Information Technology

Meta announced on Thursday that it is expanding its Facebook Protect service — which provides specialized security services for certain Facebook accounts being targeted by hackers — to more countries.

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Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Meta, said the company will be rolling out Facebook Protect services to more than 50 countries by the end of 2021. Over 1.5 million accounts have already enrolled since the latest expansion began in September. The program was started in 2018 and expanded during the 2020 US election cycle to include human rights defenders, journalists, and government officials who are highly targeted by hackers. Both Google and Microsoft have created similar programs for groups that tend to be targeted by both cybercriminals and government hackers. Gleicher noted that of the 1.5 million accounts that have already signed up, almost 950,000 have two-factor authentication. He added that no action is required unless you are prompted to enroll. Gleicher encouraged everyone to enable two-factor authentication for their Facebook accounts, but he noted that Meta wants to make it as “frictionless as possible” for certain users. In some cases, they require that users have it. “These people are at the center of critical communities for public debate. They enable democratic elections, hold governments and organizations accountable, and defend human rights around the world,” Gleicher said. “What we’ve seen so far is encouraging: in early testing, simplifying our enrollments flows, improving customer support, and mandating Facebook Protect brought adoption rates to over 90 percent in one month for these groups,” Gleicher added. “Over the next several months, we’re going to carefully expand this requirement globally.”

Facebook will be launching the program in countries like the US, India, Portugal, and others. The news came as Meta released its Adversarial Threat Report, where it detailed a range of threats disrupted by the company’s security team. Meta said it removed malicious networks in Italy, France, Vietnam, Palestine, Poland, Belarus, and China. Facebook, and now parent company Meta, have faced withering criticism for years over lackluster security measures and a general failure to protect certain accounts from malicious activity. Former employees of the company have bashed Facebook for not doing enough to stop — and in some cases actively helping — dictators and others across the world from using the site to attack and harass critics, human rights activists, and others.  More

Planned Parenthood Los Angeles has sent out breach notification letters to about 400,000 patients after the organization suffered from a ransomware incident between October 9 and October 17.

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In a letter shared with the California Attorney General’s office and sent out on November 30, the organization said it identified suspicious activity in its computer network on October 17. “We immediately took our systems offline, notified law enforcement, and a third-party cybersecurity firm was engaged to assist in our investigation. The investigation determined that an unauthorized person gained access to our network between October 9, 2021, and October 17, 2021, and exfiltrated some files from our systems during that time,” the organization said.”On November 4, 2021, we identified files that contained your name and one or more of the following: address, insurance information, date of birth, and clinical information, such as diagnosis, procedure, and/or prescription information.”The organization is not offering any identity protection services for those affected, only urging victims to review statements received from health insurers or healthcare providers. They said they planned to hire a cybersecurity firm to help with the incident and improve their cybersecurity systems. Law enforcement was called in to help with the attack, according to CNN, but it is unclear which group is behind the attack. The attack was first reported by The Washington Post, which noted that other branches of the organization had been hacked in the past, both by opportunistic cybercriminals and anti-abortion activists. Despite the vital role healthcare organizations have played in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercriminals have shown little reticence in attacking hospitals and clinics. Over the last two years, multiple healthcare organizations have announced attacks and breaches involving sensitive patient data, including Social Security Numbers and bank account information. 

Garret Grajek, CEO of YouAttest, listed off multiple recent healthcare-related cyberattacks, including ones involving the Tardigrade malware, which was released upon vaccine manufacturers. He added that the DeepBlueMagic hackers recently shut down the computer system in a major Israeli hospital. “The PII/PHI that has been stolen from Planned Parenthood go beyond the usual threat actor’s desire for identity data to resell on the dark web. Given that not only was standard identity information stolen, but the theft was coupled with medical background and procedure data, the ramifications of malicious use of this data are easy to imagine,” Grajek said.  “The mechanism has not been revealed, but previous hacks on medical institutions have shown a proclivity to both social and technical hacking methods, given the amount of personnel involved and the difficulty of enacting safe security conduct by all team members.”Ekram Ahmed, spokesperson at cybersecurity firm Check Point, said those affected should be watchful for a hacker technique called ‘Triple Extortion’. “In this tactic, hackers are not only encrypting files and then ransomware, but they go to patients directly, threatening to reveal sensitive information unless paid. Here, over 400,000 patients, which is a staggering number for a data breach, can potentially become victims to Triple Extortion, which could be devastating,” Ahmed said. “Healthcare records are known to be one of the most valuable types of information that hackers look for. The reason being is that cybercriminals can use this data to create false identities, commit health insurance fraud and illegally obtain prescription drugs. Furthermore, stolen patient information can be stolen for top dollar on the dark web. This year, the healthcare sector sees 752 ransomware attacks a week on average, marking a 55% increase compared to last year.”Gurucul vice president Jane Grafton noted that the ransomware attack on Planned Parenthood Los Angeles occurred right as the Supreme Court actively debates a direct challenge to the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. “Women’s personal procedures and diagnosis are just that: personal. Having them stolen for potential exposure puts women in the political crosshairs,” Grafton said. “Securing medical records has never been more important. We can only hope that this information stays out of the public eye.”  More

