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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

Eight people allegedly involved in the REvil ransomware gang were hit with charges by a court in Moscow on Saturday, according to the Russian News Agency (TASS). The eight were arrested as part of a larger raid by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia on 25 different locations across Moscow, St. Petersburg and Lipetsk on Friday.TASS reported that on Saturday, Moscow’s Tverskoi Court charged the men with violating Part 2 of Article 187 of Russia’s Criminal Code, which covers the “illegal circulation of payments. The men are facing up to seven years in prison and a fine of about $13,150.  “At present, materials are either incoming or have already been examined with regard to Roman Muromsky, Andrey Bessonov and also the following individuals: Golovachuk M.A., Zayets A.N., Khansvyarov R.A., Korotayev D.V., Puzyrevsky D.D. and Malozemov A.V. Overall, the court has materials on eight individuals,” the court said.Muromsky and Bessonov were initially named by Russian news outlets as members of the group and video emerged online of the two in court. The FSB said it moved forward with the raid after receiving information about REvil’s alleged leader and other members of the group from US authorities. The FSB said in a statement that 20 luxury cars, 426 million rubles, $600,000 and Є500,000 in Euros were seized during the raids. Police also took computer equipment and gained access to several crypto wallets.

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The Russian news outlet called REvil “one of the world’s most prominent cybercrime groups,” noting that they have attacked the state government of Texas, companies like Apple and dozens of other organizations. According to the US Department of Justice, in addition to the headlining attacks on Kaseya and JBS, REvil is responsible for deploying its ransomware on more than 175,000 computers. The group allegedly brought in at least $200 million from ransoms. On Friday evening, White House officials told reporters that the person behind the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline last year was arrested as part of the raid but did not reveal the person’s name. While the attack on Colonial Pipeline — which caused a week of gas shortages along the East Coast of the US — was attributed to the DarkSide ransomware group, experts said those involved were closely associated with REvil.Recorded Future ransomware expert Allan Liska told ZDNet that there are multiple connections between REvil and Darkside, which shuttered its operations shortly after the headline-grabbing attack on Colonial Pipeline and reconstituted under the name “BlackMatter.” “First, we think the user Darksup, who was the main organizer of the DarkSide ransomware, started out as an affiliate of REvil. Secondly, there is a lot of code overlap between DarkSide and REvil ransomware. Flashpoint did a good analysis of that,” Liska said. “Finally, after the Colonial Pipeline attack, when DarkSide went into hiding, Unknown (the spokesperson for REvil) was speaking on DarkSide’s behalf on the underground forums.”There has been significant debate about why Russian authorities finally decided to detain members of the REvil ransomware group after US officials spent months pressing the country for help. Digital Shadows’ Chris Morgan told ZDNet that some people on Russian cybercriminal forums said the arrests were part of a larger “political game” between the US and Russia, which has faced backlash in recent weeks for its threatening actions toward Ukraine. “Its possible that the FSB raided REvil knowing that the group were high on the priority list for the US, while considering that their removal would have a small impact on the current ransomware landscape. These arrests could also have served a secondary purpose, as a warning to other ransomware groups,” Morgan explained. “REvil made international news last year in its targeting of organizations such as JBS and Kaseya, which were high profile and impactful attacks; a very public series of raids could be interpreted by some as a message to be mindful of their targeting.” More

Ukrainian law enforcement agencies said more than 70 state websites were attacked on Friday and accused hacker groups associated with Russian secret services of potentially being behind the incident. The attack, which Ukrainian officials initially called “massive,” took down several government websites in Ukraine, including those for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Education and Science.In a statement, the Security Service of Ukraine, State Special Service and Cyber Police said 10 of the government websites “were subjected to unauthorized interference.” Ukrainian news outlet Ukrinform said the websites for the country’s energy, treasury, environment, veterans, and state emergency service departments were defaced. The agencies said the content on the sites was not changed and no personal data was taken during the incident, despite the claims made by the hackers. “Our specialists, together with the administrators of ministries and departments, have restored the work of most web resources. Also at the initiative of the SBU, a number of critical state resources were cut off, including public services portal Action, to localize the technical problem and to prevent the spread of the attack. The mobile application Action worked and works in a regular mode,” the statement said. “At the same time, the report that hackers exploited a specific vulnerability of the content management system that appeared in the media during the day was just one of the versions that was being worked out. Now, at the end of the day, we can say with high probability that there was a so-called supply chain attack, among others. The attackers hacked the infrastructure of a commercial company that had access to the rights to administer the web resources affected by the attack.”Law enforcement officials in the country are still in the process of investigating the incident and collecting evidence, noting that their investigation will continue through the weekend. The Ukrainian CERT released its own message saying the attack may have related to a vulnerability in a CMS system that was discovered last year.  

