Iranian Hackers Tried to Impersonate Israeli Cyber-security Company

Last month, the Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky discovered an Iranian hacker group called Charming Kitten running an operation it called Ayatollah BBC.

The Israeli cybersecurity firm ClearSky has exposed several cases in which Iranian  hackers impersonated legitimate websites. In February, for instance, it revealed an operation it called Ayatollah BBC – a series of Iranian-run websites impersonating foreign or even Iranian media outlets. 

But earlier this month, it reported that it, too, has joined the list of victims of these Iranian “copy and paste” operations.

Last month, the company discovered that a hacker group called Charming Kitten, which had perpetrated previous attacks, was still operating. The group is connected to the Iranian government and is deemed an “advanced persistent threat,” meaning it comprises sophisticated hackers.

It has occasionally hit the headlines, once when one of its members was involved in breaking into the HBO television network and stealing videos and other files, including scripts for the hit series “Game of Thrones.”

The group often uses “watering hole” attacks, which utilize either legitimate sites or seemingly innocent but malicious sites to infect users with malware that the hackers can then use to spy on them. For instance, ClearSky researchers discovered the group had created a website which impersonated the German paper Deutsche Welle’s site. 

The hackers also managed to insert a malicious page into the website of a Los Angeles Jewish community paper, the Jewish Journal. The page invited users to a webinar and included a link that activated a program called BeEF, which stands for Browser Exploitation Framework. BeEF was originally created for security researchers who look for security breaches, particularly in browsers, in order to improve their defenses. But it has proven a double-edged sword that attackers can use for less benign ends.

ClearSky’s most entertaining discovery so far, however, relates directly to the company. As the website Bleeping Computer reported last week, the Charming Kitten group impersonated ClearSky itself by creating a website almost identical to that of the Israeli firm, with a slightly different address; the imposter site ended in “.net” rather than “.com.”

ClearSky researchers found some broken links in the fake site, leading them to think it is still under development.

The obvious question is what the Iranian hackers hoped to achieve with this impersonation. The answer lies in one very significant difference between the two sites: Unlike the original site, the Iranian version allows users to register. This would enable the hackers to steal information from ClearSky’s customers, who would think they were merely registering to receive site updates. The moment a user clicked on the registration link, the hackers would be able to steal his or her personal information, including passwords for service providers.

Source: Haaretz

Stolen D-Link Certificate Used to Digitally Sign Spying Malware

Digitally signed malware has become much more common in recent years to mask malicious intentions.

                   

Security researchers have discovered a new malware campaign misusing stolen valid digital certificates from Taiwanese tech-companies, including D-Link, to sign their malware and making them look like legitimate applications.

As you may know, digital certificates issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA) are used to cryptographically sign computer applications and software and are trusted by your computer for execution of those programs without any warning messages.

However, malware author and hackers who are always in search of advanced techniques to bypass security solutions have seen been abusing trusted digital certificates in recent years.

Hackers use compromised code signing certificates associated with trusted software vendors in order to sign their malicious code, reducing the possibility of their malware being detected on targeted enterprise networks and consumer devices.

Security researchers from ESET have recently identified two malware families, previously associated with cyberespionage group BlackTech, that have been signed using valid digital certificates belonging to D-Link networking equipment manufacturer and another Taiwanese security company called Changing Information Technology.

The first malware, dubbed Plead, is a remotely controlled backdoor designed to steal confidential documents and spy on users.

The second malware is also a related password stealer designed to collect saved passwords from Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, and Mozilla Firefox.

Researchers notified both D-link and Changing Information Technology about the issue, and the companies revoked the compromised digital certificates on July 3 and July 4, 2018, respectively.

Since most antivirus software fails to check the certificate's validity even when companies revoke the signatures of their certificates, the BlackTech hackers are still using the same certificates to sign their malicious tools.

"The ability to compromise several Taiwan-based technology companies and reuse their code-signing certificates in future attacks shows that this group is highly skilled and focused on that region," the researchers said.

It is not the first time when hackers have used valid certificates to sign their malware. The infamous Stuxnet worm that targeted Iranian nuclear processing facilities in 2003 also used valid digital certificates.

Also, the 2017 CCleaner hack, wherein hackers replaced the original CCleaner software with the tainted downloads, was made possible due to digitally-signed software update.

Source: TheHackerNews

DomainFactory Hacked—Hosting Provider Asks All Users to Change Passwords

Besides Timehop, another data breach was discovered last week that affects users of one of the largest web hosting companies in Germany, DomainFactory, owned by GoDaddy.

The breach initially happened back in last January this year and just emerged last Tuesday when an unknown attacker himself posted a breach note on the DomainFactory support forum.

It turns out that the attacker breached company servers to obtain the data of one of its customers who apparently owes him a seven-figure amount, according to Heise.

Later the attacker tried to report DomainFactory about the potential vulnerability using which he broke into its servers, but the hosting provider did not respond, and neither disclosed the breach to its customers.

In that situation, the attacker head on to the company's support forum and broke the news with sample data of a few customers as proof, which forced DomainFactory to immediately shut down the forum website and initiate an investigation.

