Eliana Willis

Update (July 16, 2021): Artwork Archive told ZDNet it received notice a month or so ago about a single open S3 bucket — a folder where it keeps publicly shareable reports. It addressed it, and after a review by its team, it found no suspicious activity. Artwork Archive said it has also alerted users about this issue. Researchers say a platform used to connect artists and potential buyers leaked the personally identifiable information (PII) of users. 

On Friday, the WizCase team, led by Ata Hakçıl, said that misconfigurations in an Amazon S3 bucket belonging to Artwork Archive exposed over 200 000 files. Based in Denver, Colorado, Artwork Archive is marketed as a platform to “give artists, collectors, and organizations a better way to manage their art.” Software solutions are offered on a subscription basis to manage both the purchase and sale of artwork. The security researchers discovered the bucket, which did not require any authentication to access, on May 23.In total, 421GB of data was exposed. Dating back to August 2015, the records related to over 7000 artists, collectors, and galleries, and “potentially their customers, too,” according to WizCase. Data available to view included full names, physical addresses, and email addresses.  Purchase details, too, were exposed. WizCase found approximately 9000 invoices, as shown below, including the price of artwork and sales agreements, alongside revenue reports.
WizCase

WizCase

In addition, “exported contacts” were stored in the bucket, containing full names, phone numbers, email addresses, city and country, and company affiliations of individuals.”These were usually contacts an artist added to Artwork Archive via their contact management feature and included art institutions, individual artists, art collectors, friends, and family,” the researchers say.  Finally, WizCase discovered inventory reports which listed artwork owned by “specific artists, buyers, and galleries.”  Artwork Archive was made aware of the security issue on May 23 and secured the storage system three days later, on May 26.  ZDNet has reached out to Artwork Archive, and we will update when we hear back.  Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

Researchers have provided a deep dive into Toddler, a new Android banking Trojan that is surging across Europe. 

In a report shared with ZDNet, the PRODAFT Threat Intelligence (PTI) team said that the malware, also known as TeaBot/Anatsa, is part of a rising trend of mobile banking malware attacking countries, including Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Toddler was first disclosed by Cleafy following its discovery in January. While still under active development, the mobile Trojan has been used in attacks against the customers of 60 European banks.   In June, Bitdefender said that Spain and Italy were infection hotspots, although the UK, France, Belgium, Australia, and the Netherlands were also being targeted. According to PTI, in an analysis of the malware this year, Spain has secured the top spot for cyberattacks. So far, at least 7 632 mobile devices have been infected. After infiltrating a command-and-control (C2) server used by the Trojan’s operators, the researchers also found over 1000 sets of stolen banking credentials.  Although researchers from multiple organizations have tracked Toddler to malicious .APK files and Android apps, infection vectors vary. While the Trojan has not — as of now — been found on Google Play, numerous legitimate websites have been compromised to host and serve the malware.  

While Toddler is pre-configured to target the users of “dozens” of banks across Europe, the company has found that 100% of infections detected, so far, relate to only 18 financial organizations. In total, five of the companies accounted for close to 90% of attacks — which the team believes may indicate a successful SMS-based phishing campaign.  Toddler is run-of-the-mill Trojan software in many ways. It contains the functions you would typically expect: the ability to steal data, including banking details, keylogging, taking screenshots, intercepting two-factor authentication (2FA) codes, SMS interception, and connecting to a C2 to transfer information, accept commands, and link the infected device to a botnet.  The Trojan will use overlay attacks to dupe victims into submitting their EU bank credentials by displaying fake login screens. Upon installation, the malware monitors what legitimate apps are being opened — and once target software is launched, the overlay attack begins. “Toddler downloads the specially-crafted login page for the opened target application from its C2,” PRODAFT noted. “The downloaded webview phishing page is then laid over the target application. The user suspects nothing because this event happens almost instantaneously when the legitimate application is opened.”The malware will also attempt to steal other account records too, such as those used to access cryptocurrency wallets.  The C2’s command list includes activating an infected device’s screen, prompting permission requests, changing volume levels, attempting to grab codes from Google Authenticator via Accessibility, and uninstalling apps.  The level of persistence this Trojan is able to maintain is unusual. Toddler contains multiple persistence mechanisms — the most notable of which is preventing an infected device from being rebooted by abusing Accessibility functions. Toddler can also prevent a handset from being used in safe mode. “Toddler sets a new precedent for persistence module implementation,” the researchers say. “Removal of the malware from the device requires huge technical expertise, and it looks like the process will not get easier in the future.” Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

A Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group is spreading fake Zoom software to spy on targets in South East Asia. 