Meta has detailed takedowns of what it described as six ‘adversarial networks’ from across the world that were using Facebook for behaviour including spreading false information, harassment and trying to have genuine information taken down.It said the groups violated its rules around Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior and two new policies: Brigading and Mass Reporting.

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Facebook defines Brigading as networks of people work who together to mass comment, mass post or engage in other types of repetitive mass behaviors to harass others or silence them. Mass Reporting is when people work together to mass-report an account or content to get it incorrectly taken down by Facebook.SEE: Facebook: Here comes the AI of the MetaverseMeta said it had removed a network in Italy and France for Brigading: “We removed a network of accounts that originated in Italy and France and targeted medical professionals, journalists, and elected officials with mass harassment,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Meta’s Head of Security Policy in its Adversarial Threat Report. “Our investigation linked this activity to an anti-vaccination conspiracy movement.”In Vietnam, Meta targeted networks attempting to use mass reporting, via duplicated but legitimate accounts, to have accurate news reports criticizing the government taken down. “The network coordinated to falsely report activists and other people who publicly criticized the Vietnamese government for various violations in an attempt to have these users removed from Facebook,” explained Gleicher. 

Meta also removed four networks from Palestine, Poland, Belarus, and China for violating its policy on Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior: each of these networks targeted people in multiple countries at once. The report also notes the shifting environment Facebook faces, what it deems to be a security threat, and how it responds to them.”In this environment, we build our defenses with the expectation that adversarial groups will not stop, but rather adapt and try new tactics to persist,” wrote Gliecher with other Meta security leads. “Our focus has been to study malicious behaviors and add new layers of defense to our arsenal to make sure we prevent and address potential gaps from multiple angles. Our goal over time is to make these behaviors more costly and difficult to hide, and less effective. It is a significant, ongoing effort that spans teams, departments and time zones across Meta.”Facebook has in the past been criticized for its slow response to groups using its platform to spread disinformation. This report follows claims by a former employee about the negative impact of Instagram on the wellbeing of some young users.Meta says it will share its findings with industry peers, independent researchers, law enforcement agencies, and policymakers.  More

Nation state-backed hacking groups are exploiting a simple but effective new technique to power phishing campaigns for spreading malware and stealing information that’s of interest to their governments.  Cybersecurity researchers at Proofpoint say advanced persistent threat (APT) groups working on behalf of Russian, Chinese and Indian interests are using rich text format (RTF) template injections. 

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While the use of RTF text file attachments in phishing emails isn’t new, the technique being used by hackers is easier to deploy and more effective because it’s harder for antivirus software to detect – and many organisations won’t block RTF files by default because they’re part of everyday business operations. SEE: A winning strategy for cybersecurity (ZDNet special report) The technique is RTF template injection. By altering an RTF file’s document-formatting properties, it’s possible for attackers to weaponise an RTF file to retrieve remote content from a URL controlled by the attackers, enabling them to secretly retrieve a malware payload that gets installed on the victim’s machine.  Attackers can use RTF template injections to open documents in Microsoft Word, which will use the malicious URL to retrieve the payload while also using Word to display the decoy document.   This approach might require luring users into enabling editing or enabling content to begin the process of downloading the payload, but with the right form of social engineering, especially off the back of a convincing lure, a victim can be tricked into allowing this process to take place. 

