Tech News - Cybersecurity

In less than ten months of Wireshark’s last release, the Wireshark community has now released Wireshark 2.6. Wireshark is one of the popular tools to analyze traffic over a network interface or a network stream. It is used for troubleshooting, analysis, development and education. Wireshark is based on the Gerald Combs-initiated "Ethereal" project, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). Wireshark 2.6 is released with numerous innovations, improvements and bug fixes. The highlight of Wireshark 2.6 is that, it is the last release that will support the legacy (GTK+) user interface. It will not be supported or available in Wireshark 3.0. Major improvements since 2.5, the last version, include: This version now supports HTTP Request sequences. Support for MaxMind DB files, GeoIP and GeoLite Legacy databases has been removed. Windows packages are now built using Microsoft Visual Studio 2017. The IP map feature (the “Map” button in the “Endpoints” dialog) has been removed. Some other improvements since the version 2.4 Display filter buttons can now be edited, disabled, and removed via a context menu directly from the toolbar Support for hardware-timestamping of packets has been added Application startup time has been reduced. Some keyboard shortcut mix-ups have been resolved by assigning new shortcuts to Edit → Copy methods New Protocol Support: Many protocols have been added including the following. ActiveMQ Artemis Core Protocol: This supports interceptors to intercept packets entering and exiting the server. Bluetooth Mesh Protocol : This allows (Bluetooth Low Energy) BLE devices to network together to carry data back to a gateway device, where it can be further routed to the internet. Steam In-Home Streaming discovery protocol: This allows one to use input and output on a single computer, and lets another computer actually handle the rendering, calculations, networking etc. Bug Fix: Dumpcap, a network traffic dump tool which lets one capture packet data from a live network and write the packets to a file, might not quit if Wireshark or TShark crashes. (Bug 1419) To know more about the updates in detail, read Wireshark 2.6.0 Release Notes What is Digital Forensics? Microsoft Cloud Services get GDPR Enhancements IoT Forensics: Security in an always connected world where things talk

On 31st July 2018, Eric Holmes, a security researcher gained access to Homebrew's GitHub repo easily (He documents his experience in an in-depth Medium post). Homebrew is a free and open-source software package management system with well-known packages like node, git, and many more. It simplifies the installation of software on macOS. The Homebrew repository contains its recently elevated scopes. Eric gained access to git push on Homebrew/brew and Homebrew/homebrew-core. He was able to invade and make his first commit into Homebrew’s GitHub repo within 30 minutes. Attack = Higher chances of obtaining user credentials After getting an easy access to Homebrew’s GitHub repositories, Eric’s prime motive was to uncover user credentials of some of the members of Homebrew GitHub org. For this, he made use of an OSSINT tool by Michael Henriksen called gitrob, which easily automates the credential search. However, he could not find anything interesting. Next, he explored Homebrew’s previously disclosed issues on https://hackerone.com/Homebrew, which led him to the observation that Homebrew runs a Jenkins instance that’s (intentionally) publicly exposed at https://jenkins.brew.sh. With further invasion into the repo, Eric encountered that the builds in the “Homebrew Bottles” project were making authenticated pushes to the BrewTestBot/homebrew-core repo. This further led him to an exposed GitHub API token. The token opened commit access to these core Homebrew repos: Homebrew/brew Homebrew/homebrew-core Homebrew/formulae.brew.sh Eric stated in his post that, “If I were a malicious actor, I could have made a small, likely unnoticed change to the openssl formulae, placing a backdoor on any machine that installed it.” Via such a backdoor, intruders could have gained access to private company networks that use Homebrew. This could further lead to data breach on a large scale. Eric reported this issue to Homebrew developer, Mike McQuaid. Following which, he publicly disclosed the issue on the blog at https://brew.sh/2018/08/05/security-incident-disclosure/. Within a few hours the credentials had been revoked, replaced and sanitised within Jenkins so they would not be revealed in future. Homebrew/brew and Homebrew/homebrew-core were updated so non-administrators on those repositories cannot push directly to master. The Homebrew team worked with GitHub to audit and ensure that the given access token wasn’t used maliciously, and didn’t make any unexpected commits to the core Homebrew repos. As an ethical hacker, Eric reported the vulnerabilities he found to the Homebrew team and did no harm to the repo itself. But, not all projects may have such happy endings. How can one safeguard their systems from supply chain attacks? The precautions which Eric Holmes took were credible. He informed the Homebrew developer. However, not every hacker has good intentions and it is one’s responsibility to make sure to keep a check on all the supply chains associated to an organization. Keeping a check on all the libraries One should not allow random libraries into the supply chain. This is because it is difficult to partition libraries with organization’s custom code, thus both run with the same privilege risking the company’s security. One should make sure to levy certain policies around the code the company wishes to allow. Only projects with high popularity, active committers, and evidence of process should be allowed. Establishing guidelines Each company should create guidelines for secure use of the libraries selected. For this, a prior definition of what the libraries are expected to be used for should be made. The developers should also be detailed in safely installing, configuring, and using each library within their code. Identification of dangerous methods and how to use them safely should also be taken care of. A thorough vigilance within the inventory Every organization should keep a check within their inventories to know what open source libraries they are using. They should also ensure to set up a notification system which keeps them abreast of which new vulnerabilities the applications and servers are affected. Protection during runtime Organizations should also make use of runtime application security protection (RASP) to prevent both known and unknown library vulnerabilities from being exploited. If in case they notice new vulnerabilities, the RASP infrastructure enables one to respond in minutes. The software supply chain is the important part to create and deploy applications quickly. Hence, one should take complete care to avoid any misuse via this channel. Read the detailed story of Homebrew’s attack escape on its blog post and Eric’s firsthand account of how he went about planning the attack and the motivation behind it on his medium post. DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0: Hackers used social engineering to manipulate the 2016 U.S. elections Twitter allegedly deleted 70 million fake accounts in an attempt to curb fake news YouTube has a $25 million plan to counter fake news and misinformation