The incident — which took place as Russia threatens to invade Ukraine — caused significant outrage across Europe but led some to question whether the concern over the attack was warranted considering the the lack of tangible damage done. Cybersecurity expert and journalist Kim Zetter, one of the first to notice the attack, said “it helps the perpetrator of the attack spread fear and their misinformation campaign when people make more out of an attack than it merits.”Other experts said even calling the incident an “attack” was an exaggeration. But despite the criticisms, foreign ministers across Europe released statements condemning the incident and pledging support for Ukraine, including officials from Belgium, Bulgaria, Latvia, Denmark, Lithuania, Poland, Norway and Romania.NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said cyber experts in Brussels were sharing information with Ukrainian officials and others were supporting Ukraine “on the ground.””In the coming days, NATO and Ukraine will sign an agreement on enhanced cyber cooperation, including Ukrainian access to NATO’s malware information sharing platform. NATO’s strong political and practical support for Ukraine will continue,” Stoltenberg said.In addition to the website defacements, Ukraine’s largest gas retail also reported a cyberattack although it is unclear if the two were tied together. Oleg Nykonorov, CEO of РГК, wrote on Facebook that they too were attacked but said it was stopped before any damage could be done. More

Suspected members of the cyber criminal REvil ransomware gang have been detained and the group has been dismantled following raids by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Moscow has said. Joint action by the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia was taken at 25 properties across several regions of Russia, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Lipetsk, linked to 14 members of the REvil ransomware group.According to a statement from the FSB, several member of REvil have been detained and charged. Computer equipment has been seized along with cryptocurrency and crypto wallets, as well as over 426 million rubles, $600,000 US dollars and Є500,000 in Euros. It said 20 luxury cars bought with money obtained from ransomware attacks has have also been seized.SEE: A winning strategy for cybersecurity (ZDNet special report)    The raids took place following requests from the United States, which has been a major victim of ransomware attacks by REvil. Previous action has been taken against REvil, including suspected members being arrested in Romania and Ukraine, but the raids by the FSB is the first time Russian authorities have taken action against the group.One of the most significant alleged REvil attacks targeted Kaseya, an IT solutions developer for MSPs and enterprise clients. REvil was also accused of being responsible for a major ransomware attack against food supplier JBS, which paid $11 million in Bitcoin to the attackers in exchange for the key required to decrypt the network.

Last year, the United States and other G7 countries warned Russia that it needed to take responsibility for ransomware and other cyber criminal groups operating within its borders. Ransomware has become one of the biggest cybersecurity issues facing the world today, with attacks against every sector resulting in disruption.High-profile incidents have seen hospitals and healthcare services, energy suppliers and local governments hit with ransomware attacks, preventing people from being able to access vital services they need. MORE ON CYBERSECURITY More

A new 02 scam targeting customers in the United Kingdom is offering ridiculous discounts and phone plans in return for your one-time security codes. 

Having been the recipient of a cold call from a delightful scam artist today, I’ll hand it to them: the lure is strong. At a time when the cost of living is rising in the United Kingdom, many of us are worried about the looming energy price cap disaster, and finances are often stretched thin — the prospect of being the lucky customer eligible for a discount of 35% to 40% on your phone plan is an attractive one.  At least, that’s what the very nice man on the end of the phone tried to sell me.  The phone call came from Ballygawley in Northern Ireland. The scammer (let’s call him James, since that appears to be one of the personas used, according to reports based on the number), sounded delighted in informing me that I was able to take advantage of a substantial discount on my plan.  Even before he’d finished his pitch, I received a text message which is legitimate 02 communication — a one-time code that customers can use to access their accounts if they forget their password, for example.  This is how the scam works: The cold caller asks if you want to take advantage of the discount At the same time, the scammer visits the 02 sign in page, types in your phone number, and asks for a one-time code to access your accountIn order to apply the discount, they -only- need the code they have just sent to your handsetIf you hand over the code, they can then access your details

To try and make it appear legitimate, James also told me I would receive a paper document in 24 to 48 hours outlining my amazing discount. I had to move quickly though and could I please give him the code. James wasn’t particularly happy when I called him out on the scam and tried to defend himself by saying that they are “only allowed to ask customers if they want the promotion,” but if I didn’t want it, to have a good day.  I said I hoped he had the day he deserves, and after being called some interesting names laden with profanity, that was the end of the call.  He was incredibly pushy and made repeat requests for the code. For those that receive this form of scam call, especially if they are vulnerable, not tech-savvy, or elderly, the immediate ping of a text message could be taken as a legitimate aspect of a carrier service call.  The number, 028 8501 7468, has been searched numerous times since November. Reports suggest the team has also impersonated Carphone Warehouse and Three, and are offering discounts, new phone contracts, and a 100% discount on phone charges. Worth keeping an eye out for — and as always, you should never hand over these details. If in doubt, cut the call and ring your service provider directly.  Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

Amazon Web Services has fixed two flaws affecting AWS Glue and AWS CloudFormation. The bug in AWS Glue could allow an attacker using the service to create resources and access data of other AWS Glue customers, according to Orca Security. 