Attacker Gains Access to a Large Number of Data

DomainFactory finally confirmed the breach last weekend, revealing that following personal data belonging to an unspecified number of its customers has been compromised.

Customer name

Company name

Customer account ID

Physical address

E-mail addresses

Telephone number

DomainFactory Phone password

Date of birth

Bank name and account number (e.g. IBAN or BIC)

Schufa score (German credit score)

Well, that's a whole lot of information, which can be used by cybercriminals for targeted social engineering attacks against the customers.

The forum has since been temporarily down, and DomainFactory said that a data feed of certain customer information, accessed by the attacker, was left open to external third parties after a system transition on January 29, 2018.

"We have notified the data protection authority and commissioned external experts with the investigation. The protection of the data of our customers is paramount, and we regret the inconvenience this incident causes, very much," the company said.

Change All of Your Passwords

DomainFactory is now advising its users to change passwords for all of the following services and applications "as a precautionary measure," and also change passwords for other online services where you use the same password.

Customer password

Phone password

Email passwords

FTP / Live disk passwords

SSH passwords

MySQL database passwords

Since the compromised data can be used for identity theft and to create direct debits for customers' bank account, users are also recommended to monitor their bank statements for any unauthorized transaction.

So far it is unclear how the attacker got into the Domainfactory servers, but the German publication said the attacker did not give an impression of selling the captured data or leaking it online.

Source:  TheHackerNews

New Virus Decides If Your Computer Good for Mining or Ransomware

Security researchers have discovered an interesting piece of malware that infects systems with either a cryptocurrency miner or ransomware, depending upon their configurations to decide which of the two schemes could be more profitable.

While ransomware is a type of malware that locks your computer and prevents you from accessing the encrypted data until you pay a ransom to get the decryption key required to decrypt your files, cryptocurrency miners utilize infected system's CPU power to mine digital currencies.

Both ransomware and cryptocurrency mining-based attacks have been the top threats so far this year and share many similarities such as both are non-sophisticated attacks, carried out for money against non-targeted users, and involve digital currency.

However, since locking a computer for ransom doesn't always guarantee a payback in case victims have nothing essential to losing, in past months cybercriminals have shifted more towards fraudulent cryptocurrency mining as a method of extracting money using victims' computers.

Researchers at Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs have discovered a new variant of Rakhni ransomware family, which has now been upgraded to include cryptocurrency mining capability as well.

Written in Delphi programming language, the Rakhni malware is being spread using spear-phishing emails with an MS word file in the attachment, which if opened, prompts the victim to save the document and enable editing.

The document includes a PDF icon, which if clicked, launches a malicious executable on the victim's computer and immediately displays a fake error message box upon execution, tricking victims into thinking that a system file required to open the document is missing.

How Malware Decides What To Do

However, in the background, the malware then performs many anti-VM and anti-sandbox checks to decide if it could infect the system without being caught. If all conditions are met, the malware then performs more checks to decide the final infection payload, i.e., ransomware or miner.

1.) Installs Ransomware—if the target system has a 'Bitcoin' folder in the AppData section.
Before encrypting files with the RSA-1024 encryption algorithm, the malware terminates all processes that match a predefined list of popular applications and then displays a ransom note via a text file.

2.) Installs cryptocurrency miner—if 'Bitcoin' folder doesn't exist and the machine has more than two logical processors.
If the system gets infected with a cryptocurrency miner, it uses MinerGate utility to mine Monero (XMR), Monero Original (XMO) and Dashcoin (DSH) cryptocurrencies in the background.

Besides this, the malware uses CertMgr.exe utility to install fake root certificates that claim to have been issued by Microsoft Corporation and Adobe Systems Incorporated in an attempt to disguise the miner as a trusted process.

3.) Activates worm component—if there's no 'Bitcoin' folder and just one logical processor.
This component helps the malware to copy itself to all the computers located in the local network using shared resources.

"For each computer listed in the file the Trojan checks if the folder Users is shared and, if so, the malware copies itself to the folder \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup of each accessible user," the researchers note.

Regardless of which infection is chosen, the malware performs a check if one of the listed antivirus processes is launched. If no AV process is found in the system, the malware will run several cmd commands in an attempt to disable Windows Defender.
What's more? There's A Spyware Feature As Well

"Another interesting fact is that the malware also has some spyware functionality – its messages include a list of running processes and an attachment with a screenshot," the researchers say.

This malware variant is targeting users primarily in Russia (95.5%), while a small number of infection has been noticed in Kazakhstan (1.36%), Ukraine (0.57%), Germany (0.49%), and India (0.41%) as well.

The best way to prevent yourself from being a victim of such attacks in the first place is never to open suspicious files and links provided in an email. Also, always keep a good backup routine and updated anti-virus software in place.

Source:   TheHackerNews 

Samsung Messages bug may share your entire gallery without permission

Users of Samsung's Messages app are facing a weird issue. Several of them have confirmed their entire galleries of photos has been sent to a random contact, and the scary part is the whole process happened without leaving a trace (meaning the sent photos didn't show up at their end).

