Information Technology

The number of ransomware attacks has more than doubled over the last year as cybercriminals continue their relentless campaigns to hold networks and data to ransom.According to an analysis by cybersecurity researchers at SonicWall, the volume of attempted ransomware attacks targeting their customers rose by 105% in 2021, to a total of 623.3 million attempted incidents throughout the year. The figure also represents more than triple the number of attempted ransomware attacks recorded in 2019.The biggest surge in ransomware attacks came between June and September 2021, a period that featured some of the most significant incidents of last year. These included the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, the JBS ransomware attack and the Kaseya ransomware attack.Both Colonial and JBS were among the ransomware victims who opted to pay cybercriminals millions of dollars in ransom demands in order to obtain a decryption key to restore their networks.Cybersecurity providers and law enforcement agencies recommend against giving in to ransom demands, as it shows criminals that ransomware attacks work. But in some cases, victims perceive it to be the most efficient way of restoring the network – although even with the correct decryption key, this can still take months of effort.Cybercriminals are also using the extra leverage provided by threatening to leak data stolen from compromised networks if they don’t receive a ransom payment.

SEE: A winning strategy for cybersecurity (ZDNet special report)According to SonicWall’s statistics, the United States was by far the largest target for ransomware attacks, but the volume of detected incidents more than doubled in many regions around the world including Europe and Asia.While action has been taken against some significant ransomware groups, such as the apparent takedown of REvil in January, the SonicWall report warns that this has been “largely ineffective” in stemming the tide of ransomware as a whole.”Due to the lucrative nature of ransomware, as soon as one group is taken down, new ones rise to fill the void,” says the paper. But despite the continuing scourge of ransomware, according to SolarWinds, there are relatively simple steps that organisations can take to prevent them from falling victim – such as practising better password hygiene and using multi-factor authentication.Cracking simple passwords is one of the easiest ways for cybercriminals to gain access to accounts and networks, particularly if they’re common passwords, or the username and password have previously been leaked in a breach. Using unique passwords on accounts can help prevent unauthorised access.In addition, applying multi-factor authentication across the network provides an extra barrier of protection against hackers attempting to breach an account.”The Colonial Pipeline breach could almost certainly have been prevented with the use of two-factor authentication,” said the paper.”While cyberdefense has become more sophisticated and specialized over time, in some cases the simplest prevention is still some of the best”.MORE ON CYBERSECURITY More

Microsoft has warned of new threats impacting blockchain technologies and Web3 including “ice phishing” campaigns. 

The blockchain, decentralized technologies, DeFi, smart contracts, the concept of a ‘metaverse’ and Web3 — the decentralized foundation built on top of cryptographic systems that underlay blockchain projects — all have the potential to produce radical changes in how we understand and experience connectivity today. Read on: What is Web3? Everything you need to know about the decentralized future of the internetHowever, with every technological innovation, there may also be new avenues created for cyberattackers and Web3 is no exception.  Today’s most common threats include mass spam and phishing conducted over email and social media platforms, social engineering, and vulnerability exploitation.  On February 16, the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team said that phishing, in particular, has made its way over to the blockchain, custodial wallets, and smart contracts – “reaffirming the durability of these threats as well as the need for security fundamentals to be built into related future systems and frameworks.” Microsoft’s cybersecurity researchers say that phishing attacks focused on Web3 and the blockchain can take various forms. 