After Google Launched its Certification Authority in August 2017, it has now put in a  request to Mozilla certification store for the inclusion of the Google Trust Services R1, R2, R3, and R4 roots as documented in the following bug. Google’s application states the following- "Google is a commercial CA that will provide certificates to customers from around the world.  We will offer certificates for server authentication, client authentication, email (both signing and encrypting), and code signing.  Customers of the Google PKI are the general public. We will not require that customers have a domain registration with Google, use domain suffixes where Google is the registrant, or have other services from Google." What are Google Trust Services Roots? To adopt an independent infrastructure and build the "foundation of a more secure web," Google Trust Services allows the company to issue its own TLS/SSL certificates for securing its web traffic via HTTPS, instead of relying on third-party certs. The main aim of launching the GTS was to bring security and authentication certificates up to par with Google’s rigorous security standards. This means invalidating the old, insecure HTTP standard in Chrome, and depreciate Adobe Flash, a web program known to be insecure, and a resource hog. GTS will provide HTTPS certificates public websites to API servers, and it will be inclusive to all Alphabet companies, not just Google. Developers who build products that connect to Google’s services will have to include the new Root Certificates. All GTS roots expire in 2036, while GS Root R2 expires in 2021 and GS Root R4 in 2038. Google will also be able to cross-sign its CAs, using GS Root R3 and GeoTrust, to ease potential timing issues while setting up the root CAs. To know more about these trust services, you can visit GlobalSign. Some noticeable points in this request are Google has supplied a key generation ceremony audit report Other than the disclosed intermediates and required test certificates, no issuance has been detected from these roots. Section 1.4.2 of the CPS expressly forbids the use of Google certificates for "man-in-the middle purposes". Appendix C of the current CPS indicates that Google limits the lifetime of server certificates to 365 days. The following concerns exist in the Roots- From the transfer on 11-August 2016 through 8-December 2016, at the time it would not have been clear if any policies applied to these new roots. The applicable CPS (Certification Practice Statement) during that period makes no reference to these roots. Google does state in their current CPS that these roots were operated according to that CPS. From the transfer on 11-August 2016 through the end of Google’s audit period on 30-September, 2016, these roots were not explicitly covered by either Google’s audit nor GlobalSign’s audit. The discussion was concluded with adding this policy to the main Mozilla Root Store Policy (section 8). With these changes and the filing of the bug, Mozilla plans to take no action against GTS based on what has been discovered and discussed. Here is what users had to say on this request- Source: Vue-hn To get a complete insight into this request, head over to Google groups. Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificates gain the trust of all Major Root Programs Pay your respects to Inbox, Google’s email innovation is getting discontinued Google’s prototype Chinese search engine ‘Dragonfly’ reportedly links searches to phone numbers  

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA) has come out with AI-based forensic tools to catch deepfakes, first reported by MIT technology review yesterday. According to MIT Technology Review, the development of more tools is currently under progress to expose fake images and revenge porn videos on the web. DARPA’s deepfake mission project was announced earlier this year. Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live face swapped with Donald Trump As mentioned in the MediFor blog post, “While many manipulations are benign, performed for fun or for artistic value, others are for adversarial purposes, such as propaganda or misinformation campaigns”. This is one of the major reasons why DARPA Forensics experts are keen on finding methods to detect deepfakes videos and images How did deepfakes originate? Back in December 2017, a Reddit user named “DeepFakes” posted extremely real-looking explicit videos of celebrities. He used deep learning techniques to insert celebrities’ faces into adult movies. Using Deep learning, one can combine and superimpose existing images and videos onto original images or videos to create realistic-seeming fake videos. As per the MIT technology review,“Video forgeries are done using a machine-learning technique -- generative modeling -- lets a computer learn from real data before producing fake examples that are statistically similar”. Video tampering is done using two neural networks -- generative adversarial networks which work in conjunction “to produce ever more convincing fakes”. Why are deepfakes toxic? An app named FakeApp was released earlier this year which helped create deepfakes quite easily. FakeApp uses neural networking tools developed by Google's AI division. The app trains itself to perform image-recognition tasks using trial and error. Ever since its release, the app has been downloaded more than 120,000 times. In fact, there are tutorials online on how to create deepfakes. Apart from this, there are regular requests on deepfake forums, asking users for help in creating face-swap porn videos of ex-girlfriends, classmates, politicians, celebrities, and teachers. Deepfakes is even be used to create fake news such as world leaders declaring war on a country. The toxic potential of this technology has led to a growing concern as deepfakes have become a powerful tool for harassing people. Once deepfakes found their way on the world wide web, many websites such as Twitter and PornHub, banned them from being posted on their platforms. Reddit also announced a ban on deepfakes, earlier this year, killing The “deepfakes” subreddit which had more than 90,000 subscribers, entirely. MediFor: DARPA’s AI weapon to counter deepfakes DARPA’s Media Forensics group, also known as MediFor, works in a group along with other researchers is set on developing AI tools for deepfakes. It is currently focusing on four techniques to catch the audiovisual discrepancies present in a forged video. This includes analyzing lip sync, detecting speaker inconsistency, scene inconsistency and content insertions. One technique comes from a team led by Professor Siwei Lyu of SUNY Albany. Lyu mentioned that they “generated about 50 fake videos and tried a bunch of traditional forensics methods. They worked on and off, but not very well”. As the deepfakes are created using static images, Lyu noticed that that the faces in deepfakes videos rarely blink and that eye-movement, if present, is quite unnatural. An academic paper titled "In Ictu Oculi: Exposing AI Generated Fake Face Videos by Detecting Eye Blinking," by Yuezun Li, Ming-Ching Chang and Siwei Lyu explains a method to detect forged videos. It makes use of Long-term Recurrent Convolutional Networks (LRCN). According to the research paper, people, on an average, blink about 17 times a minute or 0.283 times per second. This rate increases with conversation and decreases while reading. There are a lot of other techniques which are used for eye blink detection such as detecting the eye state by computing the vertical distance between eyelids, measuring eye aspect ratio ( EAR ), and using the convolutional neural network (CNN) to detect open and closed eye states. But, Li, Chang, and Lyu use a different approach. They rely on  Long-term Recurrent Convolutional Networks (LRCN) model. They first perform pre-processing to identify facial features and normalize the video frame orientation. Then, they pass cropped eye images into the LRCN for evaluation. This technique is quite effective. It is also better as compared to other approaches, with a reported accuracy of 0.99 (LRCN) compared to 0.98 (CNN) and 0.79 (EAR). However, Lyu says that a skilled video editor can fix the non-blinking deepfakes by using images that shows blinking eyes. But, Lyu’s team has a secret effective technique in the works to fix even that, though he hasn’t divulged any details. Others in DARPA are on the look-out for similar cues such as strange head movements, odd eye color, etc as these little details are leading the team even closer to detection of deepfakes. As mentioned in the MIT Technology review post, “the arrival of these forensics tools may simply signal the beginning of an AI-powered arms race between video forgers and digital sleuths” and how”. Also, MediFor states that “If successful, the MediFor platform will automatically detect manipulations, provide detailed information about how these manipulations were performed, and reason about the overall integrity of visual media to facilitate decisions regarding the use of any questionable image or video”. Deepfakes need to stop and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA) seems all set to fight against them. Twitter allegedly deleted 70 million fake accounts in an attempt to curb fake news A new WPA/WPA2 security attack in town: Wi-fi routers watch out! YouTube has a $25 million plan to counter fake news and misinformation  