The group, dubbed LuminousMoth by Kaspersky, is focused on cyberespionage and the theft of information from high-profile targets. Dating back to at least October 2020, roughly 100 victims have been detected in Myanmar, and close to 1,400 have been recorded in the Philippines. However, these infection rates may not tell the whole story, as the researchers believe that only a small subset of these numbers was of interest to the APT and were exploited further.  LuminousMoth’s true targets, in particular, are government agencies in both of these countries and abroad. According to the researchers, the preliminary rate of infection may be due to LuminousMoth’s initial attack vector and spreading mechanisms, deemed “noisy” and unusual for an APT to adopt.  The APT begins by sending spear phishing emails that contain Dropbox download links to a .RAR archive, named with political or COVID-19 themes. This file contains two malicious .DLL files which are able to then pull and deploy malicious executables on an infected system.  Once this stage of infection has been completed, LuminousMoth will download a Cobalt Strike beacon and side-load two malicious libraries designed to establish persistence and to copy the malware onto any removable storage drives connected to a victim system.

In cases noted by Kaspersky, the threat actors have then deployed a fake Zoom app, software that has become a lifeline — alongside Microsoft Teams, and others — for many businesses forced to go remote during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The software, signed by an organization in Shanghai, is actually used to exfiltrate files of interest to LuminousMoth. Any file found with pre-defined extensions is copied and transferred to a command-and-control (C2) server.   LuminousMoth will also look for cookies and credentials, including those used for Gmail accounts.  “During our test, we set up a Gmail account and were able to duplicate our Gmail session by using the stolen cookies,” Kaspersky says. “We can therefore conclude this post-exploitation tool is dedicated to hijacking and impersonating the Gmail sessions of the targets.” The APT’s activities also appear to overlap with HoneyMyte/Mustang Panda, another Chinese-speaking group, linked to an attack against the office of Myanmar’s president (1,2).  LuminousMoth and HoneyMyte have adopted similar tactics during campaigns including C2 overlaps, .DLL side-loading, the deployment of Cobalt Strike beacons, and similar cookie-stealing functionality. “Both groups, whether related or not, have conducted activity of the same nature — large-scale attacks that affect a wide perimeter of targets with the aim of hitting a few that are of interest,” the researchers say.  Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

Microsoft’s war against private exploit and offensive security sellers continues with a strike against Sourgum. 

On July 15, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said that the Redmond giant has been quietly tackling the threat posed to Windows operating systems by the organization, dubbed a “private-sector offensive actor” (PSOA).  A tip provided by human rights outfit Citizen Lab led Microsoft to the PSOA, dubbed Sourgum, a company said to sell cyberweapons including the DevilsTongue malware. “The weapons disabled were being used in precision attacks targeting more than 100 victims around the world including politicians, human rights activists, journalists, academics, embassy workers, and political dissidents,” Microsoft says.  Approximately half of DevilsTongue victims are located in Palestine, but a handful has also been traced back to countries including Israel, Iran, Spain/Catalonia, and the United Kingdom. According to the Citizen Lab, Sourgum is based in Israel and counts government agencies across the globe among its customers.  With the assistance of Citizen Lab, Microsoft has examined the unique malware family developed by Sourgum and has now pushed protections against it in Windows security products. This includes patching previously unknown vulnerabilities, CVE-2021-31979 and CVE-2021-33771. 

