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The Good
We’re back with the most interesting threat intel of the week. As is our custom, let’s first acknowledge all the positive advancements that took place in the cybersecurity landscape over the past week. Instagram is testing a new feature that automatically locks users’ old usernames for 14 days after switching to a new handle. National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has published a guide to protect mobile devices from data breaches. Meanwhile, DHS is requesting a budget of $11.4 million to support the addition of new 150 cybersecurity positions by the end of fiscal 2020.
- National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has published a guide titled ‘Mobile Device Security: Cloud and Hybrid Build’ for organizations to protect mobile devices from data breaches. This publication is a ‘how to guide’ for organizations and government agencies to protect mobile devices via commercially available technology.
- Instagram is testing a new feature that automatically locks users’ old usernames for 14 days after switching to a new handle. This ‘username auto-lock’ feature will put an end to hackers who use bots to grab usernames as soon as the users switch to a new handle.
- The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is requesting a budget of $11.4 million to support the addition of new 150 cybersecurity positions by the end of fiscal 2020. In order to remain competitive with the private sector, the government has given DHS the authority to exempt its cyber employees from certain hiring and compensation requirements.
- Europol has announced the adoption of the new Law Enforcement Emergency Response Protocol that covers malicious and criminal cyber incidents. The new protocol focuses on rapid assessment, sharing of information, and coordination of the international aspects of an investigation.
- Brunei is planning to set up a National Cyber Security Centre in order to safeguard the country from cyber threats in line with the government’s strategy to equip technology for economic gain. National Cyber Security Centre will help Brunei to monitor and coordinate efforts at the national level in order to defend cybersecurity threats.
The Bad
Over the past week, several data breaches and massive cyber attacks came to light. Gnosticplayers seller, who disclosed 800 million profiles, has made a comeback with the fourth batch of stolen data put up for sale in the DreamMarket marketplace. The aluminum giant, Norsk Hydro suffered a cyber attack switching some of its operations to a manual mode. In the meantime, Facebook revealed that almost hundreds of millions of users passwords were stored in a readable format on its internal data storage systems.
- Gnosticplayers, who exposed and sold 800 millions of user records in February 2019, has yet again come out with the fourth batch of 26 million user records put up for sale in the DreamMarket marketplace. The stolen data belongs to customers of six companies across the world such as GameSalad, Estante Virtual, Coubic, LifeBear, Bukalapak, and YouthManual.
- Norsk Hydro, one of the world's largest aluminum producers suffered a cyber attack switching some of its operations to a manual mode. The cyber attack has impacted Hydro’s operations and IT systems in most of the business areas across the globe. However, people safety is not affected by the attack.
- A new sextortion scam campaign is underway pretending to come from the technical collection officer of the Central Intelligence Agency and claiming that you are involved in a case that deals with the distribution of child pornography. The scam emails state that you will be arrested as a part of an international operation and demands $10000 in bitcoin to remove your details from the case list.
- Researchers discovered an unprotected database that contained over 1.5 million customer records from online retail sites such as GearBest, Zaful, Rosegal, and DressLily. The exposed information includes customers’ names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, location addresses, IP addresses, nation ID, passport details, account passwords, customers’ orders, payment methods, and invoices.
- ‘Bad Tidings’ phishing campaign targets Saudi Arabia government agencies and a single Saudi-based financial institution impersonating the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Interior’s e-Service Absher. This campaign leveraged three spoofing techniques including Punycode spoofing, SubDomain spoofing, and Typosquatting.
- Researchers observed two new active phishing campaigns targeting Netflix and American Express (AMEX) users to steal users’ personal information, payment card details, login credentials, and social security information. The phishing emails sent to Netflix and AMEX users included a web fillable form attachment that urges users to download the attachment and fill out the form.
- Magecart threat group targeted the bedding websites MyPillow.com and Amerisleep.com in order to steal customers’ personal information and payment card information. While MyPillow has restored its site after the attack, Amerisleep is yet to respond with a fix.
- The Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) has been hit by a ransomware attack. The ransomware attack encrypted several databases and servers, making data and email services inaccessible. The impacted databases and servers include the PFEW national members database, claims case management system, and the booking system for conference and hotel facilities.
- The social media Giant Facebook revealed that hundreds of millions of users’ passwords were stored in a readable format on its internal data storage systems. However, Facebook confirmed that there has been no evidence of any misuse of user passwords by its employees.
New Threats
Several vulnerabilities and malware strains emerged over the past week. Researchers observed a new variant of the Mirai botnet that uses 11 new exploits and targets smart TVs and wireless presentation systems. Researchers uncovered the Google photos vulnerability that could allow attackers to infer the metadata of the images stored in Google Photos. Last but not least, a new malspam campaign disguised as leaked documents that contain information about the ‘Boeing 737 Max crashes’ was observed in the wild distributing H-Worm RAT and Adwind info-stealer malware.
- Researchers observed a new variant of the Mirai botnet that uses 11 new exploits and targets LG Supersign TVs and WePresent WiPG-1000 wireless presentation systems. In addition to using new exploits in its multi-exploit battery, this new variant also includes new credentials to use in brute force attacks against devices.
- A new malspam campaign disguised as leaked documents that contain information about the ‘Boeing 737 Max crashes’ distributes H-Worm RAT and Adwind info-stealer malware to the recipients’ computer.
- A German pen-testing firm named SySS GmbH disclosed that Fujitsu LX901 wireless desktop sets consisting of a wireless mouse and wireless keyboard are vulnerable to keystroke injection attacks. Fujitsu LX901 wireless keyboard sets are vulnerable to keystroke attacks due to ‘an insecure implementation of the data communication’.
- Researchers observed a new NETWIRE phishing campaign that uses a ‘Process Hollowing’ technique that involves VBScript, PowerShell, and the .NET framework to perform a code injection attack.
- Researchers observed the come back of Fin7 threat group with a new administrative panel and previously unseen malware samples. In the new campaigns, researchers observed two new malware samples ‘SQLRat’, ‘DNSbot’ and the threat group’s new attack administrative panel ‘Astra’.
- A security researcher uncovered that Google Photos is vulnerable to a browser-based timing attack called Cross Site Search. This vulnerability could allow attackers to infer the metadata of the images stored in Google Photos. To be precise, the vulnerability could allow attackers to know where, when, and with whom your photos were taken.
- New ransomware dubbed ‘JNEC.a’ propagates by exploiting the WinRAR ACE vulnerability. Researchers noted that this the first ransomware that spreads via the 19-year-old WinRAR ACE exploit. Once the ransomware encrypts files in a computer, it generates a Gmail address that victims need to create through which they will receive the decryption key.
- A security researcher discovered a critical bug in the open-source, reverse engineering tool ‘Ghidra’. The vulnerability found in Ghidra could be exploited with a remote code execution attack. This bug has been addressed in the latest version of Ghidra v9.0.1.
- Cardinal RAT has resurfaced after two years with a new variant. The updated variant of the Cardinal RAT is used in a series of attacks against Israel-based financial technology firms. Researchers noted that this new Cardinal RAT variant shares a relationship with another malware family named EVILNUM.
- A critical bug was detected in the SSH client PuTTY that could allow Man in the Middle (MitM) attacks. The vulnerability which is designated as vuln-dss-verify primarily affects DSA signature checking and provides the attacker with an opportunity to bypass signature checks.
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Posted on: March 22, 2019
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