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Obama to end cyber-attacks

American president Barack Obama is so hacked off with cyber-attacks on US companies (and other interests) that he’s taken a step sure to send the perpetrators running for cover. In an executive order on the 1st of April, he created a new sanctions authority to have a go at anyone attacking the USA. In the statement announcing it he is quoted as saying “Cyber threats pose one of the most serious economic and national security challenges to the United States, and my administration is pursuing a comprehensive strategy to confront them”, describing it as a “national emergency”

Basically it gives the US Treasury Department to freeze the assets of any hackers suspected of attacking the US, in much the same way as it brings peace to places the Middle East and Ukraine. The criminals behind these attacks are no doubt quaking in their sneakers.

The decision to blame North Korea for the Sony attack told the world that the administration was getting tough, never mind the facts. And the Chinese, of course, deny state-sponsored naughtiness on an apparently daily basis.

The problem is, of course, that it’s somewhat difficult to actually figure out who’s behind an attack. Working out where an attack comes from is possible, and it’s usually from some hijacked computers used to obfuscate the origin. China and various other countries have a higher installed base of pirated software, which often comes with a built-in botnet, so of course attacks come from these places.

Initial opinion in the USA is divided between the law-makers, politicians and the non-technical cyber-security industry heralding it as the beginning of the end for international espionage gangs, and those of us who know now it works wondering if this is an April Fool.

One point I find intriguing, however, is whether this will have an effect on patent disputes. Apparently they’re worried about, and plan to apply these powers to, intellectual property theft. It seems to me that if some technology turned up in a competitor’s product and the American company went crying to the authorities they could have sanctions imposed on the foreign company, without any reasonable way of proving that any theft had taken place – or even who had it first. It could get messy.

 

 

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Security certificates broken on Google Chrome 41

Don’t install the latest release of Google Chrome (41), released on Thursday (Friday UK time). They’ve messed up. Twice.

Broken SSL when talking to routers etc.

The first problem comes when accessing the web interface on a device such as a router over SSL (encrypted). Unfortunately, because the software in theses is embedded, the security certificate it uses isn’t going to match the name of the device you use to access it. This would be impossible – when it leaves the factory it hasn’t had its IP address assigned on your site; never mind the DNS entry. Previously browsers have allowed you to ignore this mis-match; the encryption works as long as you’re comfortable that you’re really talking what you think you are using some other check, and once the exception has been stored, this should be the end of the matter.

But not with Chrome release 41. Now it will show you the screen below:

ChromeMessedUp

If you ask for more details it doesn’t really give you much:

A secure connection cannot be established because this site uses an unsupported protocol.
Error code: ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
This comes from a DrayTek 2820 modem/router, but the problem seems to exist on other networking kit.

More adverts too – and a malware backdoor

(Please see update below – there may be an innocent explanation for this)
As an extra surprise, those nice people seem to have found a way of blocking URL keyword filters used to keep adverts out from objectionable sources, circumventing methods of blocking Google’s syndicated advertising. I’m still researching this, but the way they appear to have done it means that embedded content from other sources than the site you’re looking at is extremely difficult to block.
It appears Google has done this to protect its revenue stream from adverts, with little regard from the site policies that may exist for reasons Google may not realise. But that’s not the worst of it: how long will it be before this feature of Chrome is used for drive-by downloads. If you’re firewall isn’t able to cross-check the source of the content on a page, it can be coming from anywhere.
Unfortunately there is no way of rolling back a bad version of Chrome. They really don’t like you doing that, however dangerous a release might be.
I have, of course, made urgent representations to the Chrome project but we will have to wait and see. In the mean time, all I can suggest is that you prevent Chrome from updating beyond version 40.

Update 2015-03-23
On further investigation, the updated Chrome isn’t doing a DNS lookup to find the Google ad-server. I’m unsure whether this is because it somehow cached the DNS results internally or whether its hard-wired. It certainly wasn’t using the system cache, but I know Chrome has kept its own cache in the past. If it is from an internal cache, the mechanism used to get the IP address in there in the first place is a mystery, however Google’s ad servers change from time to time and it’s not impossible that the perimeter firewall simply hadn’t kept up and allowed some through.

My next research will be looking more closely at the DNS traffic.

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Yahoo plans to give up passwords

The latest scheme from Yahoo’s Crazy Ideas Department is to dispense with login passwords. Are they going to replace them with a certificate login or something more secure? Nope! The security-gaff prone outfit from Sunnyvale California has had the genius idea of sending a four-character one-time password to your mobile phone, according to an announcement they made at SXSW yesterday (or possibly today if you’re reading this in the USA).

According to Chris Stoned Stoner, their Product Development Director, the bright idea is to avoid the need to memorise difficult passwords by simply sending a new one, each time, to your registered mobile phone.