In today’s world, organizations and companies go to great lengths to protect themselves from network breaches. However, even a pinhole is enough for the attackers to intrude into any system. Last week, routers by Cisco and Huawei were hacked by two separate groups using different methods. Cisco’s routers were hacked using a backdoor attack while Huawei routers were exploited using a much older vulnerability programming code. An abnormal rise in the Cisco router backdoors Cisco in the year 2004 had written the IETF proposal for a “lawful intercept” backdoor for their routers. This proposal stated that the law enforcement teams could use the intercept to remotely log in to routers. These routers which are sold to ISPs and other large enterprises would allow the law enforcement agents to wiretap IP networks. These law enforcement agents are supposed to gain such an access only via a court order or other legal access request. [box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]A backdoor is a malware type which can surpass the normal authentication process for accessing any system or application. Some backdoors are legitimate and assist, for instance, manufacturers to regain lost passwords. However, these backdoors can be used by attackers to remotely access the systems without anyone on the system knowing it.[/box] However, later in the year 2010, an IBM security researcher stated that such a protocol would give an easy access to malicious attackers and would take over Cisco IOS routers. Also, the ISPs related to these routers would also end up being hacked. Some undocumented backdoors were discovered in the year 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017. According to Tom’s Hardware, this year alone, Cisco recorded five different backdoors within their routers, which resulted in a security flaw for the company’s routers. Let’s have a look at the list of undocumented backdoors found and when. The month of March recorded two backdoors. Firstly, a hardcoded account with the username ‘cisco’, which would have provided an intrusion within more than 8.5 million Cisco routers and switches in a remote mode. Another hardcoded password was found for Cisco's Prime Collaboration Provisioning (PCP) software. This software is used for the remote installation of Cisco voice and video products. May revealed another backdoor in Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture (DNA) Center. This center is used by enterprises to provision devices across a network. Further, in the month of June, Cisco’s Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) found a backdoor account. Note that this is a software tool for traffic optimizations in the Wide Area Network (WAN). The most recent backdoor, found this month, was in the Cisco Policy Suite, which is a software suite for ISPs and large companies that can manage a network’s bandwidth policies. Using this backdoor, the attacker gets a root access to the network with no mitigations against it. However, this backdoor has been patched with Cisco’s software update. The question that arises from these incidents is whether these backdoors were created accidentally or actually by intruders? The recurrence of such incidents does not paint a good picture of Cisco as a responsible, reliable and trustworthy network for end users. Botnet built in a day brings down Huawei routers Researchers from the NewSky security spotted a new botnet last week, which nearly enslaved 18,000 Huawei’s IoT devices within a day. [box type="shadow" align="" class="" width=""]Botnets are huge networks of enslaved devices and can be used to perform distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack), send malicious packets of data to a device, and remotely execute code.[/box] The most striking feature of this huge botnet is that it was built within a day and with a vulnerability which was previously known, as CVE-2017-17215. Anubhav said, “It's painfully hilarious how attackers can construct big bot armies with known vulns"This botnet was created by a hacker, nicknamed Anarchy, says Ankit Anubhav, security researcher at NewSky security. Other security firms including Rapid7 and Qihoo 360 Netlab also confirmed the existence of this new botnet. They first noticed a huge increase in Huawei’s device scanning. Anubhav states that the hacker revealed to him an IP list of victims. This list has not been made public yet. He further adds that the same code was released as public in January this year. The same code was used in the Satori and Brickerbot botnets, and also within other botnets based on Mirai botnets (Mirai botnets were used in 2016 to disrupt Internet services across the US on a huge scale). The NetSky security researcher suspects that Anarchy may be the same hacker known as Wicked, who was linked with the creation of the Owari/Sora botnets. Moreover, Anarchy/Wicked told the researcher that they also plan to start a scan for Realtek router vulnerability CVE-2014-8361, in order to enslave more devices. After receiving such a warning from the hacker himself, what new security measures will be taken henceforth? Read more about this Huawei botnet attack on ZDNet. Is Facebook planning to spy on you through your mobile’s microphones? Social engineering attacks – things to watch out for while online DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0: How hackers used social engineering to manipulate the 2016 U.S. elections

