Archive
Crime As A Self Service
One of the most visionary information security predictions for 2012, was the one issued by Fortinet which defined the term Crime As A Service: “Crime as a Service (CaaS), [...] is just like Software as a Service (SaaS), but instead of offering legal and helpful services though the Internet, criminal syndicates are offering illegal and detrimental services, such as infecting large quantities of computers, sending spam and even launching direct denial of service (DDoS) attacks“. At first glance I marked this prediction as exaggerated but then I could not imagine that I should have witnessed a huge demonstration only few days after. Of course I am referring to the #OpMegaUpload when, immediately after the FBI takedown, the Anonymous redirected users towards a website when they could DDoS a large group of targets with a simple web click and most of all, without the need to install the Infamous LOIC.
Even if this has been, so far, the most noticeable example, is not the only one of a malicious tool used as a service for criminal (in this case one shot) campaigns. More in general, using very familiar terms (borrowed and adapted from Cloud Terminology) I believe the CaaS is assuming three shapes:
- Software As a (Crime) Service or Saa(C)S, in which the criminals offer malicious software (and the needed support) as a service. An example? The latest Zeus Variant dubbed Citadel, recently spotted by Brian Kerbs, which provides the purchaser with help desk and even a dedicated Social Network;
- Infrastructure As (Crime) Service or Iaa(C)S, in which the criminals offer malicious services (or infrastructures) to attack specified targets, services may include complex “traditional” infrastructures such as botnets, but also “innovative” large scale fashioned services such as DDoS or also sharper services such as password cracking. Try to surf the web and you will discover how easy it is to purchase such a criminal kind of services.
- Platform As a (Crime) Service or Paa(C)S: in which the criminals offer malicious platforms that users may adapt to fit their needs. An example? The brand new HOIC (High Orbit Ion Cannon) the new DDoS tool, evoluti0n of the infamous LOIC, that may be assimilated to a real malicious service platform that users may tailor to fits their needs thanks to the booster scripts. I believe we are not so far from criminal organizations selling customized booster scripts for every kind of need and, why not, offering support services as well.
Last but not least this services are self provisioned, and this is the reason why I used the term “Crime as a Self Service”: in every scenario, be the malicious service a Saa(C)S, Iaa(C)S or Paa(C)S, the user selects directly the target (or the victim), and that’s it!
Related articles
- May I Be Arrested For Using LOIC? (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- DDoS with just a click! (thesecuritysamurai.com)
January 2012 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part 2)
Click here for part 1.
The second half of January is gone, and it is undoubtely clear that this month has been characterized by hacktivism and will be remembered for the Mega Upload shutdown. Its direct and indirect aftermaths led to an unprecedented wave of cyber attacks in terms of LOIC-Based DDoS (with a brand new self service approach we will need to get used to), defacements and more hacking initiatives against several Governments and the EU Parliament, all perpetrated under the common umbrella of the opposition to SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. These attacks overshadowed another important Cyber Event: the Middle East Cyberwar (which for the sake of clarity deserved a dedicated series of posts, here Part I and Part II) and several other major breaches (above all Dreamhost and New York State Electric & Gas and Rochester Gas & Electric).
Chronicles also reports a cyber attack to railways, several cyber attacks to universities, a preferred target, and also of a bank robbery in South Africa which allowed the attackers to steal $6.7 million.
Do you think that cyber attacks in this month crossed the line and the Cyber Chessboard will not be the same anymore? It may be, meanwhile do not forget to follow @paulsparrows to get the latest timelines and feel free to support and improve my work with suggeastions and other meaningful events I eventually forgot to mention.
Middle East Cyberwar Timeline Part II
The #OpMegaupload and its subsequent Cyber Attacks all over the world, are diverging the attention from what is happening in the Middle East where the Cyber Conflict between Arab and Israeli Hackers is proceeding at an apparently unstoppable pace which forced me to post an update for the events occurred in the last week.
The rapid escalation of personal information leaks which characterized in the first two weeks of January has slightly changed shape, being replaced in the third week by Defacements and DDoS campaigns (targeting also the web sites of two Israeli Hospitals, as to say that a Cyber Geneva Convention is needed). Other dumps has also occurred, but not of the same scale as the first two weeks of January.
