Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: Reuters

The United States ordered the consulate closed this week, leading China to retaliate on Friday by telling the United States to shut its consulate in the city of Chengdu, as relations between the world’s two largest economies deteriorate.

In a briefing for journalists, a senior State Department official linked espionage activity at the Houston consulate to China’s pursuit of research into a vaccine for the new coronavirus.

The official said China had been very clear about its intent to be first to the market with a coronavirus vaccine.

“The medical connections here aren’t lost on me and… the medical connection in Houston is also pretty specific,” the official said, without giving further details.

A senior Justice Department official said it was accepted that consulates of all countries were bases of operations for foreign intelligence services.

“It’s understood that there will be some activity here by those services,” he said. But, he added, “The sum total of the Houston consulate’s activities went well over the line of what we’re willing to accept.”

“At some point you say, ‘enough is enough’ and you decide which are one of the worst offenders,” he said.

China has denied the allegations of spying and intellectual property theft as “malicious slander.”

The Justice Department official said that while illegal, the activities were “not necessarily amenable to criminal charges,” due in part to the diplomatic immunity that consulate officials enjoy.

The senior State Department official said, despite the disagreement between the two countries, U.S. diplomats who had been withdrawn from China earlier this year due to the spread of the coronavirus would continue to return.

“The Chinese side has been cooperative in that; they understand the need to get back to balance,” he said.

A flight bound for Shanghai carrying U.S. diplomats left the United States on Wednesday as Washington pressed ahead with its plan to restaff its mission in China.

According to a July 17 internal State Department email seen by Reuters, more such flights are planned.

It said these included a tentative July 29 flight to Tianjin and Beijing that was in the initial planning stages, while a target date for another flight, to Guangzhou, was still to be determined.

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Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: The Register

The denizens of online forums dedicated to trading in stolen credit cards have been shown to be wretched hives of scum and villainy.

This not-so-surprising news comes this week via academics at Washington State University (WSU) in the US, who eavesdropped on the activities of two marketplaces and read over 10,714 posts to those discussion boards.

What they found was miscreants, from newly-registered accounts all the way up to the admins, are constantly trying to get one over on one another.

We’re told only a small fraction of the crooks lurking on the boards were commercial traders buying and selling stolen cards for cybercrime use. Far more frequent were accounts that were looking for handouts – things like free credit-card lists, malware tools, and tutorials.

“These free content sections are not really that new,” The Reg was told by Dr Alex Kigerl, an assistant research professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at WSU and lead author of the report.

“It’s a way of attracting a larger user base, it is a nice ‘gateway drug’ to convince cautious users to consider buying premium products eventually, and it is also a way for free-content contributors to gain street cred that they can convert into actual business transactions.”

They aren’t the only ones looking to get something for nothing.

And here we have the rare ‘admin as ripper’ scam

In one particularly amusing instance, the WSU team found that it was the administrators of a carding forum who were perpetrating a scam on their fellow users.

Here’s how it worked. The admin was offering collections of stolen credit card information for sale. As it turns out, and as the buyer would only find out after completing the purchase, the credit card details were false.

These scams, known as “rippers,” are well-known among carding forums. Those that perpetrate them usually get booted quickly. Unless, of course, they have a way to keep the operation quiet.

Aware that the angry buyers could blow the scam by tipping the rest of the forum off, the administrator would ban their victims accounts from the public forums if they called out the scam publicly.

“Usually, it’s in the admin’s best interest to crackdown on rippers, because it scares off customers who can’t trust the site and is bad for business,” said Kigerl.

“This admin, however, regularly received payments for credential goods from users then proceeded to ban the user from the site without delivering anything. To my knowledge, I’ve never heard of this happening before, so it is new.”

Then again, fraudsters aren’t generally well-known for their excellent foresight.

The full paper, “Behind the Scenes of the Underworld: Hierarchical Clustering of Two Leaked Carding Forum Databases” was published in the journal Social Science Computer Review. ®

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Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: The Register

TCP-IP-co-developer Vint Cerf, revered as a critical contributor to the foundations of the internet, has floated the notion that privacy legislation might hinder the development of a vaccination for the COVID-19 coronavirus.