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Orca researchers say it was due to an internal misconfiguration within AWS Glue, which AWS today confirmed it has since fixed.SEE: Cloud security: A business guide to essential tools and best practicesGlue, which launched in 2017, is a managed serverless data integration service for connecting large databases, allowing developers to extract, transform and load (ETL) for machine-learning jobs. Orca researchers discovered a Glue feature could be used to gain the credentials to a role within the AWS service’s own account to give an attack access to the internal service’s application programming interface (API). Using this access with the internal misconfiguration, an attacker could escalate privileges within an account and gain full administrative privileges. 

“We confirmed that we would be able to access data owned by other AWS Glue customers,” Orca researcher Yanir Tsarimi said in a write-up.AWS said in a statement that Glue customers don’t need to update systems and emphasized the bug could not have affected AWS customers who don’t use Glue. “Utilizing an AWS Glue feature, researchers obtained credentials specific to the service itself, and an AWS-internal misconfiguration permitted the researchers to use these credentials as the AWS Glue service,” AWS said. “There is no way that this could have been used to affect customers who do not use the AWS Glue service.” Additionally, AWS said it audited Glue logs going back to its launch in 2017 and confirmed that no customer data had been impacted by the flaw since then. “AWS moved immediately to correct this issue when it was reported. Analysis of logs going back to the launch of the service have been conducted and we have conclusively determined that the only activity associated with this issue was between accounts owned by the researcher,” AWS said. “No other customer’s accounts were impacted. All actions taken by AWS Glue in a customer’s account are logged in CloudTrail records controlled and viewable by customers.”Orca found a second bug in AWS that allowed an attacker to compromise a server within CloudFormation in a way that lets them run as an AWS infrastructure service. AWS customers can use CloudFormation to provision and manage cloud resources.  The company identified an XML external entity injection (XXE) vulnerability that allowed it to read files and perform web requests on behalf of the server. The flaw could be used by an attacker to gain “privileged access to any resource in AWS”, according to Orca. AWS has also remediated this flaw, according to Orca.   More

One of the largest carding platforms in the Dark Web, UniCC, has announced its “retirement” from the criminal industry. 

UniCC has been active since 2013. The platform specialized in what is known as ‘carding’: credit card fraud and the sale of stolen details which can then be used to make unauthorized transactions, to clone cards, and to potentially facilitate identity theft. The retirement notice was posted in both Russian and English on a number of dark web forums.  “Our team retires,” the post read. “Thanks to everyone who has been part of us for years. To loyal partners, clients, and colleagues who assisted us in many ways, I would separately thank each one but it is not professional. If I or some of our team members failed your expectations – we [are] truly sorry.” The operators then gave the apparent reasons for UniCC’s closure: the age and health of its team.  “Don’t build any conspiracy theories about us leaving. It is weighted decision, we are not young and our health do not allow to work like this any longer.” The UniCC team then warned users that they have 10 days to wrap up their business and clear their accounts before the platform, alongside its affiliate domain — LuxSocks — closes. “We ask you to be smart and not follow any fakes tied to our comeback and other things,” the operators added. 

According to an analysis conducted by Elliptic, since 2013, UniCC has generated approximately $358 million in stolen data purchase revenue through cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Dash.  “Tens of thousands of new cards were listed for sale on the market each day, and it was known for having many different vendors — with the fierce competition keeping prices relatively low,” Elliptic noted. “As UniCC retires, focus will now be on who emerges as the main successor. The carding market overall recently surpassed more than $1.4 billion in sales with Bitcoin alone. Meanwhile, the operators behind UniCC will be seeking to cash out their formidable profits.” In February last year, one of the largest carding forums, Joker’s Stash, called it quits. The platform facilitated the trade and sale of stolen payment card data, but following the seizure of a number of domains used by Joker’s Stash several months prior — and the apparent hospitalization of the operator due to COVID-19 — the service closed.  It is estimated that Joker’s Stash also generated millions of dollars in illicit profits during its lifetime.  Whether or not the operators have truly ‘retired’ or are just seeking to cash out, this does not mean it is the end of the story — law enforcement could still knock on their door, one day.  Speaking to the BBC, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA)’s Alex Hudson, intelligence manager, said the closure has created “mixed” feelings. While the operators have left the criminal industry and the potential pool of tradeable stolen data has shrunk slightly, it may also feel like unfinished business. “If there is a regret, it’s that we do need to hold them accountable for it and they need to understand that they will still be held accountable,” Hudson commented.  Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More