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For a period of 12 hours, Crypto.com paused its users’ ability to withdraw funds, and subsequently asked its users to reset two-factor authentication. “We have a small number of users reporting suspicious activity on their accounts. We will be pausing withdrawals shortly, as our team is investigating. All funds are safe,” the exchange tweeted on Monday afternoon, Sydney time. It wasn’t until early Tuesday morning, that Crypto.com said withdrawals were allowed again and it would take time to clear its backlog. In the meantime, it informed its users they would need to sign back into their accounts and reset their two factor authentication. In the replies to the exchange’s tweets, users were complaining of seeing a number of transactions draining funds from their accounts — typically these transactions were in the order of several thousands of dollars at a time. Soon afterwards, the Australian Football League announced that Crypto.com would become the “official cryptocurrency exchange and official cryptocurrency trading platform of AFL and AFLW”, along with gaining the naming rights to score reviews. “Crypto.com has partnered with a number of elite sporting codes across the world and the AFL is proud to be the first Australian sports league and elite women’s competition globally to work alongside an organisation that shares our passion to progress the future of elite sport and technology,” AFL executive general manager customer and commercial Kylie Rogers said.

The exchange has been spending big on sponsoring sporting teams in recent times, with the most high-profile being when it purchased the naming rights to the building formerly known as Staples Centre in Los Angeles, renaming it to Crypto.com Arena. The company has also previously spent money sponsoring Formula 1, UFC, Paris Saint-Germain, Philadelphia 76ers, and the Montreal Canadiens. Related Coverage More

Singapore has instructed providers of cryptocurrency services not to promote or advertise their offerings to the general public. This applies to companies such as banks and payment institutions that offer such services, and will be further expanded to include the transfer of cryptocurrencies and provision of wallet services. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Monday released new guidelines highlighting that Digital Payment Token (DPT), or commonly known as cryptocurrency, service providers should not promote their offerings to the local population. This effectively means these providers cannot market or advertise their services in public areas, such as through advertisements on public transport, websites, social media, broadcast and print media, and the provision of physical ATMs (automated teller machines). Promotional banners or pop-up ads, for example, on social media platforms should not be used to promote DPT services. 

The engagement of third parties including social media influencers to promote cryptocurrency services to the Singapore public also are not permitted. DPT service providers can only market or advertise on their own corporate websites, mobile apps, or official social media accounts, according to MAS. Services that fall under the guidelines include the buying or selling of cryptocurrencies as well as facilitating the exchange of cryptocurrency. This classification will be widened, when amendments to the Payment Services Act take effect, to include cryptocurrency transfers and the facilitation of DPT exchanges where the service providers do not posses moneys or DPTs. The amendments to the Act were passed in parliament last January. The Act regulates DPTs for risks against money laundering, terrorism financing, and “technology risk”, MAS said.

The regulator said it had “consistently warned” that cryptocurrency trading involved high risks and was not suitable for the general public, as the prices of DPTs were subject to “sharp speculative swings”. It noted that some cryptocurrency service providers had been actively promoting their services through online and physical advertisements or through the provision of physical ATMs located in public areas. The convenient access to ATMs might mislead the public to trade in DPTs “on impulse”, without fully understanding or considering the risks, MAS said. Its assistant managing director of policy, payments, and financial crime, Loo Siew Yee, said: “MAS strongly encourages the development of blockchain technology and innovative application of crypto tokens in value-adding use cases. But the trading of cryptocurrencies is highly risky and not suitable for the general public. DPT service providers, therefore, should not portray the trading of DPTs in a manner that trivialises the high risks of trading in DPTs or engage in marketing activities that target the general public.”Noting that the cryptocurrency services sector was rapidly evolving, MAS said it would continue to review the provision of DPT services to the public and might update its guidelines “as necessary”.There currently are several ATMs across Singapore from which cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, can be bought and sold. Companies operating these machines include Daenerys & Co. and Bitcoin Exchange.A study last August found that 67% of personal investors in Singapore expanded their cryptocurrency portfolio, with 78% revealing they owned Ethereum. Some 69% had Bitcoin and 40% carried Cardano, according to the survey, which was conducted by cryptocurrency platform Gemini, financial platform Seedly, and cryptocurrency price-monitoring site CoinMarketCap.  RELATED COVERAGE More