Besides the mutual DDoS and defacements to each other web sites, so far a quick calculation shows that since the beginning of this cyber war Arab Hackers have dumped more than 410,000 Credit Cards and 170,000 accounts, while the Israeli Counterparts have published approximately 11,000 Credit Cards, details of 140,000 individuals and 105,000 emails. Even if these data have to be taken with attention since many records have proven to be duplicated or fake, one consideration is clear: even Cyber Wars have their digital casualties.
The worst is yet to come?
One Year Of Lulz (Part II)
Christmas has just gone and here it is my personal way to wish you a Happy New Year: the second part of my personal chart (first part here) of Main 2011 Cyber Attacks covering the time window from August to November 2011 (December is not yet finished, and featuring remarkable events, so expect an update very soon). This memorable year is nearly over and is time, if you feel nostalgic, to scroll down the second part of the list to review the main Cyber Events that contributed, in my opinion, to change the landscape and the rules of the (information security) game. Many events in this period among whom, IMHO, the most noticeable is the one carried on against Diginotar. Since then our trust in conventional authentication models is not (and will not be) the same anymore.
Of course this is my personal selection. Suggestions are well accepted and if you need more details about the cyber events in 2011, feel free to consult my 2011 Cyber Attacks Master Index. As usual after the page break you find all the references…
November 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
The second half of November has confirmed the trend seen in the previous report covering the first half of the month. The period under examination has confirmed a remarkable increase in Cyber Attacks from both a quality and quantity perspective.
Although the month has been characterized by many small attacks, several remarkable events have really made the difference.
Among the victims of the month, Finland deserves a special mention in this unenviable rank: the second half of the month has confirmed the emerging trend for this country, which suffered in this period two further breaches of huge amounts of personal data, for a global cumulative cost, computed on the whole month, around $25 million.
But Finland was not the only northern European country hit by cybercrookers (maybe the term cyberprofessionals would be more appropriate): Norwegian systems associated with the country’s oil, gas and energy sectors were hit with an APT based cyber attack resulting in a loss of sensitive information including documents, drawings, user names and passwords.
But once again the crown of the most remarkable breach of the month is placed upon the head of South Korea which suffered another huge data dump affecting users of the popular MMORPG “Maple Story” affecting theoretically 13 million of users, nearly the 27% of the Korean population, for an estimated cost of the breach close to $2.8 billion.
The list of affected countries this month includes also 243,089 Nigerian users, victims of the hack of Naijaloaded, a popular forum.
Microsoft has been another victim in this November, with a phishing scam targeting Xbox Live users. Details of the scam are not clear, although each single affected user in U.K. might have lost something between £100 and £200 for a total cost of the breach assimilable to “million of Pounds”.
November will make history for showing for the first time to information security professionals the dangers hidden inside the SCADA universe (and not related to Nuclear Reactors). The echo of Stuxnet and Duqu is still alive, but this month was the the turn of SCADA water pumps, that have suffered a couple of attacks (Springfield and South Houston), the first one allegedly originated from Russia and the second one from a “lonely ranger” who considered the answer from DHS concerning the first incident, too soft and not enough satisfactory. My sixth sense (and one half) tells me that we will need to get more and more used to attacks against SCADA driven facilities.
The Anonymous continued their operations against governments with a brand new occurrence of their Friday Releases, targeting a Special Agent of the CA Department and leaking something like 38,000 emails. Besides from other some sparse “small” operations, the other remarkable action performed by the Anonymous collective involved the hacking of an United Nations (old?) server, that caused personal data of some personnel to be released on the Internet.
November Special mentions are dedicated (for opposite reasons) to HP and AT&T. HP for the issue on their printers discovered by a group of Researchers of Columbia Univerity, which could allow a malicious user to remotely control (and burn) them. AT&T deserved the special mention for the attack, unsuccessful, against the 1% of its 100 million wireless accounts customer base.
In any case, counting also the “minor” attacks of the month, the chart shows a real emergency for data protection issues: schools, e-commerce sites, TVs, government sites, etc. are increasingly becoming targets. Administrators do not show the deserved attention to data protection and maybe also the users are loosing the real perception of how much important is the safeguard of their personal information and how serious the aftermaths of a compromise are.