In an essay written for Indian outlet Medianama titled “Internet Lessons from COVID19”, Cerf – a Google vice-president and chief internet evangelist – opens by pointing out that networks have more than proven their worth by facilitating interactions and economic activity that would otherwise have had to be conducted face-to-face and therefore may not have been conducted at all.

He went on to note that internet access is not universal and to suggest that subsidies could perhaps build the infrastructure to improve coverage.

“Given the rich varieties of Internet-based services aimed at facilitating socially distant economies, it is not hard to argue for policies that encourage more Internet infrastructure,” he said, suggesting global collaboration to improve privacy, security and access to quality multi-lingual content.

And then he offered this observation:

Cerf says no more on the matter. The Register is aware that GDPR requires researchers to develop the same data management plans as required of commercial entities and that this can be an onerous chore. A March 2020 article in the European Journal Of Human Genetics explains that GDPR means secondary researchers can’t identify individuals and could therefore make it harder to translate research into action.

Cerf’s piece also says he feels “Mobiles and the Internet appear to have roles to play for at least some tracking and tracing system designs” and suggests the current crisis has shown that online education is powerful but needs further evolution.

“More generally, we must imagine other potential global catastrophes and put in place plans to mitigate,” he says as the piece winds up. “The time to agree on best practices for emergency response is before the emergency, not during.”

“We must not allow this pandemic or a future one to become our society’s Titanic.”

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Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: The Register

Britain’s Ministry of Defence contractor Interserve has been hacked, reportedly leaking the details of up to 100,000 of past and current employees, including payment information and details of their next of kin.

The Daily Telegraph reports that up to 100,000 employee details were stolen, dating back across a number of years. Interserve currently employs around 53,000 people.

A source told the paper that names, addresses, bank details, payroll information, next of kin details, personnel and disciplinary records had been swiped.

The intrusion took place “earlier this month,” the tight-lipped firm said in a statement. A spokeswoman ignored questions from The Register about how many people were affected by the hack and whether MoD services would be impacted as the company responds.

“This will take some time and some operational services may be affected. Interserve has informed the Information Commissioner (ICO) of the incident. We will provide further updates when appropriate,” said the company in a statement, also asking “former employees, clients and suppliers” to exercise “heightened vigilance”.

The National Cyber Security Centre confirmed it is helping Interserve with the aftermath of the reported security breach.

Interserve holds a number of public sector contracts comprising, among others, some of the Ministry of Defence’s more important bases. The company website says it has a presence on 35 MoD sites, including: the Falkland Islands; the vital mid-Atlantic RAF staging post on Ascension Island; Gibraltar; and Cyprus. The contract for the overseas bases is reportedly worth around £500m.

Closer to home, Interserve also maintains the vital and secretive MoD bunkers at Corsham, coyly referred to as “the cutting edge global communications hub for the Ministry of Defence”. Corsham is in fact the home of the MoD’s Global Operations Security Control Centre, as well as the Joint Security Co-ordination Centre, plus a Cyber Security Operations Centre.

Informed sources whispered to El Reg that quite a few people at Corsham would be unhappy with news that a contractor with full access to the sensitive site has been hacked.

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Credits: CNN

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Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: The Register

The Norwegian Investment Fund has been swindled out of $10m (£8.2m) by fraudsters who pulled off what’s been described as “an advance data breach.”

Norfund – the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, created from saved North Sea Oil revenues and currently worth over $1tn – said a hacker was able to manipulate the organization into routing a loan intended for a Cambodian microfinance organization into an account controlled by the crooks. As a result, in March, 100m Kroner was lost.

The investment fund says the money appears to have been diverted from the organization in Cambodia to Mexico. Local and international police have been brought in to investigate the matter.

Details of the cyber-attack are scant. It may be a bog-standard business email compromise attack, in which a miscreant hijacks an email account to impersonate an employee or official to redirect cash meant for the Cambodian company to another bank account. Alternatively, it could have been something more intrusive.

“The defrauders manipulated and falsified information exchange between Norfund and the borrowing institution over time in a way that was realistic in structure, content and use of language,” Norfund said on Wednesday of the heist. “Documents and payment details were falsified.”