Linux-based systems are everywhere and are a core part of the internet infrastructure but it’s low-powered Internet of Things (IoT) devices that have become the main target for Linux malware.With billions of internet-connected devices like cars, fridges and network devices online, IoT devices have become a prime target for certain malware activity — namely distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, where junk traffic aim to flood a target and knock them offline. Security vendor CrowdStrike says in a new report that the most prevalent Linux-based malware families in 2021 were XorDDoS, Mirai and Mozi, which collectively accounted for 22% of all Linux-based IoT malware that year. These were also a main driver of malware targeting all Linux-based systems, which grew 35% in 2021 compared with 2020. Mozi, which emerged in 2019, is a peer-to-peer botnet that uses the distributed hash table (DHT) — a lookup system — and relies on weak Telnet passwords and known vulnerabilities to target networking devices, IoT, and video recorders, among other internet-connected products. The use of DHT allows Mozi to hide its command and control communication behind legitimate DHT traffic. There were 10 times more Mozi samples in 2021 compared to 2021, Crowdstrike notes. XorDDoS, a Linux botnet for large scale DDoS attacks, has been around since at least 2014 and scans the net for Linux servers with SSH servers that aren’t protected with a strong password or encryption keys. It attempts to guess the password to give attackers remote control over the device. More recently, XorDDoS began targeting misconfigured Docker clusters in the cloud rather than its historical targets such as routers and internet-connected smart devices. Docker containers are attractive for cryptocurrency mining malware because they provide more bandwidth, CPU and memory but DDoS malware benefits from IoT devices because they provide more network protocols to abuse. However, since many IoT devices are already infected, Docker clusters became an alternative target. According to CrowdStrike, some XorDDoS variants are built to scan and search for Docker servers with the 2375 port open, offering an unencrypted Docker socket and remote root passwordless access to the host. This can give the attacker root access to the machine. 

XorDDoS malware samples have increased by almost 123% in 2021 compared to 2020, according to the firm. Mirai also spreads by targeting Linux servers with weak passwords. The most prevalent Mirai variants today include Sora, IZIH9  and Rekai, which increased in new sample counts by 33%, 39% and 83% respectively in 2021, according to CrowdStrike.   More

A digital education platform used by dozens of New York City schools is still struggling to get systems back up and running after reporting a days-long outage. Illuminate Education, which owns popular school management platforms Skedula and PupilPath, said it is still in the process of restoring service after a “security incident” that began on January 8. Scott Virkler, chief operating officer of Illuminate Education, told ZDNet that their priority is “to restore service as soon as possible and do everything in our power to help users.” “We launched an investigation with the help of third-party experts, and that is still ongoing,” Virkler said, declining to answer other questions. On the company’s status update website, Illuminate Education says it has continued experiencing a service interruption affecting all IO Classroom applications for nearly 10 days. They have not provided a new update since January 11. The online grading and attendance platforms are used heavily within the New York City public school system, and Virkler told The New York Daily News on January 11 that it was investigating an “attempted security incident.” He did not explain that statement further.It is still unclear whether data from the platform was leaked during the attack and the Department of Education in New York City did not respond to requests for comment. 

Multiple teachers have told The New York Times and other local outlets that they use the platforms extensively to communicate with parents and check grades for each student. The outages have come at a particularly inopportune time as teachers manage the COVID-19 surge, recent snow days and other issues affecting the school year. After teachers began to complain about the company’s lack of notice about the incident, Illuminate Education released a statement confirming that it was a “security incident.””Illuminate Education recently began experiencing technical difficulties, resulting in a disruption to our IO Suite of products. We immediately began an investigation, and indications are that this was the result of an attempted security incident. Our top priority is to restore full functionality to our systems as soon as possible, and we are working diligently with third-party forensic specialists to investigate the incident and confirm the effect to our systems,” the California-based company said. “We realize that you rely on systems like IO Classroom and PupilPath for daily activities including attendance, grading, and communications. We appreciate your patience and understanding, and apologize for any inconvenience. We will continue to provide updates to the School Administration as we make progress on resolving this issue.”City officials would not say how many schools use the software but the company says it serves 5,200 districts and schools across the country. Records obtained by The New York Post indicate the company has made $16 million from Department of Education schools in the last three years. The outlet added that the outages were hampering efforts by administrators to track which students had COVID-19 because students who test positive typically have everyone in their classes tested as well. Without access to student schedules, it has become difficult for teachers to know which classes a student attends and which students need to be tested.ChalkBeat gained access to a letter sent to parents by Virkler which says the company will be restoring service in phases and that it would send out another update on Tuesday.  More

Google recently added an option to switch off insecure 2G connectivity in Android smartphone modems, a move that has been welcomed by digital civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).It applauded Google for adding the new setting in Android 12 and has now called on Apple to implement the feature, too. 