As usual, references for each single cyber attack are reported below. Have a (nice?) read and most of alle share among your acquaintances the awareness that everyone is virtually at risk.
Related articles
- November 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
October 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part II)
Halloween has just gone and here it is Part II of the October 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline covering the second half (15-31) of this month.
From an Information Security Perspective, the 10th month of 2011 has been characterized by Duqu, the brand new Advanced Persistent Threat dubbed “The Sun Of Stuxnet”, whose echo is far from being silent (a brand new 0-day vulnerability targeting Windows Kernel has just been discovered in the Malware Installer). Duqu affected the timeline in two circumstances: not only the malware was discovered, but also an Indian Provider called Web Werks had some servers seized from a Data Center in Mumbai because they were discovered to be involved in the C&C communication of the infected endpoints.
Other noticeable events of the month involved:
- The wave of alleged Cyber Attacks from China against Japan Parliament and Embassies and also against Canadian Finance and Treasury Board. These were not the only Cyber Events allegedly affecting China in October: even if occurred months before, news were reported that the attack against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries led to the theft of sensitive data, moreover other 760 organizations worldwide were attacked with the same methodology used for RSA Breach and originating from China as well.
- A new tide of Hacktivism by Anonyomous and Antisec, encouraged from the OccupyWallStreet Movement, including a dramatic face-to-face of Anonymous Mexico against Las Zetas one of the most powerful Mexican Drug Cartel.
A particular rank in this month is deserved by Israel and Sweden, the first reported a huge data breach (affecting 9,000,000 users) occurred in 2006, while the latter suffered a Black October with a data leak involving nearly 200,000 users of the social platform bloggtoppen.se including Politicians and Journalists. At this point is clear that the cold Sweden won the Prize for the “Hottest Breach of The Month”.
Also Facebook was targeted with an alleged dump of 10,000 accounts, nothing if compared with the 600,000 compromised logins per day that the social network admitted to suffer).
According to my very personal estimate (based on the indications from the Ponemon’s insitute) the cost of the breaches for this months (in all those cases where enough information was available) is around $500 million, excluding the massive data breach in Israel reported today but occurred in 2006.
As usual, this Timeline was compiled with Useful Resources by:
- Cyber War News
- DATALOSSdb
- Naked Security
- Office Of Inadequate Security (DataBreaches.net)
- Softpedia
- The Hacker News
- Threatpost
And my inclusion criteria do not take into consideration “simple” defacement attacks (unless they are particularly resounding) or small data leaks.
|
Date |
Author |
Description |
Organization |
Attack |
|
Oct 16 |
Fatal Error |
UNESCO E-Platform Domain
The E-Platform domain of one of the Biggest Organizations: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) gets hacked and defaced by Fatal Error Crew hackers. |
|
Defacement |
|
Oct 17 |
|
10,000+ FaceBook accounts
A Hacking Crew From Nepal called TeamSwaStika hacks more than 10,000 facebook accounts. The hacking crew declares next target will be Nepal Government website and e-governance for Freedom. Estimated cost of the breach is $2,140,000. |
|
Account Hacking (Phishing?) |
|
Oct 17 |
? |
Sesame Street’s Youtube Channel
Sesame Street had its YouTube channel hacked on Sunday, and its highly popular child-friendly videos of muppets like Kermit the frog and the Big Bird replaced with hard core porn movies. |
|
Account Hacking |
|
Oct 17 |
? |
NHS Direct Twitter Account
NHS Direct, the UK helpline which provides expert health advice via the telephone and internet, has had its Twitter account taken over by spammers promoting an Acai Berry diet. |
|
Account Hacking |
|
Oct 18 |
TurkisH -RuleZ |
proXPN
proXPN, one of the famous VPN client based on OpenVPN Service, is hacked by TurkisH-RuleZ. |
|
Defacement |
|
Oct 19 |
? |
Gameloft
Gameloft, a Paris-based video game company that’s a leading mobile-game developer, acknowledges that a security breach has prompted it to pull the plug on one of its Web sites, the Order and Chaos online site. |
|
SQLi? |
|
Oct 19 |
? |
Duqu