It isn’t a complex technique, but because it is simple and reliable to use, it has become popular with several nation-state hacking operations, which can deploy RTF attacks instead of other, more complex attacks, but still get the same results.  Despite the “Advanced” designation, if APT actors are doing their job well, they will exert the least amount of resources and sophistication necessary to gain access to organisations, said Sherrod DeGrippo, vice president of threat research and detection at Proofpoint.  “This prevents actors from exposing more sophisticated tools if discovered, resulting in a greater operational disruption for threat actor groups to replace technical capabilities when discovered,” she added.  According to researchers, the earliest known instance of an APT group using RTF template injections in a campaign was in February 2021. These injections were undertaken by DoNot Team, an APT group that has been linked to Indian state interests.  Since then, several other state-linked hacking operations have also been seen deploying RTF injections as part of campaigns. These include a group Proofpoint refers to as TA423, also known as Leviathan, which is an ATP group that is linked to China, which has used RTF attacks in several campaigns since April.   SEE: Dark web crooks are now teaching courses on how to build botnets One of these campaigns took place in September and targeted entities in Malaysia related to the energy exploration sector – and came with specifically designed phishing emails to lure targets into inadvertently executing the payload.  Then in October, researchers spotted Gamaredon – an offensive hacking group that has been linked to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) that uses RTF template injection documents in attacks, which impersonated the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.  While only a handful of APT groups have attempted to deploy RTF-based attacks so far, researchers warn that the technique’s effectiveness combined with its ease of use is likely to drive its adoption further across the threat landscape – and this could mean campaigns leveraging this technique are adopted by financially motivated cyber criminals.  “The ease of weaponisation in this technique will also likely attract low-end and low-sophistication actors, expanding the presence of this technique in the wild, including crimeware actors,” said DeGrippo. 
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When it comes to fuzzing, Mozilla has plenty of cred, and has been doing so for some time, and yet, its prized Network Security Services (NSS) library was busted by Google Project Zero’s Tavis Ormandy quite easily. In a blog post well worth your time, entitled This shouldn’t have happened, Ormandy found that if NSS was made to create an ASN.1 signature bigger than the maximum 16384 bits it expected, overwriting of memory would occur. “What happens if you just … make a signature that’s bigger than that? Well, it turns out the answer is memory corruption. Yes, really,” Ormandy wrote. “The untrusted signature is simply copied into this fixed-sized buffer, overwriting adjacent members with arbitrary attacker-controlled data. The bug is simple to reproduce and affects multiple algorithms.” Given the designation CVE-2021-43527, Mozilla said in its advisory that Firefox was not impacted, but the likes of Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Evolution, and Evince were “believed to be impacted”. In Mozilla’s defence, Ormandy said it has a world-class security team, and has been leading the way in fuzzing, but thanks to the modular design of NSS, the library did not have end-to-end testing as each part was fuzzed independently. This was compounded by the fuzzers having a limit of 10,000 bytes on input while NSS has no such limit. “This issue demonstrates that even extremely well-maintained C/C++ can have fatal, trivial mistakes,” Ormandy wrote.

The hole has been patched in versions 3.73.0 and 3.68.1 of NSS. Related Coverage More

Australia is looking to create a new national data commissioner role that will be responsible for applying the data reforms presented in the Data Availability and Transparency (DAT) Bill 2020. The DAT Bill, which is still awaiting passage, seeks to create a scheme of controlled access to public sector data. Under the legislation, data would only be shared for three purposes: Government services delivery, informing government policy and programs, and research and development. As part of making this new role official, Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills and Family Business Stuart Robert announced that Gayle Milnes would become Australia’s first national data commissioner designate once the DAT Bill passes. The Governor-General will be asked to consider this appointment as a statutory office holder after the Bill’s passage. Milnes will be responsible for implementing the country’s data sharing and release framework, and oversee the data sharing and release activities of Commonwealth agencies. “Milnes is an experienced public service leader with an excellent record of driving nationally-significant outcomes in senior Australian Government statutory, data and regulatory roles,” Robert said. Milnes’ appointment will see Deborah Anton move on from her role as interim National Data Commissioner.

Prior to the appointment, Milnes was the first assistant secretary of the Data, Analytics and Policy Division at the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications. She has also held other senior leadership positions across the Australian Public Service, such as CEO of the Climate Change Authority. If appointed to the statutory office, Milnes would be appointed for a period of five years. Related Coverage More

A Bill allowing Australia to directly issue sanctions against cyber attackers was unanimously passed by the Senate yesterday evening, and is set to appear before the lower house for another sign off. The Bill, colloquially known as a “Magnitsky-style” of law, if enshrined, would allow the Australian government to directly issue sanctions against individuals or entities that ban them from visiting Australia or making any investments in the country. The legislation is partly based on the United States’ Magnitsky Act, which was ratified in a bid to punish Russian officials that were responsible for the death of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky who accused them of tax fraud. Along with targeting cyber attackers, the proposed laws also seek to allow direct sanctions against human rights abusers, corrupt officials and threats to international peace, security, and international humanitarian law. The Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) lauded the move, saying it would strengthen Australia’s committee to human rights globally. “It goes without saying, targeted sanctions should be a tool for protecting against the most serious violations of human rights wherever they occur in the world. We hope the Australian government will approach the use of this new sanctions power consistently, equally and free from double-standards,” ACIJ executive director Rawan Arraf said. The types of sanctions passed by the upper house on Wednesday evening are noteworthy as they can be issued to individuals or entities so long as they fall under one of those categories of thematic concerns. Currently, Australia’s sanctions regime only allows for the issuance of sanctions that either adhere to United Nations-enforced international obligations or a country-specific approach.