One of the threats to watch out for is an attacker trying to obtain the private, cryptographic keys to access a wallet containing digital assets. While emailed phishing attempts do occur, social media scams are rife. For example, scam artists may send direct messages to users publicly asking for help from a cryptocurrency service — and while pretending to be from a support team, they ask for the key.  Another tactic is by launching fake airdrops for free tokens on social media sites, and when users try to access their new assets, they are redirected to malicious domains that either try to steal credentials or execute cryptojacking malware payloads on a victim’s machine.  In addition, cybercriminals are known to conduct typo-squatting to impersonate legitimate blockchain and cryptocurrency services. They register website domains containing small errors or changes — such as cryptocurency.com rather than cryptocurrency.com — and set up phishing websites to steal keys directly.  Ice phishing is different and ignores private keys entirely. This attack method attempts to dupe a victim into signing a transaction that hands over the approval of a user’s tokens to a criminal.  Such transactions can be used in DeFi environments and smart contracts to permit a token swap to take place, for example.
Microsoft
“Once the approval transaction has been signed, submitted, and mined, the spender can access the funds,” Microsoft noted. “In case of an ‘ice phishing’ attack, the attacker can accumulate approvals over a period of time and then drain all victim’s wallets quickly.”The most high-profile example of ice phishing is last year’s BadgerDAO compromise. Attackers were able to compromise the front-end of BadgerDAO to obtain access to a Cloudflare API key, and malicious scripts were then injected — and removed — from the Badger smart contract.  Customers with high balances were selected and they were asked to sign fraudulent transaction approvals. BadgerDAO said in a post-mortem of the phishing attack that “the script intercepted Web3 transactions and prompted users to allow a foreign address approval to operate on ERC-20 tokens in their wallet.” “After phishing a number of approvals, a funding account sent 8 ETH to the exploiter’s account to fuel a series of transferFrom calls on the users’ approved tokens,” BadgerDAO said. “This allowed the attacker to move funds on behalf of the users to other accounts, which then liquidated the funds and exited via the Badger Bridge to BTC.” Approximately $121 million was stolen. An audit and recovery plan is underway.  “The Badger DAO attack highlights the need to build security into Web3 while it is in its early stages of evolution and adoption,” Microsoft says. “At a high level, we recommend that software developers increase security usability of Web3. In the meantime, end-users need to explicitly verify information through additional resources, such as reviewing the project’s documentation and external reputation/informational websites.” Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

Trickbot malware is a thorn in the side of cybersecurity professionals and is now targeting the customers of 60 major institutions in phishing attacks and through web injections. 

Trickbot began its journey as a relatively simple Banking Trojan alongside the likes of Zeus, Agent Tesla, Dridex, and DanaBot. However, after the Dyre botnet was retired in 2016 and the infrastructure supporting the prolific Emotet botnet was disrupted by Europol and the FBI last year, more attention has been paid to Trickbot activities. The malware is modular, which means that users can adopt the software to conduct a wide range of attacks – and these assaults can be tailored depending on the desired victims. On February 16, Check Point Research (CPR) published a new study on Trickbot, noting that the malware is now being used in targeted attacks against customers of 60 “high profile” organizations, many of whom are located in the United States.  The companies themselves are not the victims of the malware. Instead, TrickBot operators are leveraging the brands’ reputations and names in numerous attacks.  According to CPR, the brands being abused by TrickBot include the Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Amazon, PayPal, American Express, Robinhood, Blockchain.com, and the Navy Federal Credit Union, among others.  Financial organizations, cryptocurrency exchanges, and technology firms are all on the list. 

The researchers have also provided technical details on three key modules – out of roughly 20 that Trickbot can use – used in attacks and to prevent analysis or reverse-engineering.  The first, injectDll, is a web injection module that can compromise a browser session. This module can inject JavaScript code into a browser to perform banking data and account credential theft, such as by diverting victims to malicious pages that appear to be owned by one of the legitimate companies mentioned above.  In addition, the module’s web inject format uses a tiny payload that is obfuscated to prevent detection.    TabDLL uses five steps to steal information. The malicious code opens up LSASS application memory to store stolen data, injects code into explorer.exe, and then forces the victim to enter login credentials before locking them out of their session. The credentials are then stolen and exfiltrated from LSASS using Mimikatz, before being whisked away to the attacker’s command-and-control (C2) server.  Furthermore, this module is also able to use the EternalRomance exploit to spread Trickbot across SMBv1 networks.  The third module of note is pwgrabc, designed to steal credentials from applications including the Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers; Microsoft Outlook, FileZilla, TeamViewer, Git, and OpenSSH.  “Trickbot remains a dangerous threat that we will continue to monitor, along with other malware families,” the researchers say. “No matter what awaits TrickBot botnet, the thorough efforts put into the development of sophisticated TrickBot code will likely not be lost and the code would find its usage in the future.” In a separate research study published by IBM Trusteer in January, variants of Trickbot have been discovered that contain new features designed to hamper researchers trying to analyze the malware through reverse-engineering.  Alongside server-side injections and HTTPS C2 communication, Trickbot will throw itself in a loop if ‘code beautifying’ is detected – the automatic clean-up of code to make it more readable and easier to analyze. 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 businessman has pleaded guilty to charges laid against him for selling and using surveillance tools and malware in Mexico and the United States. 