Last week, a group of security researchers reported that they have found a new malware that takes its instructions from code hidden in memes posted to Twitter. This method is popularly known as Steganography, a method popularly used by cybercriminals to abstract a malicious file within an image to escape from security solutions. According to Trend Micro, some malware authors posted two tweets including malicious memes on 25th and 26th October. These images were tweeted via a Twitter account created in 2017.  “The memes contain an embedded command that is parsed by the malware after it’s downloaded from the malicious Twitter account onto the victim’s machine, acting as a C&C service for the already- placed malware”, reported Trend Micro. According to the blog post, this new threat is detected as TROJAN.MSIL.BERBOMTHUM.AA. Also, this malware gets its command from a legitimate source, which they state is a popular networking platform. The memes cannot be taken down until the malicious Twitter account is disabled. Twitter, on the other hand, has already taken the account offline as of December 13, 2018. Malicious memes are no laughing matter The memes posted via the malicious Twitter accounts have a “/print” command hidden, which enables the malware to take screenshots of the infected machine. These screenshots are then sent to a C&C server whose address is obtained through a hard-coded URL on pastebin.com. Next, the malware will send out the collected information or the command output to the attacker by uploading it to a specific URL address. According to Trend Micro, “During analysis, we saw that the Pastebin URL points to an internal or private IP address, which is possibly a temporary placeholder used by the attackers. The malware then parses the content of the malicious Twitter account and begins looking for an image file using the pattern:  “<img src=\”(.*?):thumb\” width=\”.*?\” height=\”.*?\”/>” on the account.” Source: TrendMicro Researchers have also mentioned some other commands supported by this malware, which includes /processos to retrieve the list of running processes. /clip, to capture clipboard content, /username to retrieve username from the infected machine, and /docs to retrieve filenames from a predefined path such as (desktop, %AppData% etc.) According to TechCrunch, “The malware appears to have first appeared in mid-October, according to a hash analysis by VirusTotal, around the time that the Pastebin post was first created.” After Trend Micro reported the account, Twitter pulled the account offline, suspending it permanently. How the biggest ad fraud rented Datacenter servers and used Botnet malware to infect 1.7m systems How to build a convolution neural network based malware detector using malware visualization [Tutorial] Privilege escalation: Entry point for malware via program errors

Brave, the open source privacy- focussed browser, has allegedly introduced a ‘backdoor’ to remotely inject headers in HTTP requests that may track users, say users on HackerNews. Users on Twitter and HackerNews have expressed their concerns over the new update on custom HTTP headers added by the Brave team: https://twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1094712882867011585 Source: HackerNews A user on Reddit has explained this move as “not tracking anything, they just send the word "Brave" to the website whenever you visit certain partners of theirs. So for instance visiting coinbase.com sends an "X-Brave-Partner" custom header to coinbase.com.” Brendan Eich, from the Brave team, has replied back to this allegation saying that the ‘Update is not a "backdoor" in any event and is a custom header instead.’  He says the update is about custom HTTP headers that Brave sends to its partners, with fixed header values. There is no tracking hazard in the new update. He further stresses on the fact that Brave blocks 3rd party cookies and storage and 3rd party fingerprinting along with HSTS supercookies; thus assuring users on preserving their privacy. “I find it silly to assume we will "heel turn" so obviously and track our users. C'mon! We defined our model so we can't cheat without losing lead users who would see through it. That requires seeing clearly things like the difference between tracking and script blocking or custom header sending, though.” Users have also posted on Hacker News that the Brave browser Tracking Protection feature does not block tracking scripts from hostnames associated with Facebook and Twitter. The tracking_protection_service.h file contains a comment informing that a tracking protection white_list variable was created as a "Temporary hack which matches both browser-laptop and Android code". Bleepingcomputer also reports that this whitelist variable is associated with code in the tracking_protection_service.cc file that adds various Facebook and Twitter hostnames to the whitelist variable so that they are not blocked by Brave's Tracking Protection feature. In response to this comment, Brave says that the issue that was opened on September 8th, 2018 and developers decided to whitelist tracking scripts from Facebook and Twitter because blocking them would “affect the functionality of many sites” including Facebook logins. You can head over to Brendan’s Reddit thread for more insights on this update. Brave introduces Brave Ads that share 70% revenue with users for viewing ads Chromium-based Brave browser shows 22% faster page load time than its Muon-based counterpart Otter Browser’s first stable release, v1.0.01 is out

In the new found age of Artificial Intelligence, where everything and everyone uses Machine Learning concepts to make life easier, the dark side of the same is can be left unexplored. Cybersecurity is gaining a lot of attention these days.The most influential organizations have experienced a downfall because of undetected malware that have managed to evade even the most secure cyber defense mechanisms. The job just got easier for cyber criminals that exploit AI to empower them and launch attacks. Imagine combining AI with cyber attacks! At last week’s Black Hat USA 2018 conference, IBM researchers presented their newly developed malware “DeepLocker” that is backed up by AI. Weaponized AI seems here to stay. Read Also: Black Hat USA 2018 conference Highlights for cybersecurity professionals All you need to know about DeepLocker Simply put, DeepLocker is a new generation malware which can stealth under the radar and go undetected till its target is reached. It uses an Artificial Intelligence model to identify its target using indicators like facial recognition, geolocation and voice recognition. All of which is easily available on the web these days! What’s interesting is that the malware can hide its malicious payload in carrier applications- like a video conferencing software, and go undetected by most antivirus and malware scanners until it reaches specific victims. Imagine sitting on your computer performing daily tasks. Considering that your profile pictures are available on the internet, your video camera can be manipulated to find a match to your online picture. Once the target (your face) is identified, the malicious payload can be unleashed thanks to your face which serves as a key to unlock the virus. This simple  “trigger condition” to unlock the attack is almost impossible to reverse engineer. The malicious payload will only be unlocked if the intended target is reached. It achieves this by using a deep neural network (DNN) AI model. The simple logic of  “if this, then that” trigger condition used by DeepLocker is transformed into a deep convolutional network of the AI model.   DeepLocker – AI-Powered Concealment   Source: SecurityIntelligence   The DeepLocker makes it really difficult for malware analysts to answer the 3 main questions- What target is the malware after-  Is it after people’s faces or some other visual clues? What specific instance of the target class is the valid trigger condition? And what is the ultimate goal of the attack payload? Now that’s some commendable work done by the IBM researchers. IBM has always strived to make a mark in the field of innovation. DeepLocker comes as no surprise as IBM has the highest number of facial recognition patents granted in 2018. BlackHat USA 2018 sneak preview The main aim of the IBM Researchers- Marc Ph. Stoecklin, Jiyong Jang and Dhilung Kirat-  briefing the crowd in the BlackHat USA 2018 conference was, To raise awareness that AI-powered threats like DeepLocker can be expected very soon To demonstrate how attackers have the capability to build stealthy malware that can circumvent defenses commonly deployed today and To provide insights into how to reduce risks and deploy adequate countermeasures. To demonstrate the efficiency of DeepLocker’s capabilities, they designed and demonstrated a proof of concept. The WannaCry virus was camouflaged in a benign video conferencing application so that it remains undetected by antivirus engines and malware sandboxes. As a triggering condition, an individual was selected, and the AI was trained to launch the malware when certain conditions- including the facial recognition of the target- were met. The experiment was, undoubtedly, a success. The DeepLocker is just an experiment by IBM to show how open-source AI tools can be combined with straightforward evasion techniques to build a targeted, evasive and highly effective malware. As the world of cybersecurity is constantly evolving, security professionals will now have to up their game to combat hybrid malware attacks. Found this article Interesting? Read the Security Intelligence blog to discover more. 7 Black Hat USA 2018 conference cybersecurity training highlights 12 common malware types you should know Social engineering attacks – things to watch out for while online  