So... S9s have been sporadically sending the entire contents of one's gallery to a contact via SMS, and it doesn't show up on your side. Might be worth checking logs on your carrier's site, because it happened on my T-Mobile Note8

Last night around 2:30 am, my phone sent her my entire photo gallery over text but there was no record of it on my messages app. However, there was record of it on tmobile logs. Why would this happen?

It's been confirmed to be the Samsung Messages app

The bug reportedly appeared after the latest update of the Samsung Messages app. So irrespective of the Samaung device you're using as well as your carrier, you're affected if you have the update.

The only workaround currently available is to deny storage access to the app, something which you can do by heading to Settings -> Apps -> Samsung Messages -> Permissions -> Storage. There's no word from Samsung on the matter so far.


Source:  GSMArena 

Unpatched WordPress Flaw Gives Attackers Full Control Over Your Site

Last week we received a tip about an unpatched vulnerability in the WordPress core, which could allow a low-privileged user to hijack the whole site and execute arbitrary code on the server.

Discovered by researchers at RIPS Technologies GmbH, the "authenticated arbitrary file deletion" vulnerability was reported 7 months ago to the WordPress security team but remains unpatched and affects all versions of WordPress, including the current 4.9.6.

The vulnerability resides in one of the core functions of WordPress that runs in the background when a user permanently deletes thumbnail of an uploaded image.

Researchers find that the thumbnail delete function accepts unsanitized user input, which if tempered, could allow users with limited-privileges of at least an author to delete any file from the web hosting, which otherwise should only be allowed to server or site admins.

The requirement of at least an author account automatically reduces the severity of this flaw to some extent, which could be exploited by a rogue content contributor or a hacker who somehow gains author's credential using phishing, password reuse or other attacks.

Researchers say that using this flaw an attacker can delete any critical files like ".htaccess" from the server, which usually contains security-related configurations, in an attempt to disable protection.

Besides this, deleting "wp-config.php" file—one of the most important configuration files in WordPress installation that contains database connection information—could force entire website back to the installation screen, allegedly allowing the attacker to reconfigure the website from the browser and take over its control completely.

However, it should be noted that since the attacker can't directly read the content of wp-config.php file to know the existing "database name," "mysql username," and its "password," he can re-setup the targeted site using a remote database server in his control.

Once complete, the attacker can create a new admin account and take complete control over the website, including the ability to execute arbitrary code on the server.

"Besides the possibility of erasing the whole WordPress installation, which can have disastrous consequences if no current backup is available, an attacker can make use of the capability of arbitrary file deletion to circumvent some security measures and to execute arbitrary code on the web server," researchers say."

In a proof-of-concept video published by the researchers, as shown above, the vulnerability worked perfectly as described and forced the site to re-installation screen.

However, as of now, website admins should not panic due to this vulnerability and can manually apply a hotfix provided by the researchers.

We expect the WordPress security team would patch this vulnerability in the upcoming version of its CMS software.

Source:  TheHackerNews 

New Malware Family Uses Custom UDP Protocol for C&C Communications

Security researchers have uncovered a new highly-targeted cyber espionage campaign, which is believed to be associated with a hacking group behind KHRAT backdoor Trojan and has been targeting organizations in South East Asia.

According to researchers from Palo Alto, the hacking group, which they dubbed RANCOR, has been found using two new malware families—PLAINTEE and DDKONG—to target political entities primarily in Singapore and Cambodia.

However, in previous years, threat actors behind KHRAT Trojan were allegedly linked to a Chinese cyber espionage group, known as DragonOK.

While monitoring the C&C infrastructure associated with KHRAT trojan, researchers identified multiple variants of these two malware families, where PLAINTEE appears to be the latest weapon in the group's arsenal that uses a custom UDP protocol to communicate with its remote command-and-control server.

To deliver both PLAINTEE and DDKONG, attackers use spear phishing messages with different infection vectors, including malicious macros inside Microsoft Office Excel file, HTA Loader, and DLL Loader, which includes decoy files.

"These decoys contain details from public news articles focused primarily on political news and events," researchers explain.

"Additionally, these decoy documents are hosted on legitimate websites including a government website belonging to the Cambodia Government and in at least once case, Facebook."

Moreover, PLAINTEE downloads and installs additional plugins from its C&C server using the same custom UDP protocol that transmits data in encoded form.

"These families made use of custom network communication to load and execute various plugins hosted by the attackers," researchers say. "Notably the PLAINTEE malware’ use of a custom UDP protocol is rare and worth considering when building heuristics detections for unknown malware."

On the other hand, DDKONG has been in use by the hacking group since February 2017 and doesn't have any custom communication protocol like PLAINTEE, though it is unclear whether one threat actor or more only use this malware.

According to researchers, the final payload of both malware families suggests that the purpose of both malware is to conduct cyber espionage on their political targets; instead of stealing money from their targets.

Since RANCOR group is primarily targeting non-tech-savvy users, it is always advised to be suspicious of any uninvited document sent via an email and never click on links inside those documents unless adequately verifying the source.

Moreover, most importantly, make use of behavioral-based antivirus software that can detect and block such malware before it can infect your device, and always keep it and other apps up-to-date.

Source:  TheHackerNews