These two vulnerabilities were listed as actively exploited in Microsoft’s latest security update, known as Patch Tuesday, which is issued on a monthly basis. They are both described as Windows Kernel privilege escalation security flaws.  Microsoft says that the exploits are “key” elements of wider attack chains used by Sourgum to target Windows PCs and browsers in order to deliver DevilsTongue. Browser exploits appear to be used in one of the initial attack stages, where they are served through malicious URLs and sent via messaging services including WhatsApp.  The modular malware is described as “complex” with “novel capabilities.” While analysis is ongoing, Microsoft says that DevilsTongue’s main functionality is stored in encrypted .DLL files, only decrypted when loaded into memory, and both configuration and tasking data are separate from the main payload.  DevilsTongue can be used in both user and kernel modes and is capable of .DLL hijacking, COM hijacking, shellcode deployment, file collection, registry tampering, cookie theft, and the extraction of credentials from browsers. A feature of note is a module dedicated to decrypting and extracting conversations taking place over Signal. The malicious code also contains sophisticated obfuscation and persistence mechanisms.  “With these hacking packages, usually the government agencies choose the targets and run the actual operations themselves,” Microsoft says. “The tools, tactics, and procedures used by these companies only add to the complexity, scale, and sophistication of attacks. We take these threats seriously and have moved swiftly alongside our partners to build in the latest protections for our customers.” Detection data has also been shared with the wider security community.  “We’re providing this guidance with the expectation that Sourgum will likely change the characteristics we identify for detection in their next iteration of the malware,” the company added. “Given the actor’s level of sophistication, however, we believe that outcome would likely occur irrespective of our public guidance.” In related news this week, Microsoft disclosed a third vulnerability impacting the Windows Print Spooler service, joining the duo of security flaws known as PrintNightmare. Tracked as CVE-2021-34481, the bug can be exploited to obtain system-level privileges locally. Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

Image: Getty Images
The threat of ransomware dominates the cyber news right now, and rightly so. But this week Rachael Falk, chief executive officer of Australia’s Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre, made a very good point. Ransomware is “totally foreseeable and preventable because it’s a known problem”, Falk told a panel discussion at the Australian Strategy Policy Institute (ASPI) on Tuesday. “It’s known that ransomware is out there. And it’s known that, invariably, the cyber criminals get into organisations through stealing credentials that they get on the dark web [or a user] clicking on a link and a vulnerability,” she said. “We’re not talking about some sort of nation-state really funky sort of zero day that’s happening. This is going on the world over, so it’s entirely foreseeable.” There are “four or five steps you could take that could significantly mitigate this risk,” Falk said. These are patching, multi-factor authentication, and all the stuff in the Australian Signals Directorate’s Essential Eight baseline mitigation strategies. The latest Essential Eight Maturity Model even comes with detailed checklists for Windows-based networks. “Companies are on notice that this is a risk for them,” Falk said. “There’s a known problem often, and a known fix, but people haven’t done it.”