Signal, the encrypted communication App for iOs and Android, recently announced optional link previews for the four most popular sites- Imgur, Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube. This will enable Signal users to see what’s behind a particular URL, while sharing content with their friends. According to Joshua Lund, the creator of Signal, the feature has been created in such a way that users can generate link previews while hiding the URL from the Signal service itself, thereby shielding their IP address from the previewed site, and obfuscating the true size of the preview image. Link previews will expose relevant pieces of the URL to the recipient. There are some sites like YouTube where the URL is a random string of letters, numbers, and symbols. A recipient will never know where the link goes until they click on the same. With link previews in place, users will get an idea of what they can expect when they click the link, just by looking at the preview. Users can disable this feature through settings or  by tapping the 'X' in the corner of the preview before hitting send. The process of sending a link preview follows 3 simple steps: The Signal app will establish a TCP connection using a privacy-enhancing proxy that will obscure a users IP address from the site that is being previewed. A TLS session will be negotiated directly between the app and the previewed site through the proxy. This will ensure that the Signal service never has access to the URL. The Signal app uses overlapping range requests to retrieve preview images. This will help the proxy service to see repeated requests for a fixed block size when media is transferred. Link previews may also alert users to avoid clicking on links that may contain malicious content. Users have taken this news well, commending the team on this new feature: https://twitter.com/Roderik_de_Pree/status/1093329997882949632 https://twitter.com/bcomenl/status/1093270187208523776 You can head over to Signal’s official blog to know more about this news. Signal to roll out a new privacy feature in beta, that conceals sender’s identity! Messaging app Telegram’s updated Privacy Policy is an open challenge SafeMessage: An AI-based biometric authentication solution for messaging platforms

Matheus Eduardo Garbelini a member of the ASSET (Automated Systems SEcuriTy) Research Group at the Singapore University of Technology and Design released a proof of concept for three WiFi vulnerabilities in the Espressif IoT devices, ESP32/ESP8266. 3 WiFi vulnerabilities on the ESP32/8266 IoT device Zero PMK Installation (CVE-2019-12587) This WiFi vulnerability hijacks clients on version ESP32 and ESP8266 connected to enterprise networks. It allows an attacker to take control of the WiFi device EAP session by sending an EAP-Fail message in the final step during the connection between the device and the access point. The researcher discovered that both the IoT devices update their Pairwise Master Key (PMK) only when they receive an EAP-Success message. If the EAP-Fail message is received before the EAP-Success, the device skips to update the PMK received during a normal EAP exchange (EAP-PEAP, EAP-TTLS or EAP-TLS). During this time, the device normally accepts the EAPoL 4-Way handshake. Each time ESP32/ESP8266 starts, the PMK is initialized as zero, thus, if an EAP-Fail message is sent before the EAP-Success, the device uses a zero PMK. Thus allowing the attacker to hijack the connection between the AP and the device. ESP32/ESP8266 EAP client crash (CVE-2019-12586) This WiFi vulnerability is found in SDKs of ESP32 and ESP8266 and allows an attacker to precisely cause a crash in any ESP32/ESP8266 connected to an enterprise network. In combination with the zero PMK Installation vulnerability, it could increase the damages to any unpatched device. This vulnerability allows attackers in radio range to trigger a crash to any ESP device connected to an enterprise network. Espressif has fixed such a problem and committed patches for ESP32 SDK, however, the SDK and Arduino board support for ESP8266 is still unpatched. ESP8266 Beacon Frame Crash (CVE-2019-12588) In this WiFi vulnerability, CVE-2019-12588 the client 802.11 MAC implementation in Espressif ESP8266 NONOS SDK 3.0 and earlier does not correctly validate the RSN AuthKey suite list count in beacon frames, probe responses, and association responses. This allows attackers in radio range to cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted message. Two situations in a malformed beacon frame can trigger two problems: When sending crafted 802.11 frames with the field Auth Key Management Suite Count (AKM) in RSN tag with size too large or incorrect, ESP8266 in station mode crashes. When sending crafted 802.11 frames with the field Pairwise Cipher Suite Count in RSN tag with size too large or incorrect, ESP8266 in station mode crashes. “The attacker sends a malformed beacon or probe response to an ESP8266 which is already connected to an access point. However, it was found that ESP8266 can crash even when there’s no connection to an AP, that is even when ESP8266 is just scanning for the AP,” the researcher says. A user on Hacker News writes, “Due to cheap price ($2—$5 depending on the model) and very low barrier to entry technically, these devices are both very popular as well as very widespread in those two categories. These chips are the first hits for searches such as "Arduino wifi module", "breadboard wifi", "IoT wifi module", and many, many more as they're the downright easiest way to add wifi to something that doesn't have it out of the box. I'm not sure how applicable these attack vectors are in the real world, but they affect a very large number of devices for sure.” To know more about this news in detail, read the Proof of Concept on GitHub. Other interesting news in IoT security Cisco Talos researchers disclose eight vulnerabilities in Google’s Nest Cam IQ indoor camera Microsoft reveals Russian hackers “Fancy Bear” are the culprit for IoT network breach in the U.S. Researchers reveal vulnerability that can bypass payment limits in contactless Visa card