In a blog post, Symantec explains it came across the first samples of a new malware infecting some computer systems in Europe that appears to be very similar to Stuxnet. More analysis shows the malware is a “simple” keylogger using the same Stuxnet Technology |
N/A |
APT |
|
Oct 19 |
? |
A FAQ on the official forum of the Lord Of The Rings Community On Line reveals that the site was breached although no financial data has been obtained by the attackers. |
 |
SQLi? |
|
Oct 20 |
? |
Phishing The Phisher
Finally someone decides to give a lesson to a phisherm by hacking the phishing website with a message educating the potential victims. |
|
Phishing |
|
Oct 21 |
|
Vikram Pandit (Citigroup CEO)
Mobile phone number and home address of Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, have been placed on the web by hacking group CabinCr3w in retaliation for the cuffing of protesters at an Occupy Wall Street demo. In their online statement the hackers say that they had accessed the data – which also included family information and some financial figures – and uploaded it online in response to events during the recent anti-bank protests on Wall Street. |
|
N/A |
|
Oct 21 |
|
Law Enforcement Agencies
Anonymous and Antisec broke their apparent October silence and renewed the tradition of the Friday Dumps against law enforcement agencies releasing a 600MB data dump of confidential data belonging to Law enforcement agencies. A couple of days later an AntiSec hacker tells police in a phone call that boredom drove him to hack their website. |
|
Defacement |
|
Oct 22 |
|
40 Child Porn Websites
As part as what they call #OpDarknet, Anonymous takes down more than 40 darknet-based child porn websites over the last week. They also leak personal details of 1500 users. Detalils on “AnonMessage” and “BecomeAnonymous” YouTube channels. |
40 child Porn Websites |
SQLi DDoS |
|
Oct 23 |
? |
Microsoft’s Official YouTube Channel
Hackers take control of Microsoft’s official YouTube Channel (24,000+ subscribers), remove the company’s videos and replace them with videos of their own. Neither Microsoft nor Google (which owns YouTube) have disclosed information on how the security breach was perpetrated. |
|
N/A |
|
Oct 23 |
|
One Hit Play
@DiabloElite dumps 1008 accounts from onehitplay.com, with no other reason beside to show the need of a stronger security. All the accounts have been stored as plain text. Estimated cost of the breach is around $214,000. |
|
SQLi? |
|
Oct 23 |
|
Xbox A new hackers’ crew @DestructiveSec dumps some Xbox Live accounts. |
|
SQLi? |
| Oct 24 |
? |
cheaptickets.nl
The database of CheapTickets.nl (containing 715,000 customers) is leaked. Stolen information include 1,200,000 tickets and 80,000 passport numbers. Total cost of the breach might exceed $153 million. |
|
SQLi? |
|
Oct 24 |
Intra Web Security Exploit Team |
LG Australia Web Site
One of the Australian websites belonging to global electronics giant LG (lge.com.au) is hacked by a collective calling itself the Intra Web Security Exploit Team. The attackers replaced the site with some lightly-obfuscated JavaScript pretending to be conducting an injection attack. |
|
Defacement, Simulated SQli |
|
Oct 24 |
Malicious Employee |
Israely Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare
Employee with access to the Population Registry has been discovered to steal the details of over 9 million residents and then passed them to someone else. Estimated cost of the breach is nearly $2 billion. |
|
Malicious Access |
|
Oct 24 |
|
760 Organizations Worldwide
Brian Kerbs publishes in his blog a list of companies whose networks were shown to have been connecting to the same control infrastructure that was used in the attack on RSA. The first victims appear to have begun communicating with the attacker’s control networks as early as November 2010. According to the list 760 other organizations had networks compromised with some of the same resources used to hit RSA and almost 20 percent of the current Fortune 100 companies are on this list. |
760 Organizations Worldwide |
APT |
|
Oct 25 |
? |
bloggtoppen.se
The usernames and passwords of around 90,000 accounts at Bloggtoppen.se have been made public after a hacker attack against the website. Several journalists and politicians are among the bloggers whose log-in details have been published. On Oct 26, the Aftonbladet newspaper reported that a further 57 other websites had also been hacked, and the login details of up to 200,000 people are at risk. Estimated cost of the breach is around $42 million. |
|
SQLi? |
|
Oct 25 |
Chinese Hacker? |
Japanese Parliament