Again, this may be a generous way of saying someone got tricked into sending money into the wrong account with some forged invoices, or bogus emails, and poor invoice control.

Despite Norfund being worth over a $1tn, the Norwegians aren’t going to let this one slide. CEO Tellef Thorleifsson is promising swift action to prevent the organization from getting conned again – they are going to go viking on this one.

“This is a grave incident. The fraud clearly shows that we, as an international investor and development organisation, through active use of digital channels are vulnerable,” he said.

“The fact that this has happened shows that our systems and routines are not good enough. We have [to] take immediate and serious action to correct this.”

In addition to getting the cops involved, Norfund said it is working with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its bank, DNB, to track down the thief and get the money back. PwC is also being called in to do an evaluation for the IT security setup at the fund.

“Norfund hopes that by being open about this incident we can contribute to reducing the risk of others being victims of similar fraudulent activities,” the investment firm said.

As embarrassing as it is to fall victim to these sort of scams, Norfund is hardly alone. Business email compromise, if that is at the heart of this affair, is a multi-billion dollar industry and only getting worse.

The scam is simple, but deadly efficient. The con artist spear-phishes a specific person at the organization and then tricks other people there into sending payments to a new account rather than the intended company or organization. Because the payments are otherwise legitimate and authorized, the victims usually don’t catch on until it’s too late.

For example, last year a city government in Colorado got tricked into handing a scammer $1m for what it thought were construction costs, and a school district in Texas was duped into handing miscreants $2.3m through multiple fraudulent transactions.

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Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: The Register

Privacy pressure group Noyb has filed a legal complaint against Google on behalf of an Austrian citizen, claiming the Android Advertising ID on every Android device is “personal data” as defined by the EU’s GDPR and that this data is illegally processed.

Based in Vienna, Austria, Noyb is a nonprofit founded by Max Schrems, a lawyer and privacy advocate, to focus on “commercial privacy and data protection violations”. It says that “the core task of the office is to work on our enforcement projects and to engage in the necessary research for strategic litigation.”

The complaint against Google, which was filed with the Austrian Data Protection Authority, is based on the claim that Google’s Android operating system generates the advertising ID without user choice as required by GDPR. “In essence, you buy a new Android phone, but by adding a tracking ID they ship you a tracking device,” said Noyb lawyer Stefano Rossetti.

According to Google: “The advertising ID is a unique, user-resettable ID for advertising, provided by Google Play services. It gives users better controls and provides developers with a simple, standard system to continue to monetize their apps. It enables users to reset their identifier or opt out of personalized ads (formerly known as interest-based ads) within Google Play apps.” The opt-out is in Google settings but when you do opt out, it does not delete the advertising ID.

It appears that the effectiveness of the opt-out is in part down to app developers. “The status of the ‘Opt out of Interest-based Advertising’ or ‘Opt out of Ads Personalization’ setting must be verified on each access of the ID,” Google’s documentation states.

There is an option to reset the ID, but when you do so you get a new one, so this will only be effective long-term if you do it repeatedly. “It is like cancelling a contract only under the condition that you sign a new one,” said Rossetti.

The complaint can be viewed here [PDF] and raises key questions about privacy, choice, and tracking. It states that the complainant (the name is redacted) completed a Google contact form to withdraw consent to use of the advertising ID (if consent had been given, which is disputed), and to object to its processing. Article 7 of the GDPR states that “the data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time.” Article 21 is a “right to object at any time to processing of personal data concerning him or her” for marketing and profiling, following which the law states that “the personal data shall no longer be processed for such purposes.”

The complaint says that there is no opt-in “consent button” for the advertising ID. Although users have to agree to the general Google privacy policy, according to the complaint this consent “was neither informed, specific (the data subject has to agree to all Google services in a single step), nor free (the user cannot use a €800 phone without agreeing).”

Google responded to the request by stating that “in the case of non-account holders, Google does not have the means to verify the identity of data subjects from an Advertising ID and therefore, we cannot take specific action on the basis of the content contained in your email” and that “you may immediately cease the processing of personal data related to your Advertising ID by resetting your Advertising ID.”