On February 15, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said that Carlos Guerrero, a resident of Chula Vista, California and Tijuana, Mexico, admitted to “conspiring to sell and use hacking tools manufactured by private companies in Italy, Israel and elsewhere.”The 48-year-old appeared in a San Diego federal court, where prosecutors alleged that Guerrero owned a number of companies registered in the US and Mexico that were used as sales brokers for “interception and surveillance tools.” According to the DoJ, the firms worked with Mexican government clientele, commercial, and private customers.  In 2014 and 2015, Guerrero worked with an Italian company that developed tools for hacking devices and tracking victim locations.  Over time, the businessman expanded his reach and secured further brokerage deals with other surveillance software developers located in Israel and elsewhere.  By 2016 – 2017, Guerrero was brokering the sales of hardware able to jam signals, kits designed to intercept and eavesdrop on Wi-Fi connections, IMSI catchers, and software able to compromise the WhatsApp messaging system. 

“Guerrero admitted to knowing that, in some cases, his Mexican government clients intended to use the interception equipment for political purposes, rather than for legitimate law enforcement purposes,” prosecutors say.  In one example, Guerrero “knowingly” arranged for a mayor in Mexico to use the brokered technologies to break into a rival’s iCloud, Hotmail, and Twitter accounts. In another, a Florida-based sales representative was targeted for their phone and email records in exchange for a $25,000 payment.  Guerrero is yet to be sentenced. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.  “The world we live in is increasingly interconnected by technology meant to improve our lives, but as seen in this case, this same technology can be acquired by bad actors with harmful intentions,” commented Chad Plantz, Special Agent in Charge for HSI San Diego. “HSI and our law enforcement partners will remain committed to bringing to justice those who attempt to manipulate these platforms for nefarious purposes.” Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

The State of Missouri will not prosecute a journalist branded a “hacker” for viewing website source code and reporting a serious security leak. 

In October 2021, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud published a story documenting the exposure of Social Security numbers belonging to teachers, administrators, and counselors caused by security flaws in the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s website. Over 100,000 SSNs were reportedly exposed.  Renaud discovered the issue in a search function on the website and all it took to find SSNs was to press F12 and view the website’s HTML through the developer console.  The news outlet did not go ahead with the story until the department took the impacted pages down and remove the search tool.  St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the flaw, that allowed anyone with a browser to view this sensitive data, privately to DESE prior to publication. However, Missouri Governor Mike Parson took a dim view of the responsible disclosure.  On Twitter, Parson alleged that the journalist “took the records of at least three educators, decoded the HTML source code, and viewed the SSN of those specific educators.”