At first glance, this sounds a bit like the sensible two-factor authentication you find already: Log in using your password and an additional verification code is sent to your mobile. However, Yahoo has dispensed with the first part – logging in with your normal password. This means that anyone that has physical control of your mobile phone can now hijack your Yahoo account too. If your phone is locked, no matter – just retrieve the SMS using the SIM alone. No need to pwn Yahoo accounts the traditional way.

With an estimated 800,000 mobile phones nicked per year in the UK alone (Source inferred from ONS report) and about 6M handsets a year going AWOL in the USA, you’ve got to wonder what Yahoo was thinking.

Apart from the security risk, what are the chances of being locked out of your email simply because you’re out of mobile range (or if you’re phone has gone missing). Double whammy!

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More comment spammer email analysis

Since my earlier post, I decided to see what change there had been in the email addresses used by comment spammers to register. Here are the results:

 

Freemail Service  %
hotmail.com 22%
yahoo.com 20%
outlook.com 14%
mailnesia.com 8%
gmail.com 6%
laposte.net 6%
o2.pl 3%
mail.ru 2%
nokiamail.com 2%
emailgratis.info 1%
bk.ru 1%
gmx.com 1%
poczta.pl 1%
yandex.com 1%
list.ru 1%
mail.bg 1%
aol.com 1%
solar.emailind.com 1%
inbox.ru 1%
rediffmail.com 1%
live.com 1%
more-infos-about.com 1%
dispostable.com <1%
go2.pl <1%
rubbergrassmats-uk.co.uk <1%
abv.bg <1%
fdressesw.com <1%
freemail.hu <1%
katomcoupon.com <1%
tlen.pl <1%
yahoo.co.uk <1%
acity.pl <1%
atrais-kredits24.com <1%
conventionoftheleft.org <1%
iidiscounts.org <1%
interia.pl <1%
ovi.com <1%
se.vot.pl <1%
trolling-google.waw.pl <1%

As before, domains with <1% are still significant; it’s a huge sample. I’ve only excluded domains with <10 actual attempts.

The differences from 18 months ago are interesting. Firstly, mailnesia.com has dropped from 19% to 6% – however this is because the spam system has decided to block it! Hotmail is also slightly less and Gmail and AOL are about the same. The big riser is Yahoo, followed by laposte.net (which had the highest percentage rise of them all). O2 in Poland is still strangely popular.

If you want to know how to extract the statistics for yourself, see my earlier post.

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jpmoryan.com malware spam

Since about 2pm(GMT) today FJL has been intercepting a nice new zero-day spammed malware from the domain jpmoyran.com (domain now deleted). Obviously just one letter different from J P Morgan, the domain was set up in a fairly okay manner – it would pass through the default spamassassin criteria, although no SPF was added as it’s being sent out by a spambot.

The payload  was a file called jpmorgan.exe (spelled correctly!) with an icon that was similar to an Adobe PDF file. Is it malware? Well yes, but I’ve yet to analyse just what. It’s something new.

 

Text of the message is something like:

 

Please fill out and return the attached ACH form along with a copy of a voided check (sic).

Anna Brown
JPMorgan Chase
GRE Project Accounting
Vendor Management & Bid/Supervisor
Fax-602-221-2251
Anna.Brown@jpmchase.com
GRE Project Accounting

Be careful.

 

Update: 19:30

As a courtesy, I always let affected companies know they’re being attacked, with variable results. J P Morgan’s cyber security department in New York took about 30 minutes to get to; they couldn’t cope with the idea that (a) I was not in America; and (b) I wasn’t even a customer of theirs. I eventually ended up speaking to someone from the “Global(sic) Security Team” who told me that if I was a customer I didn’t need to worry about it, but I could sent it to abuse@… – and then put the phone down on me. This was an address for customers to send “suspicious” emails to. I doubt they’ll read it, or the malware analysis. If you’re a J P Morgan customer, you might want to have a word about their attitude.

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Interesting security issue with Google Apps for Education

I’ve come across a feature of Google Apps for Education that people should really be aware of. It goes like this…

When a school or college signs up for Google Apps for Education, a single email account is used to register a local administrator. This administrator then has control over the sub-accounts, including creation, passwords and monitoring. This would be someone at the school you can trust, right? Because they have access to all your children’s data. And it’s only for school use, so where’s the problem?

Well here’s the problem: that data will probably include a GMail account, and they may not be using it for education-related matters. Creepy. Assuming you trust the monitor, do you snoop on the pupils for their own protection or leave it completely unmoderated, with all the implications for child safety. You’re between a rock and a hard place. By forcing pupils to use an insecure channel you’re responsible for the consequences: if you look you could be accused of voyeurism; if you don’t you can be accused of allowing abuse which you could have prevented.

