the time, their haul was valued at nearly $1 million. As that haul suggests, the rise in bitcoin-related attacks can be attributed to the bitcoin bubble, which has seen the value of the cryptographic currency rise from a low of $1 per bitcoin in 2011, to $1,200 per bitcoin as of Wednesday. The rise in bitcoin’s value has lead to a number of malicious attacks, as well as a rise in efforts of a different nature. Last week, for example, Malwarebytes researcher Adam Kujawa warned in a blog post that a number of free toolbars and search agents have begun including bitcoin-mining software, which can consume massive amounts of system resources, slowing PCs to a crawl. Bitcoin mining isn’t inherently suspect. In fact, it’s crucial to the success of bitcoins, because it’s what records the chain of bitcoin transactions. Furthermore, the bitcoin system is set up to reward — with bitcoins — anyone who successfully solves related cryptographic puzzles that help maintain the public bitcoin ledger known as the “block chain.” But some people have begun turning PCs into nodes in their personal bitcoin-mining empire, such as online gaming company E-Sports, which was recently hit with a related $325,000 fine by the New Jersey state attorney general’s office. In the case of toolbars and search agents with built-in mining software, however, users who agree to the accompanying end-user license agreement (EULA) might be authorizing a third party to turn their PC into a bitcoin-mining platform. “So take note if your system is running especially slow or if a process is taking up massive amounts of your processing power; it might be malware or even a [potentially unwanted program] running a miner on your system,” said Kujawa at Malwarebytes. “Looks like the bad guys are adapting all of their various technical attacks and business models to the bitcoin world,” CounterHack co-founder and SANS Institute hacking instructor Ed Skoudis said in a recent SANS email newsletter, responding to the Malwarebytes report. “Given the stakes for rapid money-making here, we’ll surely see even more creative bitcoin-related attacks in the near future.” Source: http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks-and-breaches/bitcoin-password-grab-disguised-as-ddos-attack—-/d/d-id/1112919

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Bitcoin Password Grab Disguised As DDoS Attack

5 DDoS defence strategies every company should know

If there is any one fact that remains consistent when it comes to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, it is this: whatever mitigation solution your security engineers implement today, hackers will find a way to defeat it within the next two years. The pain of re-engineering a security program every 24 months is dwarfed by the potential pain of DDoS-provoked outages. In 2011, these attacks cost businesses more than a billion dollars, according to the Yankee Group. So how can companies defend themselves against attacks that are growing larger in scale, more complex in nature and more damaging to corporate reputations? Start with these five strategies: 1. Get educated, and be prepared Attackers are highly educated and highly motivated. Whether they shut sites down for financial gain or idealistic causes, the hackers who may target you today will do so with complex attacks at the application layer, Layer 7, where they can deplete your server resources by imitating legitimate users. They are likely to attack websites that rely on SSL by exploiting a Web server’s limited ability to handle large amounts of HTTPS sessions. These are not the straightforward DNS reflection attacks or TCP SYN floods of yesterday 2. Learn which attacks can be defeated with which solutions In order to combat increasingly sophisticated DDoS attacks, your company needs to learn what methods attackers are embracing today and continually research the most effective tools and services for addressing them. For example, you can defeat the OSI model, and Layer 3 and 4 attacks at the network and service layers with access control lists (ACLs), policies and commercially available DDoS mitigation solutions. On the other hand, you’ll need inspection by proxy to identify and fight Layer 7 attacks. 3. Ignore attacker inquiries It’s not unusual for a hacker to contact a company as he is assaulting its websites. You might receive demands if the motive behind the attack is pure financial extortion. If the attacker views himself as more of an activist, he might contact you simply to taunt the company during the outage. The best reaction to these communications is no reaction. Ignore them. Doing so generally lowers the probability that the attack will occur, if it hasn’t already, or that it will continue, if it’s already in progress. 4. Build secure networks Let start with the basics: avoid firewalls. This old security standby maintains the connection state which can be quickly filled by an attacker, rending the system useless and making it easier to take the server offline. This makes even the largest firewalls vulnerable to even the smallest attacks. Look for a hosting provider that can manage and secure your servers or build proxies using load balancers. Load balancers such as nginx or haproxy enable your host to dampen the effect of low-and-slow Layer 7 attacks, which is particularly critical if you are on a Windows Server. Finally, it’s worth it to upgrade your networks to modern equipment. Make sure your service contracts are up to date and purchase products that have a reputation for withstanding prolonged attacks. 5. Have a contingency plan Because hackers are constantly learning and DDoS attacks are constantly changing, you could make all the right decisions and still find your company under fire. That’s why a holistic approach is important. Your business should have secure network and system architecture, onsite packet filters, additional mitigation capacity with a third-party service, and skilled security staff. If you don’t have an in-house security expert, it is all the more essential that you have a DDoS mitigation service on call. Such a partner should be available on short notice and dedicated to helping you during a worst-case-scenario attack. Effective DDoS mitigation doesn’t come down to one solution, one partner or one vendor. Defending your company against attacks requires that you stay educated, stay prepared and stay vigilant. A hosting service with the right DDoS partner can be a valuable asset in your company’s business continuity plan (BCP). Whether you decide to manage your security on-site or outsource it, make sure that you build a DDoS mitigation strategy that accounts for your company’s specific needs, as well as the ever-evolving nature of attack scenarios. Source: http://www.itproportal.com/2013/12/03/5-ddos-defence-strategies-every-company-should-know/