According to local media reports, hackers were able to snoop upon emails and steal passwords from computers belonging to lawmakers at the Japanese parliament for over a month. PCs and servers were infected after a Trojan horse was emailed to a a Lower House member in July. The Trojan horse then downloaded malware from a server based in China – allowing remote hackers to secretly spy on email communications and steal usernames and passwords from lawmakers. |
|
APT |
|
Oct 25 |
|
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a high-tech military contractor, which suffered an attack from hackers earlier this year, is reported to have lost sensitive data related to defence equipment including fighter jet planes and nuclear power plant plans, according to The Ashai Shimbun. Once again suspects are directed to China. |
|
APT |
|
Oct 25 |
Inside Error |
United States Department Of Education
Highly sensitive information (including SSN) belonging to around 5,000 students was exposed after a computer error causing a federal government student loan website to reveal the data: a glitch in the website allowed students who were logged in to freely view the data of other scholars. Fortunately, the site was compromised only for 7 minutes at most, but it is possible that some users were able to steal sensitive information. Estimated cost of the breach is around $ 1 million. |
|
Inside Error |
|
Oct 26 |
? |
awurval.se
314 job seekers’ e-mail addresses and clear-text passwords acquired and dumped. Estimated Cost of the breach is around $67,000. |
|
SQLi? |
|
Oct 26 |
? |
Mobile Tele Systems
MTS is a primary Mobile Operator in Russia with more than 70 million subscribers. Personal data of 1.6 million mobile phone users appeared online in the second such leak in three months. The database, posted on Zhiltsy.net, included the full names and phone numbers of MTS subscribers in St. Petersburg and Bashkortostan, as well as residential addresses and passport data for some of them. According to MTS the database goes back to 2006 and most numbers are no longer valid. Estimated cost of the breach could potentially achieve $300 million. |
|
N/A |
|
Oct 26 |
nationmultimedia.com
@_V4ND dumps what they say is a teaser of accounts obtained from nationmultimedia.com in what appears to be another havij or similar SQLi vun tool based attack. The leak contains user emails and passwords in clear text. |
|
SQLi |
|
|
Oct 26 |
Robert Delgado |
Massive Identity Theft
Robert Delgado, a 40 years old California man, was sentenced to eight years in prison for identity theft after federal police GPS-tracked his phone and discovered a hard drive with over 300,000 victim profiles during a raid of his home. Estimated Cost of the thiet (not including purchases made with stolen data) is around $65 million. |
300,000 frauded users |
Bank Fraud |
|
Oct 26 |
Pakistani Hacker |
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)
Another occurrence of the Cyberwar between Pakistan and India: A Pakistani hacker “KhantastiC haX0r” hacks into the official website of India’s leading telecom Company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). |
|
Defacement |
|
Oct 27 |
|
Law Enforcement Authorities
@_f0rsaken a member of @TeaMp0isoN publishes a list of websites utilized by law enforcement authorities that are supposed to be vulnerable to MSAccess SQL injection attacks. A number of six sites that are listed are supposedly utilized by the police for their updates, the cybercriminals urging Occupy Wall Street supporters to take them down. |
Law Enforcement Authorities |
MSAccess SQLi |
|
Oct 27 |
|
Oakland Police Department Web Site
Cyber activists associated with Anonymous target the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and other law enforcement agencies that participated in a controversial crackdown against OccupyOakland protestors with a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack against the department’s website. Moreover According to TG Daily, the infamous collective is offered a $1,000 reward for anyone who can provide information on an officer that allegedly injured a war veteran that was taking part in the protest. |
|
DDoS |
|
Oct 27 |
? |
Clarinda Bank Iowa
In a letter dated Tuesday, Oct. 25, bank vice president Jon Baier notifies specific customers of a data breach. The letter states the bank was not provided details of the security compromise, but to protect the impacted debit card accounts, replacement cards with new numbers were ordered. The number of affected users is unknown. |
|
N/A |
|
Oct 27 |
|
Japanese Embassies
There are new reports that dozens of diplomatic computers Japanese embassies abroad were infected with malware this Summer. The news comes on the heels of recent news about malicious software attacks on Japanese defense contractors and the Japanese Parliament. A report in a local Japanese publication, The Daily Yomiuri, places the infected diplomatic computers in Canada, China, France, Myanmar, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the United States. Again China is suspected since a China Link is found on the malware. |