2G is an early digital cellular network standard that emerged in the early 1990s, when Nokia still ruled mobile. As EFF notes, 2G was developed when standards bodies didn’t account for threats like rogue cell towers or the need for strong encryption. SEE: Best cheap 5G phone 2022: No need to pay flagship prices for quality devices”There are two main problems with 2G. First, it uses weak encryption between the tower and device that can be cracked in real time by an attacker to intercept calls or text messages. In fact, the attacker can do this passively without ever transmitting a single packet,” EFF notes. “The second problem with 2G is that there is no authentication of the tower to the phone, which means that anyone can seamlessly impersonate a real 2G tower and a phone using the 2G protocol will never be the wiser.”Also known as IMSI – international mobile subscriber identity – catchers, the ability to spoof base stations has been used by law enforcement and others worldwide to intercept mobile phone traffic and location data by forcing devices with 2G modems to connect to the 2G surveillance devices. While newer standards like 3G, 4G and 5G are designed to protect against this attack, newer ISMI catchers can be used in so-called downgrade attacks since mobile modems still support 2G. 

“This makes every user vulnerable – from journalists and activists to medical professionals, government officials, and even law enforcement,” the EFF warns.The new setting to disable 2G is available on newer Android phones. On the Google Pixel it can be changed via Settings > Network & Internet > SIMs > Allow 2G, where there is an option to disable 2G. However, 2G is enabled by default to support emergency calls, so users must manually toggle it off. The new setting may not be available on older Android device and is only available on newer Samsung phones under a different setting. Via Ars Technica, Google introduced the 2G disable option in Android 12, but since it implemented it in the radio hardware abstraction layer (HAL), it’s only available in Android devices that implemented that version of the radio HAL. HALs sit between Android and the hardware driver and don’t get updated frequently. Google explains in Android 12 release notes that the toggle to disable 2G is part of Radio 1.6 HAL and that, while the toggle is enabled by default, carriers can disable the feature at runtime. “Device manufacturers must ensure that all networks are available during emergency calling,” Google adds. While operators in North America, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have already turned off 2G networks, many networks in Europe will support 2G through to 2025 and in some cases even after switching off 3G, according to cellular IoT firm EMnify.   EFF is calling on Google, Apple and Samsung to improve availability of options to disable 2G at the user’s end. “We are very pleased with the steps that Google has taken here to protect users from vulnerabilities in 2G, and though there is a lot more work to be done, this will ensure that many people can finally receive a basic level of protection,” EFF says. “We strongly encourage Google, Apple, and Samsung to invest more resources into radio security so they can better protect smartphone owners.”

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DHL took over the top spot of Check Point Research’s list of the most imitated brands among cybercriminals this year, surpassing Microsoft and Google as the brand used most often in phishing emails and scams. The company’s Q4 Brand Phishing Report for 2021 ranks the top 10 most imitated brands in October, November and December. Researchers at Check Point found DHL’s brand used in 23% of all phishing attacks they saw globally. Microsoft was second at 20%, while WhatsApp came in at 11% and Google appeared in 10%. On the left side — the fraudulent login page with credentials request. On the right side — a real DHL login page.
Check Point Research
The rest of the list includes LinkedIn, Amazon, FedEx, Roblox, PayPal and Apple. Omer Dembinsky, data research group manager at Check Point Software, said it is important to remember that cybercriminals are opportunists and will often take advantage of consumer trends by imitating popular brands. “This quarter, for the first time, we’ve seen global logistics company DHL top the rankings as the most likely brand to be imitated, presumably to capitalize on the soaring number of new and potentially vulnerable online shoppers during the year’s busiest retail period,” Dembinsky said. “Older users in particular, who are less likely to be as technologically savvy as younger generations, will be shopping online for the first time and might not know what to look for when it comes to things like delivery confirmation emails or tracking updates. Furthermore, the rise in COVID cases has people relying on the shipping service more, and cybercriminals are likely trying to capitalize on people choosing to stay indoors more.”The researchers also found that social media platforms were being spoofed more often as well, with sites like LinkedIn moving from 8th position to 5th compared to Q3 and now accounting for 8% of all phishing-related attacks. WhatsApp moved from 6th to 3rd. 
Check Point Research
“That social media would continue to be heavily targeted by bad actors looking to take advantage of those leaning more heavily on channels like WhatsApp, Facebook and LinkedIn as a result of remote working and other fallouts from the pandemic,” Dembinsky explained. 