So given this laziness, given that cyber wake-up calls have been ignored since the 1970s, and given that organisations continue to willfully fail to follow the advice they’re given, your correspondent has a question. Has the time come to let Darwinism loose? Should we let all these lazy organisations get hacked, and just let God sort them out? “I love that approach,” Falk said. “It is glacial-like movement, and I think the only change now that might accelerate it is legislation, which obviously government is potentially seeking to introduce at the moment,” she said, referring to proposed changes to critical infrastructure laws. Maybe we’ll only start paying attention when there’s more 5G, more device-to-device communication, and more personal dependence on the network. “I kind of wonder, though, in a macabre kind of way, will the test be when people just can’t use their phones for half an hour,” Falk said. “That’s when you’ll get people going, oh, we just have to have law about this because we can’t cope with [no] iPhones, internet, fridge, streaming, Netflix, you name it.” OK, we’re joking. Probably. In cybersecurity as in public health, blaming the victim is counterproductive. And in many cases it’s the customers and citizens who’d really suffer from ransomware and other cyber attacks that take out an organisation. “It could really, really impact life, and be a threat and risk to life. So I think people have to start thinking about this as not some sort of a joke,” Falk said. “The fact that we joke about, oh, the internet being down for 30 minutes, it could be the matter of a medical procedure is stopped and someone dies halfway through.” In Germany last year, for example, a patient died following a ransomware attack on a hospital in Duesseldorf, which caused her to be re-routed to a hospital more than 30 kilometres away. A police investigation found that she probably would have died anyway, but next time we may not be so lucky. ASPI’s ransomware policy recommendations Fortunately, a global consensus on how to tackle ransomware does seem to be emerging. Just one example is a new report from ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre, Exfiltrate, encrypt, extort: The global rise of ransomware and Australia’s policy options, of which Falk is co-author. On the vexed question of whether organisations should pay a ransom or not, the report recommends that paying them should not be criminalised. Instead, there should be a “mandatory reporting regime … without fear of legal repercussions”. This would be a major step in transparency. Out of all the major ransomware incidents in Australia — Toll Holdings, BlueScope Steel, Lion Dairy and Drinks, legal document-management services firm Law in Order, Nine Entertainment, Eastern Health in Victoria, Uniting Care Qld, and JBS Foods — only JBS has admitted to paying a ransom of $11 million. Such a scheme has already been proposed by Labor in its Ransomware Payments Bill 2021 introduced onto parliament last month as part of its national ransomware strategy. The ASPI report recommends expanding the role of the ASD’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) to include the real-time distribution of publicly available alerts. ACSC should also publish a list of ransomware threat actors and aliases, giving details of their modus operandi and key target sectors, along with suggested mitigation methods. The ASD is already known to be using its classified capabilities to warn of impending ransomware attacks. The report also recommends tackling the “low-hanging fruit” of incentivisation and education. This includes incentives such as tax breaks for cyber investment, grants, or subsidy programs; a “concerted nationwide public ransomware education campaign, led by the ACSC, across all media”; and a “business-focused multi-media public education campaign”, also led by the ACSC. “[This campaign should] educate organisations of all sizes and their people about basic cybersecurity and cyber hygiene. It should focus on the key areas of patching, multifactor authentication, legacy technology, and human error.” Finally, the report recommends creating a “dedicated cross-departmental ransomware taskforce”, including state and territory representatives, to share threat intelligence and develop policy proposals. Your correspondent finds none of these recommendations unreasonable, though there are perhaps questions about whether ACSC is currently well-equipped to run an effective and engaging major public information campaign. Nevertheless, given how slowly Australian organisations have adapted to cyber risks over the last couple of decades, maybe we need a little less carrot and a bit more stick. Related Coverage More

After a pair of PrintNightmare vulnerabilities, the last thing the Windows Print Spooler needed was a third vulnerability, and yet it exists. Microsoft has announced CVE-2021-34481 allows for local privilege escalation to the level of SYSTEM. “An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the Windows Print Spooler service improperly performs privileged file operations. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights,” Microsoft said. “An attacker must have the ability to execute code on a victim system to exploit this vulnerability. “The workaround for this vulnerability is stopping and disabling the Print Spooler service.” Microsoft rates the exploitability of the vulnerability as “more likely”. “Microsoft analysis has shown that exploit code could be created in such a way that an attacker could consistently exploit this vulnerability. Moreover, Microsoft is aware of past instances of this type of vulnerability being exploited. This would make it an attractive target for attackers, and therefore more likely that exploits could be created,” Microsoft’s exploitability index explained.

Microsoft said it was creating a patch, and that the vulnerability was not introduced in its July 13 set of updates. The company has been scrambling to properly patch its Print Spooler service recently. Initially, a critical bug that allowed for remote code execution was announced and labelled as CVE-2021-1675. Exploits were publicly available after Microsoft’s patches failed to fix the issue completely and security researchers that had already published their code, said they deleted it, but it was already branched on GitHub. Microsoft then dropped CVE-2021-34527 later in the week, which had much the same description of running code as SYSTEM as CVE-2021-34481. Unlike the new vulnerability, this one can be run remotely. Related Coverage More