Popular Bitcoin forum targeted in DNS and DDoS attack

Roughly 175,000 members registered on bitcointalk.org are being discouraged from logging into their accounts following attacks against the popular Bitcoin forum, according to an advisory on the top of the main page. “If you used your password to login between 06:00 Dec 1 UTC and 20:00 Dec 2 UTC, then your password may have been captured in a man-in-the-middle attack, and you should change your password here and wherever else you used it,” according to the advisory. On Monday, a bitcointalk.org administrator named ‘theymos’ wrote that what likely happened is an attacker took advantage of a vulnerability in the forum’s registrar, Anonymous Speech, to redirect the domain name system (DNS) to a different point. Bitcointalk.org was promptly transferred to a different registrar as a result, theymos explained, but the administrator added that those types of changes take time and that users should avoid logging into the website for about 20 hours. “Because the HTTPS protocol is pretty terrible [on the forum], this alone could have allowed the attacker to intercept and modify encrypted forum transmissions, allowing them to see passwords sent during login, authentication cookies, PMs, etc.,” theymos wrote. “Your password only could have been intercepted if you actually entered it while the forum was affected.” The administrator added, “I invalidated all security codes, so you’re not at risk of having your account stolen if you logged in using the “remember me” feature without actually entering your password.” Meanwhile, the Bitcoin forum is concurrently the target of a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, theymos wrote, adding that while the two events are probably linked, it is unclear why the attacker is doing both at once. Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/popular-bitcoin-forum-targeted-in-dns-and-ddos-attack/article/323311/

Google Nexus 5 vulnerable to DDoS attack

Google Nexus smartphones including the latest Google Nexus 5 running Android 4.4 KitKat are vulnerable to denial-of-service attack via Flash SMS messages; it has been revealed on Friday during DefCamp security conference in Bucharest, Romania. Bogdan Alecu, a system administrator working with Levi9 – an IT services company, performed a live test during the conference on a Nexus 4 phone running Android 4.3. Alecu showed through the test that after receiving 30 odd Flash messages, the smartphone became unresponsive. During this state the phone neither responded to screen taps nor was it able to receive any phone calls and had to be rebooted manually to get it in functional order. Flash messages are Class 0 SMS that gets displayed on phones’ screen directly without getting stored on the device. Users have the option to saving the message or dismissing it. According to Alecu, there have been instances during this tests that the phone behaves in a different manner at times and loses mobile network connectivity temporarily. The connectivity is restored in a short while with ability to place and receive phone calls, but internet connectivity is lost up until the phone is manually restarted. There are instances when the messaging app crashes and the Nexus smartphone reboots. The issue has been discovered over a year ago revealed Alecu and has been tested on all Google Galaxy Nexus smartphones running Android 4.x including the recently released Nexus 5. Alecu revealed that he has contacted Google multiple times just to receive automated response. Some one did respond that the issue will be resolved in Android 4.3, but unfortunately it still persists and has been passed onto Android 4.4 KitKat. There is no official fix for the vulnerability and till then the only workaround is an app named Class0Firewall (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silentservices.class0firewall&hl=en) developed by Michael Mueller, an IT security consultant from Germany in collaboration with Alecu. Source: http://www.techienews.co.uk/973439/google-nexus-5-vulnerable-denial-service-attack/

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Google Nexus 5 vulnerable to DDoS attack

DDos Is Hot, Planning Is Not

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks continue to plague major corporations today, but half of organizations don’t have a plan or defense against DDoS attacks, a new survey found. Nearly 45 percent of organizations surveyed by Corero have no DDoS response plan, while some 21 percent don’t have a response team set up in the case of a DDoS attack targeting their networks. Around 60 percent say they don’t have a designated DDoS response team, and 40 percent say they don’t have a point of contact within their organizations when a DDoS hits, according to the survey of some 100 respondents. “Half of them aren’t really doing anything about DDoS. They’re just hoping nothing will happen to them, or they [will just be] putting up with inconvenience it’s causing in the meantime,” says Ashley Stephenson, CEO of Corero, which will release full data from the survey next month. Stephenson says he has seen cases where corporations had no idea that their own computing resources were being used in DDoS attacks against them. “A lot of people are not really paying attention to what’s going on, and that’s facilitating the malicious activity going on out there,” he says. More than 54 percent of the organizations surveyed say they have either an out-of-date network diagram of their infrastructures or no diagram at all. Some 66 percent don’t have statistics on network traffic patterns and traffic volume baselines to help identify when a DDoS is brewing. One of the reasons DDoS attacks have become so popular is that they are relatively inexpensive to pull off. “It’s a cheap resource being used to launch the attacks,” Stephenson says. “And the more we invest in good Internet [technology], the greater power is available for third parties to leverage it and do these attacks … [The attackers] are just cataloging all of these vulnerabilities and exploitable resources and calling on them when necessary to affect the attack.” Compromised desktop machines traditionally have been the most popular weapons for DDoSing a target, but, increasingly, attackers are deploying servers for more firepower. “That takes fewer bots but much more powerful [ones],” Stephenson says. A recent report by Dell SecureWorks revealed just how much DDoS-for-hire services cost in the cyberunderground. Those services cost only $3 to $5 per hour and $90 to $100 per day, Dell SecureWorks found. And a weeklong attack goes for $400 to $600. Source: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/survey-ddos-is-hot-planning-is-not/240164306?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

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DDos Is Hot, Planning Is Not