“Unfortunately, there’s only so much brands like DHL, Microsoft and WhatsApp — which represent the top 3 most imitated brands in Q4 — can do to combat phishing attempts. It’s all too easy for the human element to overlook things like misspelt domains, typos, incorrect dates or other suspicious details, and that’s what opens the door to further damage. We’d urge all users to be very mindful of these details when dealing with the likes of DHL in the coming months.” More

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It’s been an interesting couple of weeks at the intersection of Open Source Avenue and Cybersecurity Way, first with the situation around Log4j, and then this week a JavaScript developer had enough and went rouge.

Excuse me while I clutch this set of pearls very tightly as the term open source vulnerability is used, because where it seems governments think there is a pressing cyber issue, it is more often one of finances. Particularly as a one person project, creating under an open source licence is great for when starting out, and it is barely noticed and your users and fellow developers can help make the software better. But when multinationals and governments freeload from it, I have some sympathy for a developer that decides supporting Fortune 500 companies for free is a bridge too far. While the methodology of injecting an infinite loop and zalgo text might have been cooked, what decent size organisation was pulling down and executing code without either inspecting it, or running it in a test environment first? It sucks that a number of Node.js apps fell over, but thankfully it wasn’t doing anything malicious. Affected organisations should be considering this as a free cyber and software supply chain checkup, rather than yelling even more at a developer that is done with being yelled at. There’s a reason XKCD 2347 has received a bigger workout than usual in recent months, and it is because it exposes the truth of the matter. “I worked for the Linux Foundation on the Core Infrastructure Initiative supporting OpenSSL and other projects,” says one comment on the relevant Explain XKCD site.

“The one that scared me was Expat the XML parser maintained by two people on alternate Sunday afternoons assuming no other distractions. We did get funding for a test suite.” I have little reason to doubt this comment, because this is how the stacks that power the modern internet actually work. Deep in each stack is a weekend dependency. While the tech giants rake in billions each quarter, somewhere there is a well-used library that doesn’t receive a penny from these titans of industry. It’s not illegal, but it is a bit rich on the companies’ part to take advantage of free labour like this. At this juncture, I thought an analogy about a car manufacturer using volunteer labour to make car parts would be apt, but then realised that with all those car entertainment systems, there’s got to be some open source libraries or applications in there somewhere. Such is the world of the 2020s. Last week, the debate reached the point where it was labelled as a “national security concern” in the US, and Google and IBM wanted a list of critical open source projects. While both companies have been among the best corporate supporters and funders of open source, that list really should be put straight into their respective accounting systems and sufficient payments made each month. Unfortunately, the times at the intersection of Open Source Avenue and Cybersecurity Way have a sense of repetition. It was almost eight years ago during the Heartbleed flaw that OpenSSL said it was time for major users to stump up and help fund projects. At the time, OpenSSL had one full-time employee, and an outpouring of donations in the week afterwards had netted a mere $9,000. “It takes nerves of steel to work for many years on hundreds of thousands of lines of very complex code, with every line of code you touch visible to the world, knowing that code is used by banks, firewalls, weapons systems, web sites, smartphones, industry, government, everywhere. Knowing that you’ll be ignored and unappreciated until something goes wrong,” OpenSSL Software Foundation president Steve Marquess said. “The combination of the personality to handle that kind of pressure with the relevant technical skills and experience to effectively work on such software is a rare commodity, and those who have it are likely to already be a valued, well-rewarded, and jealously guarded resource of some company or worthy cause.” OpenSSL would eventually get some funding from the Core Infrastructure Initiative, which would be superseded by the Open Source Security Foundation, but I doubt either of those two organisations would have considered a node.js module or a Java logging framework as critical infrastructure worthy of funding and auditing. Funding needs to be go beyond just the term “critical” and move more towards “widely-used but underfunded”, because with the right vulnerability, suddenly any previously innocuous piece of software can become critical. ZDNET’S MONDAY MORNING OPENER   The Monday Morning Opener is our opening salvo for the week in tech. Since we run a global site, this editorial publishes on Monday at 8:00am AEST in Sydney, Australia, which is 6:00pm Eastern Time on Sunday in the US. A member writes it of ZDNet’s global editorial board, which is comprised of our lead editors across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.  PREVIOUSLY ON MONDAY MORNING OPENER :  More

Microsoft said it has discovered a destructive malware being used to corrupt the systems of multiple organizations in Ukraine. In a blog published on Saturday, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) said it first discovered the ransomware-like malware on January 13. The news comes days after more than 70 Ukrainian government websites were defaced by groups allegedly associated with Russian secret services. But Microsoft said it “has not found any notable associations” between the malware it found and the website attacks that occurred last week. “MSTIC assesses that the malware, which is designed to look like ransomware but lacking a ransom recovery mechanism, is intended to be destructive and designed to render targeted devices inoperable rather than to obtain a ransom,” Microsoft explained. 