|
APT |
|
Oct 27 |
|
U.S. Government Satellites
Bloomberg reports that Computer hackers, possibly from the Chinese military, interfered with two U.S. government satellites four times in 2007 and 2008 through a ground station in Norway, according to a congressional commission. |
|
N/A |
|
Oct 28 |
|
Canadian Finance and Treasury Board
Ottawa Citizen reveals that, in Jan 2011, the Canadian Finance and Treasury Board’s networks were targeted by hackers in an attempt to steal sensitive information about the potash industry even though Finance and Treasury Board representatives denies it. It looks that the hackers were actually foreign, the first clues indicating that the attack originated from China. |
|
APT |
|
Oct 28 |
PayFail |
PayPal Executives’ Contact Information
In what looks to be the first of a number of “name and shame” postings, an individual or individuals posting as “PAYFAIL” upload some personal information on dozens of former and current PayPal executives. The dumped data do not seem to be particularly sensivite, nevertheless, although deleted three times so far, the original statement keeps on appearing on pastebin. |
|
N/A |
|
Oct 28 |
? |
Again on Duqu
Two workers at an Indian web-hosting company called Web Werks tell Reuters that last week officials from India’s Department of Information Technology seized several hard drives and other components from a server hosted on a Mumbai Data Center, that security firm Symantec Corp indicated as communicating with computers infected with Duqu. |
|
APT |
|
Oct 29 |
|
El Paso County Community College
@DestructiveSec hacks the El Paso Country Community College, defacing the web site and dumps some data. |
|
SQLi? |
|
Oct 29 |
|
Las Zetas (Mexican Drug Cartel)
Anonymous Mexico faces one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the World, the Las Zetas Mexican Drug Cartel. In a video they warn the Cartel to release one of their members kidnapped during a street protest, otherwise the hacker group will disclose (or dox) the identities of members of the cartel including corrupted politicians and policeman. Another example of an hacking action with huge real aftermaths in terms of possible deadly retaliations. |
Mexican Droug Cartel |
SQLi? |
|
Oct 29 |
|
Dominican Republic Police
As part of their Spanish Solidarity Saturday Anonymous release a pastebin document containing a list of finds and vulnerabilities on the Dominican Republic Police system and some other sites too. They also left a website defaced. |
|
Several Vulns, Defacement |
|
Oct 31 |
3xp1r3 cyber army |
hi5ads.com
A hacker group going by the name of 3xp1r3 cyber army dumps two separate pastes with respectively 5,065 and 3,149 account details to www.hi5ads.com. The leaks contain emails and plain text passwords. Estimated cost of the breach is around $680,000. |
|
SQLi |
|
Oct 31 |
3xp1r3 cyber army |
Bangla TV
The Same group hacks Bangla TV and releases 1,517 usernames and clear-text password. Estimated cost of the breach is around $320,000. |
|
SQLi |
|
Oct 31 |
ScreamDevz |
Penguin Elite
A group or individual dubbed ScreamDevz hacks Club Penguin Elite Database and dumps nearly 400 usernames, emails and MD5 hashed passwords. Estimated cost of the breach is around $80,000. |
|
SQLi |
|
Oct 31 |
|
Chinese Government Web Site
@TehMaskz, a member of @ChaoticSec defaces a web site belonging to Chinese Government (at the time of writing |
|
Defacement |
|
Oct 31 |
|
One Hit Play
@ChaoticSec hacks One Hit Play (once again) and releases more than 1000 User information, including emails, passwords, and usernames. Estimated cost of the breach is around $214,000. |
|
SQLi |
|
Oct 31 |
|
comitet.ru
@DeleteSec attacks comitet.ru and dumps more than 2000 records with email and passwords. Estimated cost of the breach is around $420,000 |
|
SQLi |
| Oct 31 |
|
plusline.org
@DeleteSec attacks plusline.org and dumps more than 1000 records with email and passwords. Nearly in contemporary the same group dumps 700+ accounts from several sites. Estimated cost of the breach is around $420,000. |
|
SQLi |
|
Oct 31 |
Mr. DarkCoderz |
Adult Site
Another occurrence of hackers dumping data from adult sites. Estimated cost of the breach is around $43,000. |
Adult Site |
SQLi? |
Related articles
- October 2011 Cyber Attacks Timeline (Part I) (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
- Just For Reference… (paulsparrows.wordpress.com)
Lo Smartphone? Ha fatto il BOT!