With cybercrime on the rise, companies have started adopting the hard ways of preventing system breaches. Cybersecurity has become the need of the hour. This article will explore how cyberattacks bring companies down to their knees giving rise to cybersecurity. The article also looks at some of the cybersecurity strategies that an organization can adopt to safeguard itself from the prevalent attacks. Malware, Phishing, Ransomware, DDoS - these terms have become widespread today due to the increasing number of cyberattacks. The cyber threats that organizations face have grown steadily during the last few years and can disrupt even the most resilient organizations. 3 cyber attacks that shook the digital world 2011: Sony Who can forget the notorious Sony hack of April 2011? Sony’s PlayStation Network was hacked by a hacking group called “OurMine,” compromising the personal data of 77 million users. This cyberattack made Sony pay more than 15 million dollars in compensation to the people whose accounts were hacked. A hack made possible through a simple SQL inject could have been prevented using data encryption. Not long after this hack, in 2014, Sony Pictures was attacked through a malware by a hacker group called “Guardians of Peace” stealing more than 100 terabytes of confidential data. Sony had once again not paid heed to its security audit, which showed flaws in the firewall and several routers and servers resulting in the failure of infrastructure management and a monetary loss of 8 million dollars in compensation. 2013: 3 billion Yahoo accounts hacked Yahoo has been the target of the attackers thrice. During its takeover by Verizon, Yahoo disclosed that every one of Yahoo's 3 billion accounts had been hacked in 2013. However, one of the worst things about this attack was that it was discovered only in 2016, a whopping two years after the breach. 2017: WannaCry One of the most infamous ransomware of 2017, WannaCry spanned more than 150 countries targeting businesses running outdated Windows machines by leveraging some of the leaked NSA tools. The cyber attack that has been linked to North Korea hit thousands of targets, including public services and large corporations. The effects of WannaCry were so rampant that Microsoft, in an unusual move to curb the ransomware, released Windows patches for the systems it had stopped updating. On a somewhat unsurprising note, WannaCry owed its success to the use of outdated technologies (such as SMBv1) and improper maintaining their systems update for months, failing to protect themselves from the lurking attack. How cyber attacks damage businesses Cyberattacks are clearly bad for business. They lead to: Monetary loss Data loss Breach of confidential information Breach of trust Infrastructure damages Impending litigations and compensations Remediations Bad reputation Marketability This is why cybersecurity is so important - investing in it is smart from a business perspective as it could save you a lot of money in the long run. Emerging cybersecurity trends Tech journalist and analyst Art Wittmann once said "the idea that security starts and ends with the purchase of a prepackaged firewall is simply misguided". It's a valuable thing to remember when thinking about cybersecurity today. It's about more than just buying software; it's also about infrastructure design, culture and organizational practices. Cybersecurity is really a range of techniques and strategies designed to tackle different threats from a variety of sources. Gartner predicts that worldwide cybersecurity spending will climb to $96 billion in 2018. This rapid market growth is being driven by numerous emerging trends, including: Cloud computing Internet of things Machine learning Artificial Intelligence Biometrics and multi-factor authentication Remote access and BYOD--Bring your own device Effective cybersecurity strategies The most effective strategy to mitigate and minimize the effects of a cyberattack is to build a solid cybersecurity. Here are some of the ways in which an organization can strengthen their cybersecurity efforts: Understand the importance of security In the cyberage, you have to take the role of security seriously. You need to protect the organization with the help of a security team. When building a security team, you should take into accountthe types of risks that could affect the organization, how these risks will impact the business, and remedial measures in case of a breach Top notch security systems You cannot compromise on the quality of systems installed to secure your systems. Always remember what is at stake. Shoulda situation of attack arise, you need the best quality of security for your business. Implement a Red and Blue Team The organization must use the Red Team and Blue Team tactics, where the Red Team tactics can be used in penetration for accessing sensitive data, and the Blue Team tactics will defend your system from complex attacks. This team can be appointed internally or this job could be outsourced to the experts. Security audits Security audits are conducted with the aim of protect, detect, and respond. The security team must actively investigate their own security systems to make sure that everything is at par to defend against the lurking attack if it should occur. The security team must also be proactive with countermeasures to defend the organization walls against these malicious lurkers. Employees must also be properly educated to take proper precautions and act wisely in case of occurrence of a breach. Continuous monitoring Securing your organization against cyberattacks is a continuous process. It is not a one-time-only activity. The security team must be appointed to do regular audits of the security systems of the organizations. There should be a systematic and regular process, penetration testing must be conducted at regular intervals. The results of these tests must be looked at seriously to take mitigation steps to correct any weak or problematic systems. Enhance your security posture In an event of a breach, once the security team has confirmed the breach, they need to react quickly. However, don't start investigating without a plan. The compromised device should be located, its behavior should be analyzed and remedial actions should be underway. Vigilance In the words of the world’s most famous hacker, Kevin Mitnick, “Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls, encryption,and secure access devices, and its money wasted; none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain.” It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to be ever vigilant. The security team must stay current with the latest threat intelligence and always be on the lookout for the latest malicious programs that disrupt the organizations. Think ahead The question is never “if”, the real question is “when.”The attackers come sneaking when you are not looking. It is absolutely critical that organizations take a proactive stance to protect themselves by dropping the “if” attitude and adopting the “when” attitude. If you liked this post explore the book from which it was taken: Cybersecurity - Attack and Defense Strategies. Written by Yuri Diogenes and Erdal Ozkaya, Cybersecurity - Attack and Defense Strategiesuses a practical approach to the cybersecurity kill chain to explain the different phases of the attack, which includes the rationale behind each phase, followed by scenarios and examples that bring the theory into practice. Yuri Diogenes is a Senior Program Manager @ Microsoft C+E Security CxP Team and a professor at EC-Council University for their master's degree in cybersecurity program. Erdal Ozkaya is a doctor of philosophy in cybersecurity, works for Microsoft as a cybersecurity architect and security advisorand is also a part-time lecturer at Australian Charles Sturt University.