Parson said: “This matter is serious. The state is committing to bring to justice anyone who hacked our system and anyone who aided or encouraged them to do so — in accordance with what Missouri law allows AND requires. A hacker is someone who gains unauthorized access to information or content. This individual did not have permission to do what they did. They had no authorization to convert and decode the code. We will not rest until we clearly understand the intentions of this individual and why they were targeting Missouri teachers.” Locke Thompson, a Cole County Prosecutor, has declined to press charges. In a statement last week (.PDF), Thompson thanked the governor for his concerns and while “there is an argument to be made that there was a violation of law,” the “issues at the heart of the investigation have been resolved through non-legal means.” “As such, it is not in the best interest of Cole County citizens to utilize the significant resources and taxpayer dollars that would be necessary to pursue misdemeanor criminal charges in this case,” the prosecutor said.  The Cole County Prosecutor’s Office will not comment further on the case. After the threat of prosecution was dissolved, Post-Dispatch Publisher Ian Caso said that the “accusations against our reporter were unfounded and made to deflect embarrassment for the state’s failures and for political purposes.” Renaud said the decision was a “relief” but does not “repair the harm done to me and my family.” In an interview with St. Louis on the Air, the journalist added that the governor has missed an opportunity to “change the public discourse” and “to change the way the politics are done in the state.” Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews.
Image: Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews introduced three new Bills into Parliament on Thursday, covering the federal government’s ransomware action plan, critical aviation and marine cybersecurity, and mobile phone access in prisons. The first of the three Bills contains criminal law reforms announced in October last year as part of Home Affairs’ ransomware action plan to create tougher penalties for cybercriminals. Chief among these penalties are an increased maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment for cybercriminals that use ransomware and a new maximum penalty of 25 years’ imprisonment for criminals that target Australia’s critical infrastructure. Labelled by Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo earlier this week as the government’s “offence” against cyber threats, the Bill also seeks to criminalise individuals buying and selling malware for the purpose of committing a computer offence and dealing with stolen data. The Bill, if passed, would also expand law enforcement’s ability to monitor, freeze, and seize ill-gotten gains of criminals to also cover digital assets, including those held by digital currency exchanges. According to Andrews, the reforms are a response to the growing threat of malicious cyber attacks. “This Bill gives Australian law enforcement agencies the legal tools and capabilities they need to pursue and prosecute ransomware gangs and the pervasive threat of ransomware attacks on Australia and Australians,” Andrews said. “The Morrison government will not tolerate attacks on Australia’s critical infrastructure, small businesses, or targeting the most vulnerable members of our community. Cybercriminals use ransomware to do Australians real and long-lasting harm.”

When the ransomware action plan was first announced, Andrews said the legislation would sit alongside a mandatory ransomware incident reporting regime, which would require organisations with a turnover of over AU$10 million per year to formally notify government if they experience a cyber attack. Concrete details of the ransomware reporting regime are still yet to surface, however.The second Bill that was introduced into Parliament by Andrews on Thursday was the Transport Security Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill 2022 (TSACI Bill), which Andrews said is aimed at bolstering the cyber defence of Australia’s airports and seaports.”The aviation and maritime transport sectors that support our economy and way of life are targets for criminals, terrorists. and malicious foreign actors. This is why in times of emergency we must be prepared to protect our critical aviation and maritime sectors,” Andrews said. Unlike the pair of Critical Infrastructures that already entered Parliament, with the first of them becoming law last year, the TSACI Bill is focused on creating additional reporting requirements for aviation and maritime entities whereas the other two Bills were drafted to generally cover entities across Australia’s 11 designated critical infrastructure sectors. The federal government said critical aviation and maritime needed additional reporting requirements against cyber threats due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as for times of emergency. This includes a new requirement for critical aviation and maritime entities to report cybersecurity incidents to both Home Affairs and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). Examples of cybersecurity incidents are malware, phishing, denial of service, and cross-site scripting, the Bill’s explanatory memorandum details. The new Bill also classifies cybersecurity incidents that have a relevant impact on a critical aviation or maritime asset to be unlawful interference. If the person who created the cybersecurity incident that had a relevant impact is convicted, they could potentially face the tougher penalties proposed in the aforementioned ransomware action plan legislation. A cybersecurity incident will be deemed to have created a relevant impact if it affected the availability, integrity, reliability or confidentiality of information about the asset.The Bill also seeks to create an “all hazards” reporting framework that will require critical aviation and maritime entities to consider and be resilient to any natural disasters, cyber vulnerabilities, and supply chain disruptions that could impact their ability to provide services. According to the TSACI Bill’s explanatory memorandum, the new reporting requirements align with the reporting requirements contained in the first Critical Infrastructure Bill and work alongside the existing reporting requirements for other types of aviation and maritime security incidents. The last of three Bills is legislation to assist state and territory corrective services authorities identify, investigate, and prevent illegal mobile phone criminal activity in Australia’s prisons. If passed, the Bill would amend the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (TIA Act) to provide prison authorities with the ability to access telecommunications data to track down illegal mobile phone use activity in prisons. “It is vital for prison authorities to have the powers they need to uncover illicit mobile phones and access their telecommunications data to prevent and prosecute criminal and national security offences inside Australia’s prisons,” Andrews said. “Australians expect our prison authorities to have the legal powers they need to identify and prosecute an inmate or inmates found to be linked to illegal mobile phones, to stop criminal activity, and to stop inmates establishing criminal networks within our prison system. Prior to the prison mobile phone legislation coming before Parliament, Andrews already provided immediate access to these powers to Corrective Services NSW, using her temporary declaration powers under the TIA Act. Related Coverage More

Phishing attacks impersonating emails from LinkedIn have grown 232% since the start of February, according to cybersecurity firm Egress.The company released a report about cybercriminals using display name spoofing and stylized HTML templates to socially engineer victims into clicking on phishing links in Outlook 365 and then entering their credentials into fraudulent websites. 