E’ stato appena pubblicato un interessante articolo di Georgia Weidman relativo al concept di una botnet di smartphone controllati tramite SMS. Il lavoro, annunciato alla fine del mese di gennaio 2011 e presentato alla Shmoocon di Washington, aveva da subito attirato la mia attenzione poiché, in tempi non sospetti, avevo ipotizzato che la concomitanza di fattori quali la crescente potenza di calcolo dei dispositivi mobili e la loro diffusione esponenziale, avrebbe presto portato alla nascita di possibili eserciti di Androidi (o Mele) controllate da remoto in grado di eseguire la volontà del proprio padrone.
Il modello di mobile bot ipotizzato (per cui è stato sviluppato un Proof-Of-Concept per diverse piattaforme) è molto raffinato e prevede il controllo dei terminali compromessi da parte di un server C&C di Comando e Controllo, mediante messaggi SMS (con una struttura di controllo gerarchica), che vengono intercettati da un livello applicativo malevolo posizionato tra il driver GSM ed il livello applicativo. La scelta degli SMS come mezzo di trasmissione (che in questo modello di controllo assurgono al ruolo di indirizzi IP) è dovuto all’esigenza di rendere quanto più possibile trasparente il meccanismo di controllo per utenti e operatori (l’alternativa sarebbe quella del controllo tramite una connessione dati che tuttavia desterebbe presto l’attenzione dell’utente per l’aumento sospetto di consumo della batteria che non è mai troppo per gli Androidi e i Melafonini ubriaconi). Naturalmente il livello applicativo malevolo è completamente trasparente per l’utente e del tutto inerme nel processare i dati e gli SMS leciti e passarli correttamente al livello applicativo senza destare sospetti.
Georgia Weidman non ha trascurato proprio nulla e nel suo modello ipotizza una struttura gerarchica a tre livelli:
- Il primo livello è composto dai Master Bot, controllati direttamente dagli “ammucchiatori”. I Master Bot non sono necessariamente terminali (nemmeno compromessi), ma dovendo impartire ordini via SMS possono essere dispositivi qualsiasi dotati di un Modem;
- Il secondo livello è composto dai Sentinel Bot: questi agiscono come proxy tra i master e l’esercito di terminali compromessi. Le sentinelle devono essere dispositivi “di fiducia”, ovvero dispositivi sotto il diretto controllo degli “ammucchiatori” o membri della botnet da un periodo di tempo sufficientemente lungo da far ritenere che l’infezione sia ormai passata inosservata per il proprietario e degna pertanto di promuoverli al ruolo di sentinelle.
- Il terzo livello è composto dagli slave bot. I veri e propri soldati dell’esercito di terminali compromessi che ricevono le istruzioni dalla sentinelle ed eseguono il volere del capo.
Da notare che questo modello gerarchico applica il paradigma del “divide et impera”. I terminali compromessi slave non comunicano mai direttamente con il master, e solo quest’ultimo, inoltre, conosce la struttura dell’intera botnet. L’utilizzo del SMS inoltre consente al master di poter cambiare numero di telefono all’occorrenza ed eludere così le forze del bene, ovvero gli eventuali cacciatori di bot.
Ovviamente tutte le comunicazioni avvengono tramite SMS cifrati (con un algoritmo di cifratura a chiave asimmetrica) e autenticati, inoltre la scoperta di un telefono infetto non pregiudica l’intera rete di terminali compromessi ma solo il segmento controllato dalla sentinella di riferimento (il master può sempre cambiare numero).