Yesterday, Google, Mozilla, and Apple announced that by 2020, they will disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1 by default in their respective browsers. Kyle Pflug, Senior Program Manager for Microsoft Edge said, "January 19th of next year marks the 20th anniversary of TLS 1.0, the inaugural version of the protocol that encrypts and authenticates secure connections across the web." Chrome, Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari already support TLS 1.2 and will soon support recently-approved final version of the TLS 1.3 standard. On the other hand, Chrome and Firefox already support TLS 1.3, while Apple and Microsoft are still working towards supporting TLS 1.3. Why disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1? The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an organization that develops and promotes Internet standards is hosting discussions to formally deprecated both TLS 1.0 and 1.1. TLS provides confidentiality and integrity of data in transit between clients and servers while exchanging information. In order to keep this data safe, it is essential to use modern and highly secures versions of this protocol. The Apple’s Secure Transports team has listed down some benefits of moving away from TLS 1.0 and 1.1 including: Modern cryptographic cipher suites and algorithms with desirable performance and security properties, e.g., perfect forward secrecy and authenticated encryption, that are not vulnerable to attacks such as BEAST. Removal of mandatory and insecure SHA-1 and MD5 hash functions as part of peer authentication. Resistance to downgrade-related attacks such as LogJam and FREAK. For Google Chrome users, Enterprise deployments can preview the TLS 1.0 and 1.1 removal today by setting the SSLVersionMin policy to ‘tls1.2’. For enterprise deployments that need more time, this same policy can be used to re-enable TLS 1.0 or TLS 1.1 until January 2021. Post depreciation here is what each browser maker has promised: TLS 1.0 and 1.1 will be disabled altogether in Chrome 81, which will start rolling out “on early release channels starting January 2020.” Edge and Internet Explorer 11 will disable TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 by default “in the first half of 2020.” Firefox will drop support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 in March 2020. TLS 1.0 and 1.1. will be removed from Safari in updates to Apple iOS and macOS beginning in March 2020. Read more about this news in detail on Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) blog post. Introducing TLS 1.3, the first major overhaul of the TLS protocol with improved security and speed Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificates gain the trust of all Major Root Programs Java 11 is here with TLS 1.3, Unicode 11, and more updates

A few days ago, researchers from Positive technologies discovered flaws in Visa contactless cards, which allow hackers to bypass the payment limits. This research was conducted by two of Positive technologies’ researchers: Leigh-Anne Galloway, Cyber Security Resilience Lead and Tim Yunusov, Head of banking security. The attack was tested with “five major UK banks where it successfully bypassed the UK contactless verification limit of £30 on all tested Visa cards, irrespective of the card terminal”, the researchers mentioned. They added that the contactless Visa card vulnerability is possible on cards outside the UK as well. How to exploit this contactless Visa card vulnerability? The attack manipulates two data fields that are exchanged between the card and the terminal during a contactless payment. “Predominantly in the UK, if a payment needs an additional cardholder verification (which is required for payments over 30 pounds in the UK), cards will answer "I can’t do that," which prevents against making payments over this limit,” the researchers said. Next, the terminal uses country-specific settings, which demand that the card or mobile wallet provide additional verification of the cardholder, such as through the entry of the card PIN or fingerprint authentication on the phone. The attack could bypass both these checks using a device that intercepts communication between the card and the payment terminal. This device acts as a proxy thereby conducting a man in the middle (MITM) attack. “This attack is possible because Visa does not require issuers and acquirers to have checks in place that block payments without presenting the minimum verification,” the researchers say. “The attack can also be done using mobile wallets such as GPay, where a Visa card has been added to the wallet. Here, it is even possible to fraudulently charge up to £30 without unlocking the phone,” Positive Technologies mention in their post. One of the researchers, Yunusov said, "The payment industry believes that contactless payments are protected by the safeguards they have put in place, but the fact is that contactless fraud is increasing. While it’s a relatively new type of fraud and might not be the number one priority for banks at the moment, if contactless verification limits can be easily bypassed, it means that we could see more damaging losses for banks and their customers." A hacker can easily conduct a cardless attack Forbes explains, criminals, for instance, could take a payment from a card when the user wasn’t looking with their own mobile payments machine (though a malicious merchant would eventually be caught by banks’ fraud systems if they used the same terminal). They could even take a payment reading from a credit card using their mobile phones and send the data to another phone and make a payment on that second device going beyond the limit, the researchers claimed. “For the hack to work, all the fraudsters need is to be close to their victim,” Forbes mentions. “So that means if you found someone’s card or if someone stole your card, they wouldn’t have to know your PIN, they wouldn’t have to impersonate your signature, and they could make a payment for a much higher value,” Galloway said. According to UK Finance, fraud on contactless cards and devices increased from £6.7 million in 2016 to £14 million in 2017. £8.4 million was lost to contactless fraud in the first half of 2018. Researchers suggest that additional security should be provided by the bank issuing cards and shouldn’t rely on Visa to provide a secure protocol for payments. “Instead, issuers should have their own measures in place to detect and block this attack vector and other payment attacks,” the researchers say. Galloway says, “It falls to the customer and the bank to protect themselves. While some terminals have random checks, these have to be programmed by the merchant, so it is entirely down to their discretion.” “Because of this, we can expect to see contactless fraud continue to rise. Issuers need to be better at enforcing their own rules on contactless and increasing the industry standard. Criminals will always gravitate to the more convenient way to get money quickly, so we need to make it as difficult as possible to crack contactless,” she further adds. In the U.S., contactless card transactions are relatively rare, with only about 3 percent of cards falling into this category, CNBC reports. Researchers say the limits attackers can withdraw will differ in different countries. In the UK, they were able to make payments of £100 without any detection. Galloway says, for instance, in the U.S., it’s considerably higher at $100. What measures is Visa taking to prevent this kind of contactless fraud? Surprisingly, the company was not alarmed by this situation. In fact, Forbes reports that Visa wasn’t planning on updating their systems anytime soon. “One key limitation of this type of attack is that it requires a physically stolen card that has not yet been reported to the card issuer. Likewise, the transaction must pass issuer validations and detection protocols. It is not a scalable fraud approach that we typically see criminals employ in the real world,” a Visa spokesperson told Forbes. The company also said it was continually working on improving its fraud detection tech. https://twitter.com/a66ot/status/1155793829443842049 To know more about this news in detail, head over to Positive technologies’ official post. A vulnerability found in Jira Server and Data Center allows attackers to remotely execute code on systems VLC media player affected by a major vulnerability in a 3rd library, libebml; updating to the latest version may help A zero-day vulnerability on Mac Zoom Client allows hackers to enable users’ camera, leaving 750k companies exposed