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Many people have become accustomed to seeing emails from LinkedIn saying things like “You appeared in 4 searches this week,” “You have 1 new message,” and “Your profile matches this job.”But now, cybercriminals are using webmail addresses with a LinkedIn display names to send fake emails with the same subject lines. “The emails use multiple stylized HTML templates, including the LinkedIn logo, brand colors and icons. Within the body of the email, the cybercriminal uses other well-known organizations’ names (including American Express and CVS Carepoint) to make the attacks more convincing,” Egress explained. “When clicked, the phishing links send the victim to a website that harvests their LinkedIn log-in credentials. The footer features elements from LinkedIn’s genuine email footer, including their global HQ address, hyperlinks to unsubscribe and to their support section, and the recipient’s information.”
Egress
Egress noted that the emails were particularly concerning right now because so many people are looking for new jobs and switching employers, making them more likely to click on malicious links that look identical to some LinkedIn messages.

Yehuda Rosen, senior software engineer at nVisium, added that LinkedIn has hundreds of millions of users, many of whom are very accustomed to seeing frequent, legitimate emails from LinkedIn. They may inevitably click without carefully checking that each and every email is real.Also: Microsoft allows US users to cut politics from their LinkedIn feedsA record number of people have already left their jobs and are looking for work, and Egress said they have seen a variety of targets in different industries across North America and the UK.”The attacks we have seen are bypassing traditional email security defenses to be delivered into people’s inboxes. We advise organizations to examine their current anti-phishing securing stack to ensure they have intelligent controls deployed directly into people’s mailboxes,” Egress said.”Individuals should take extreme caution when reading notification emails that request them to click on a hyperlink, particularly on mobile devices. We recommend hovering over links before clicking on them and going directly to LinkedIn to check for messages and updates.” More

Nine vulnerabilities were added to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities this week, with two carrying a remediation date of March 1. The two vulnerabilities — CVE-2022-24086 and CVE-2022-0609 — relate to Adobe Commerce and Magento as well as Google Chrome. 
CISA
Adobe released an emergency patch on Monday to tackle CVE-2022-24086, which security companies have confirmed is being exploited in the wild. The tech giant said that the vulnerability impacts Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source. It is being weaponized “in very limited attacks targeting Adobe Commerce merchants,” according to Adobe.The bug impacts Adobe Commerce (2.3.3-p1-2.3.7-p2) and Magento Open Source (2.4.0-2.4.3-p1), as well as earlier versions. The vulnerability has been issued a CVSS severity score of 9.8 out of 10. Adobe’s patches can be downloaded and manually applied here. Adobe urged customers using the Magento 1 e-commerce platform to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Commerce after security company Sansec detected a mass breach of over 500 stores running the platform. In a statement to ZDNet, Adobe said it ended support for Magento 1 on June 30, 2020. “We continue to encourage merchants to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Commerce for the most up-to-date security, flexibility, extensibility, and scalability,” an Adobe spokesperson said. “At a minimum, we recommend Magento Open Source merchants on Magento 1 to upgrade to the latest version of Magento Open Source (built on Magento 2), to which Adobe contributes key security updates.”

The other issue given a remediation date of March 1 is a Google Chrome Use-After-Free vulnerability. Google released a fix for the issue on Monday and said it was reported on February 10 by Adam Weidemann and Clément Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group.”Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2022-0609 exists in the wild,” Google Chrome’s Srinivas Sista added. The rest of the vulnerabilities on the list have remediation dates of August 15.CISA has increased the number of times they update the known exploited vulnerabilities catalog, adding more and more bugs more often in 2022. Their last update was just five days ago and included one vulnerability with a remediation date of February 24. More