Quali possono essere gli utilizzi di una botnet così strutturata? Naturalmente rubare informazioni, per fini personali o di qualsiasi altro tipo (politici, economici, etc.). Purtroppo, per questa classe di dispositivi, che stanno trovando sempre di più applicazioni verso i livelli alti di una Organizzazione, gli exploit e i bachi sono all’ordine del giorno per cui teoricamente sarebbe possibile rubare il contenuto della memoria SD con un semplice SMS. Ma non finisce qui purtroppo: considerata la potenza di calcolo (abbiamo ormai un PC nel taschino) e la potenza di calcolo, questi dispositivi possono essere facilmente usati come seminatori di traffico, ovvero sorgenti di attacchi di tipo DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service), specialmente nel caso di connessioni Wi-Fi che si appoggiano su un operatore fisso che offre possibilità di banda maggiori e quindi più consone ad un attacco di tipo Distributed Denial Of Service. Questo si sposa perfettamente con la dinamicità di una botnet basata su SMS (in cui il master può cambiare numero per nascondersi) e con le infrastrutture degli operatori mobili (o fissi offerenti servizi Wi-Fi) che potrebbero non essere completamente pronte per affrontare simili tipologie di eventi informatici (come anche evidenziato dal recente report di Arbor Networks). Altra nefasta applicazione potrebbe essere lo spam, soprattutto se effettuato tramite SMS. Interessante inoltre la combinazione con il GPS che potrebbe portare al blocco totale delle comunicazioni GSM in determinate circostanze spazio-temporali (sembra fantapolitica ma è comunque teoricamente possibile).
Rimane ora l’ultimo punto che era rimasto in sospeso quando avevo trattato di questo argomento per la prima volta: mi ero difatti chiesto la questione fondamentale, ovvero se il software malevolo di bot avesse necessità o meno di permessi di root. La risposta è affermativa, ma questo non mitiga la gravità del Proof-Of-Concept, ribadisce anzi l’importanza di un concetto fondamentale: alla base della sicurezza c’è sempre l’utente, il cui controllo sovrasta anche i meccanismi di sicurezza del sistema operativo, e questo non solo perché ancora una volta viene evidenziata drammaticamente la pericolosità di pratiche “smanettone” sui propri dispositivi (che possono avere conseguenze ancora più gravi se il terminale è usato per scopi professionali), ma anche perché gli utenti devono prendere consapevolezza del modello di sicurezza necessario, facendo attenzione alle applicazioni installate.
Lato operatori, urge l’assicurazione che gli aggiornamenti di sicurezza raggiungano sempre i dispositivi non appena rilasciati. Aggiungerei inoltre, sulla scia di quanto dichiarato da Arbor Networks, possibili investimenti infrastrutturali per l’eventuale rilevazione di eventi anomali dentro i propri confini.
A questo punto, il fatto che i produttori di sicurezza abbiano, quasi all’unanimità, inserito il mondo mobile al centro delle preoccupazioni di sicurezza per il 2011 perde qualsiasi dubbio sul fatto che si tratti di una moda passeggera, ed è asupicabile che gli stessi stiano già correndo ai ripari, aggiungendo livelli di sicurezza aggiuntivi ai meccanismi intrinseci del sistema operativo con l’ausilio di tecnologie di DLP (come indicato dal report Cisco per il 2011), virtualizzazione e integrando sempre di più tecnologie di sicurezza nei dispositivi: ultimo annuncio in ordine di tempo? Quello di McAfee Intel che si dimostra, ancora una volta, molto attiva nel settore mobile.
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08/13/2011 - My Post on Android Malware Mentioned on Engadget.
04/14/2011 - The Article Smart Grid: L'ultima Frontiera del Cybercrime published on ICT Security Magazine May 2011.
03/14/2011 - Security Summit 2011: Paolo Passeri guest at Round Table "Mobile Security: Rischi, Tecnologie, Mercato"
02/14/2011 - The Article Gears of Cyberwar published on ICT Security Magazine January 2011.
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