If you think closing down a website, closes down the possibility of the device being tracked, then you are wrong! Some Greek researchers have revealed a new browser-based attack named MarioNet, using which attackers can run malicious code inside users' browsers even after users have closed the webpage or even navigated away from the web page on which they got infected. The researchers in the paper titled, “Master of Web Puppets: Abusing Web Browsers for Persistent and Stealthy Computation” have also explained different anti-malware browser extensions and anti-mining countermeasures, and also puts forward several mitigations that browser makers could take. The MarioNet attack was presented on February 25 at the NDSS 2019 conference in San Diego, USA. MarioNet allows hackers to assemble giant botnets from users’ browsers. The researchers state that these bots can be used for in-browser crypto-mining (crypto jacking), DDoS attacks, malicious files hosting/sharing, distributed password cracking, creating proxy networks, advertising click-fraud, and traffic stats boosting. Even after a user exits a browser or web page, MarioNet can easily survive. This is because modern web browsers support a new API called Service Workers. “This mechanism allows a website to isolate operations that rendering a page's user interface from operations that handle intense computational tasks so that the web page UI doesn't freeze when processing large quantities of data”, the ZDNet reports. In their research paper, they explain technical details of how service workers are an update to an older API called Web Workers. They say, unlike web workers, a service worker, once registered and activated, can live and run in the page's background, without requiring the user to continue browsing through the site that loaded the service worker. The attack routine consists of registering a service worker when the user lands on an attacker-controlled website and then abusing the Service Worker SyncManager interface to keep the service worker alive after the user navigates away. The attack doesn't require any type of user interaction as browsers don't alert users or ask for permission before registering a service worker. Everything happens under the browser's hood as the user waits for the website to load. MarioNet allows attackers to place malicious code on high-traffic websites for a short period of time. This allows the attackers to gain a huge user base, remove the malicious code, but continue to control the infected browsers from another central server. The attack can also persist across browser reboots by abusing the Web Push API. This requires the attacker from getting user permission from the infected hosts to access this API. The researchers also highlighted the fact that as Service Workers have been introduced a few years back, the MarioNet attack also works in almost all desktop and mobile browsers. Places, where a MarioNet attack won't work, are IE (desktop), Opera Mini (mobile), and Blackberry (mobile). To know more about MarioNet attack in detail, read the complete research paper. New research from Eclypsium discloses a vulnerability in Bare Metal Cloud Servers that allows attackers to steal data Security researchers discloses vulnerabilities in TLS libraries and the downgrade Attack on TLS 1.3 Remote Code Execution Flaw in APT Linux Package Manager allows man-in-the-middle attack

Yesterday, Maddie Stone, a Security Researcher in the Google Project Zero team shared a detailed analysis of the use-after-free Android Binder vulnerability. The vulnerability, tracked under CVE-2019-2215 was being exploited in-the-wild affecting most Android devices manufactured before fall last year. Stone's post goes into detail about how they discovered this Android Binder vulnerability, its technical details, how it can be exploited, and its fix. Along with these details, she also shared that the Project Zero team is working on improving their approach of handling "in-the-wild" zero-day exploits under the mission "make zero-day hard." Their current approach is to hunt for bugs based on rumors or leads and patch the bug, perform variant analysis to find similar vulnerabilities and patch them. Finally, sharing the complete detailed analysis of the exploit with the community. The use-after-free Android Binder vulnerability The use-after-free Android Binder vulnerability is a local privilege escalation vulnerability that gives the attacker full read and write access to a vulnerable device. It is not new though. Back in 2017, Szybot, a syzkaller system reported it to both the Linux kernel and syzkaller-bugs mailing lists. In February 2018, it was patched in the Linux 4.14, Android 3.18, Android 4.4, and Android 4.9 kernels. The patch, however, never made it to the Android monthly security bulletin leaving many already released devices such as Pixel and Pixel 2 vulnerable to an exploit. Then in late summer 2019, the NSO Group, an Israel-based technology firm known for its Pegasus spyware, informed Project Zero about an Android zero-day exploit that was part of an attack chain that installed Pegasus spyware on target devices. Based on the details shared by the NSO Group Stone was able to track down the bug in Android Binder. Project Zero reported the Android Binder vulnerability to Android on September 27. In the report Stone has shared a list of devices that appear to be vulnerable: “Other devices which appear to be vulnerable based on source code review are (referring to 8.x releases unless otherwise stated): 1) Pixel 2 with Android 9 and Android 10 preview (https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/refs/heads/android-msm-wahoo-4.4-q-preview-6/) 2) Huawei P20 3) Xiaomi Redmi 5A 4) Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 5) Xiaomi A1 6) Oppo A3 7) Moto Z3 8) Oreo LG phones (run the same kernel according to the website) 9) Samsung S7, S8, S9 “ After reporting the Android Binder vulnerability to Android, the team publicly disclosed it on October 3 and three days later Android added updates to the October Android Security Bulletin. In a statement to the Project Zero team, Android shared, "Android partners were notified of the bug and provided updates to address it within 24 hours. Android also assigned CVE-2019-2215 to explicitly indicate that it represents a security vulnerability as the original report from syzkaller and the corresponding Linux 4.14 patch did not highlight any security implications.” The statement further reads, “Pixel 3 and 3a were already protected against these issues. Updates for affected Pixel devices were available to users as early as October 7th, 2019.” To read more about the exploit, check out Stone’s blog post: Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit. Also, check out the proof-of-concept exploit that Stone wrote together with Jann Horn, a fellow team member. The PoC demonstrates how this vulnerability can be used to gain arbitrary read and write permissions when run locally. StackRox Kubernetes Security Platform 3.0 releases with advanced configuration and vulnerability management capabilities An unpatched vulnerability in NSA’s Ghidra allows a remote attacker to compromise exposed systems 10 times ethical hackers spotted a software vulnerability and averted a crisis