And it gets worse, because you’re basically logging in using a Google Account. How many people log out when they’re finished? And if a child logs in on a home computer and someone else uses it afterwards without realising, the administrator at the school gets to snoop on data inadvertently added to the account by other members of the household.

Are you a parent, and were you aware of this? You are now!

If you’re a school, my advice is to (a) monitor the monitor; and (b) make sure children know to log out after use; and (c) make very sure that you have parents’ specific permission to allow their children to use the system, being aware of the above. If not and you end up monitoring someone you don’t have permission to (i.e. not your pupil), you’re probably looking at an offence under the Misuse of Computer Act 1990 in the UK, and a class action law suit in the USA. Remember that school in Philadelphia that took snapshots using students’ Macbook webcams without telling anyone? (Robbins v. Lower Merion School District). There was no suggestion of foul play, just naivety on the part of the school district. And it cost them $600K to settle, plus a great deal of embarrassment.

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Do I have SoapSoap in my WordPress?

Apparently, 100,000 WordPress sites have been compromised by this nasty. It injects redirect code in to WordPress themes.

According to an analysis posted by  Tony Perez on his blog, it’s going to be easy to spot if you’re a server administrator as in injects the code:

php function FuncQueueObject()
{
wp_enqueue_script("swfobject");
}
add_action("wp_enqueue_scripts", 'FuncQueueObject');

In to wp-includes/template-loader.php

So,

find / -name template-loader.php -exec grep {} swfobject \;

should do the trick. I’m not a PHP nut, but I don’t think swfobject is common in that file.

Update: 06-Jan-2015

The web site linked to above has an on-line scanner that’s supposed to check for this problem, so I’ve just run it against this blog. It found something here. False positive, methinks! I’ve written to them pointing out that the search may be a little naive given the subject matter of that post! Fair play for providing such a tool free of charge though. It’s a little hard to see how such a scanner could work at all, but not pick up text lifted from a compromised site.

 

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Sony and Microsoft games network hack

Both the Sony an Microsoft games network servers have been badly disrupted from Christmas day. The cyber vandals Lizard Squad have admitted responsibility.

This outage has nothing to do with millions of new games consoles being unwrapped and connected at the same time. Oh dear me no. Their network servers would have taken the huge spike in workload in their stride. This is definitely something to blame on those awful hactivists, and any suggestion that it was teetering on the brink and all it needed was a little push is a foul slur on the competence of Microsoft and Sony.

The extent to which Lizard Squad was involved may be in question, but major respect for the expert way they’ve played the media. Again.

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Sony Hack – whodunnit?

Details are starting to emerge about how Sony was compromised. Sagie Dulce from Imperva reckons he’s seen the Destover back-door software used before, in 2012 in Saudi and then again in the 2013 Dark Seoul.

A few days ago Jaime Blascoof AlienVault Labs sent me a note about malware samples he’s got hold of, with the following comment:

“From the samples we obtained, we can say the attackers knew the internal network from Sony since the malware samples contain hardcoded names of servers inside Sony’s network and even credentials – usernames and passwords – that the malware uses to connect to systems inside the network. The malware was used to communicate with IP addresses in Europe and Asia, which is common for hackers trying to obscure their location. The hackers who compiled the malware used the Korean language on their systems.”

I’ve had other reports that the malware was compiled using a Korean language development environment. This means nothing to me – a lot of these generic malware kits are.

To me, this is looking more and more like the work of the usual suspects. An inside job – not a sudden and spontaneous lashing out by the North Koreans. This kind of attack requires time to put together.

 

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North Korea Refuses to Deny Sony Cyber Attack

The popular media is in a frenzy – those dastardly North Koreans have launched a cyber-attack on Sony, pinched a lot of films and posted them on-line in revenge against the company for a disrespectful comedy making fun of their glorious leader. According to the BBC, they have refused to deny the attack, with a spokesman saying “Wait and see.”

The north Koreans must be loving this – they were, apparently, pretty hacked off about the depiction of Kim Jong-un. They have no sense of humour as far as he’s concerned. However, this bears all the hallmarks of a bunch of script kiddies ripping off a load of films to add to the pirate haul. The North Korean’s response, when doorstepped about the incident, suggests to me that they think their “enemy’s” predicament is hilarious, but stops well short of taking credit for it. Why would they be so coy? Because when the real culprits break cover they’d look stupid.

Yes, it could have been the North Koreans, but they’re not exactly high-tech. As far as I can tell there are only about a thousand IP addresses for the whole country. If it were China in the frame, I could believe it. Would the Chinese pull a stunt in support of their southern “friends” – I somehow doubt that; not over a film.

Given the extensive nature of the compromise, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an inside job. Did the people involved set out to purpetrate the hack of the decade? There’ll be trouble now.