“At present and based on Microsoft visibility, our investigation teams have identified the malware on dozens of impacted systems and that number could grow as our investigation continues. These systems span multiple government, non-profit, and information technology organizations, all based in Ukraine. We do not know the current stage of this attacker’s operational cycle or how many other victim organizations may exist in Ukraine or other geographic locations. However, it is unlikely these impacted systems represent the full scope of impact as other organizations are reporting.”Microsoft added that it is still unclear what the purpose of the malware is but said all Ukrainian government agencies, non-profits and companies should be on the lookout for it. They said it initially appeared to be possible Master Boot Records (MBR) Wiper activity and called the malware’s capabilities “unique.”The malware executes via Impacket and overwrites the MBR on a system with a ransom note demanding $10,000 in Bitcoin. Once a device powers down, the malware executes, and Microsoft said it was “atypical” for cybercriminal ransomware to overwrite the MBR. 

Even though a ransom note is included, it is a ruse, according to Microsoft’s analysis. The malware locates files in certain directories with dozens of the most common file extensions and overwrites the contents with a fixed number of 0xCC bytes. After overwriting the contents, the destructor renames each file with a seemingly random four-byte extension, Microsoft explained. Microsoft said this kind of attack is “inconsistent with cybercriminal ransomware activity” they have observed because typically, ransomware payloads are customized for each victim. “In this case, the same ransom payload was observed at multiple victims. Virtually all ransomware encrypts the contents of files on the filesystem. The malware in this case overwrites the MBR with no mechanism for recovery. Explicit payment amounts and cryptocurrency wallet addresses are rarely specified in modern criminal ransom notes, but were specified by DEV-0586,” Microsoft explained.”The same Bitcoin wallet address has been observed across all DEV-0586 intrusions and at the time of analysis, the only activity was a small transfer on January 14. It is rare for the communication method to be only a Tox ID, an identifier for use with the Tox encrypted messaging protocol. Typically, there are websites with support forums or multiple methods of contact (including email) to make it easy for the victim to successfully make contact. Most criminal ransom notes include a custom ID that a victim is instructed to send in their communications to the attackers. This is an important part of the process where the custom ID maps on the backend of the ransomware operation to a victim-specific decryption key. The ransom note in this case does not include a custom ID.”Microsoft added that it was in the process of creating detections for the malware and provided a slate of security recommendations for organizations that may have been targeted. Rick Holland, CISO at Digital Shadows, told ZDNet that while Microsoft doesn’t attribute the activity to Russia, it isn’t a substantial analytical stretch to associate these malicious actions with Russian interests. The ransomware ruse, he said, gives the threat actor a thin veneer of plausible deniability but as Microsoft states, the full scope of the campaign isn’t clear. “Destructive ransomware won’t be the only option available to the attacker. If you look back at 3rd party attacks like last year’s SolarWinds, you could see similar-style campaigns where malicious actors have spent years undetected on Ukrainian victim networks,” Holland said.”This activity isn’t unprecedented; it is a part of Russian doctrine. Whether Russia encourages other actors or directs cyber operations themselves, Russia seeks to disrupt government and private institutions of their geopolitical opponents. We have seen similar playbooks in the 2007 denial of service attacks against Estonia, the cyber-attacks during the 2014 Crimea annexation, and the destructive malware used in the Petya and MeDoc attacks against Ukraine in 2017.”Holland noted that the recovery process with destructive malware is challenging and can often depend on the security controls that were in place before the attack. He estimated it could take days to weeks for affected organizations to recover, explaining that it took more than a week for Saudi Aramco to recover from Shamoon in 2012 and months for organizations to recover from NotPetya. Netenrich’s John Bambenek echoed Holland’s remarks, telling ZDNet that Russia has previously used ransomware as a cover for destructive attacks in the past. “Russia’s typical ploy is to leave just enough ambiguity to claim in public that it wasn’t them but to leave enough fingerprints so everyone in the room knows its them to project a deterrent on other countries in the region. Recovery depends on each entity but Ukraine has a long history of responding to and recovering from sabotage attacks from Russia,” Bambenek said. “MBR and other wipers are fairly common. We haven’t seen much in recent years but the tool has always been in the tool chest when the mission is sabotage.” More