If the laws are ratified, they will be reviewed by a joint parliamentary committee after three years of being in effect. Related CoverageSocial media platforms need complaints schemes to avoid defamation under Aussie anti-troll BillUnder Australia’s proposed anti-troll laws, courts would gain the ability to issue orders compelling social media platforms into disclosing the personal information of users accused of defamation.Australia to launch federal probe into big tech and the ‘toxic material’ on their platformsThe federal government’s latest crackdown on big tech will see an inquiry be established looking into their impact on the mental health and wellbeing of Australians.Telstra’s biggest cyber worry is businesses with basic single vendor environmentsOne of Telstra’s business partners with limited IT infrastructure suffered a cyber attack that the telco explained potentially put its customers at risk.Australia prioritises 63 critical technologies including quantum and blockchainAU$70 million will be put into building a new quantum commercialisation hub as part of Australia’s Blueprint for Critical Technologies.US, UK, and Australia pin Iran for exploiting Fortinet and Exchange holesAmerican and Australian authorities claim to have observed Iranian-backed attackers scanning and exploiting various systems.Australia’s new ransomware plan to create ransomware offences and reporting regimeUnder Australia’s new Ransomware Action Plan, organisations that suffer from a ransomware attack will be required to report the incident to government. More

CrowdStrike and CISA have announced a new partnership that will see the cybersecurity company provide endpoint security for the government organization — and others — while also “operationalizing” the Executive Order endpoint detection and response (EDR) initiative.CrowdStrike was chosen as one of the platforms to support the initiative at multiple federal agencies and will use its CrowdStrike Falcon platform to “secure critical endpoints and workloads for CISA and multiple other major civilian agencies.”

Executive Order (EO) 14028, which was signed by President Joe Biden in May, listed a variety of measures that needed to be taken across the government to better secure systems in the wake of the SolarWinds scandal and other breaches. Government organizations were urged to do more threat hunting, EDR, and IT modernization while also further embracing cloud technologies. George Kurtz, co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike, said CISA is on the front lines when it comes to defending the US government’s most critical assets against evolving threats that nation-state and eCrime adversaries present. “Improving our nation’s defenses and cyber resiliency requires strong collaboration between the government and the private sector. This partnership will arm CISA and government agencies with CrowdStrike’s powerful technology and elite human expertise to stop sophisticated attacks and protect our nation’s critical infrastructure,” Kurtz said. James Yeager, a vice president at CrowdStrike, told ZDNet that CISA was looking to beef up its Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program and “advance its mission of securing civilian ‘.gov’ networks and leading the national effort to understand and manage cyber and physical risk to critical infrastructure.”The White House is providing funds for the project through the American Rescue Plan and Yeager said the company was encouraging agencies to work with CISA to ensure their security program is equipped to enable proactive threat hunting and a coordinated response strategy to combat advanced threats.

“The United States and allied nations face unprecedented threats from today’s adversaries. Continuous cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, supply chains, government agencies, etc. present significant ongoing threats to national security and the critical services millions of citizens rely on every day,” Yeager said. “The federal government cannot afford to stay static amidst an evolutionary and highly dynamic threat landscape. Visibility is key. You cannot defend what you cannot see. The state of the endpoint has evolved, yielding a highly complex and expanded attack surface. As a result, we need to broaden the scope of visibility. Agencies need solutions that can collect and correlate data across multiple security layers – email, endpoint, server, cloud workload, and the network–for faster detection of threats and improved investigation and response times through automation and data analysis.”Yeager added that with the shift toward a remote workforce, security policies need to include remote working access management, the use of personal devices, and updated data privacy considerations for employee access to documents and other information. “Moreover, agencies need to employ protection measures that can quickly adapt and scale to support this modified IT landscape, by leveraging innovative tooling that is effective against all types of threats and that supports all workloads– on-premise systems, remote devices, cloud instances, and virtual machines,” Yeager explained. More