However, the GDPR states in Article 12 that “the controller shall not refuse to act… unless the controller demonstrates that it is not in a position to identify the data subject.” The complaint claims that “no technical or logical argument was provided, as to why the identification of the Complainant was not possible.”

Apple, notes the complaint, has a similar advertising ID in iOS but explains that this can be “replaced with a non-unique value of all zeros to prevent the serving of targeted ads”.

The complaint requests that Google is ordered to “permanently delete the advertising ID”, provide access to the data collected, and be fined based on various GDPR breaches.

According to Noyb, the complaint was partially based on the Norwegian Consumer Council’s investigation called Out of control. This report claimed it could demonstrate “how every time we use our phones, a large number of shadowy entities that are virtually unknown to consumers are receiving personal data about our interests, habits, and behaviour.”

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has said that it has “significant concerns about the lawfulness of the processing of special category data which we’ve seen in the industry, and the lack of explicit consent for that processing”.

However, the watchdog recently stated that it had decided “to pause our investigation into real-time bidding and the adtech industry” because of COVID-19. It said that “concerns about adtech remain and we aim to restart our work in the coming months, when the time is right” – news which was not well received by privacy advocates.

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Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: BBC

Interserve, which helped build Birmingham’s NHS Nightingale hospital, and Bam Construct, which delivered the Yorkshire and the Humber’s, have reported the incidents to authorities.

Earlier this month, the government warned healthcare groups involved in the response to the virus were being targeted by malicious actors.

The separate attacks were not linked.

But Bam Construct said the “significant” cyber-attack on it “forms part of the wave of attacks on public and private organisations supporting the national effort on Covid-19”.

A spokesman said the company had shut down its website and some other systems as a precaution, after being hit by a computer virus.

But its day-to-day business had remained largely unaffected.

“Our own precautions have had more of an effect on our normal working procedures than the virus itself,” he said.

Interserve, meanwhile, said “some operational services may be affected”.

But it was working with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to “contain and remedy the situation” and had notified the Information Commissioner’s Office and warned its employees, former employees, clients and suppliers to “exercise heightened vigilance during this time”.

The outsourcing company also provides facilities management and other services and holds a range of contracts with the government beyond the construction sector.

Earlier this month, the NCSC warned of attempts to attack healthcare and research organisations during the pandemic.

And the government warned malicious actors were “seeking to undermine the global response to this unprecedented global health crisis endanger lives”.

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Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: The Register

Security researchers at Comparitech have reported that an estimated 24,000 Android apps are leaking user data because of misconfigured Firebase databases.

Firebase is a popular backend service with SDKs for multiple platforms, including Android, iOS, web, C++ and Unity (for games). Features include two NoSQL database managers, Cloud Firestore and the older Realtime Database. Data is secured using rules which “work by matching a pattern against database paths, and then applying custom conditions to allow access to data at those paths”, according to the docs. This is combined with authentication to lock up confidential data while also allowing access to shared data.

“A common Firebase misconfiguration allows attackers to easily find and steal data from storage. By simply appending ‘.json’ to the end of a Firebase URL, the attacker can view and download the contents of vulnerable databases,” the report explained.

How common a problem is it? The Comparitech security team reviewed just over half a million apps, comprising, they say, about 18 per cent of apps in the Play store. “In that sample, we found more than 4,282 apps leaking sensitive information,” the report claimed.

No high-tech investigation was required. The team simply searched each app’s resources for text strings ending “.firebaseio.com”, to find database URLs. The team also checked for write access, and of those which were publicly exposed (11,730), 9,014 offered write access to world+dog, the report claimed.

Write access is alarming, because this has the potential to corrupt an app’s behaviour. If an app had a high level of permissions on the user’s device, one can imagine cases where this could cause further exploits.

Some developers struggle with Firebase security, as discussions on StackOverflow confirm. They may want to avoid the friction of a login, though; according to the docs, you can use “temporary anonymous accounts” for this.

This question from a developer who got a warning email from Google received an answer from Firebase engineer Frank van Puffelen, who explained that simply requiring authentication is insufficient.

“If you enable any auth provider in Firebase Authentication, anyone can sign in to your back-end, even without using your app. Depending on the provider, this can be as easy as running a bit of JavaScript in your browser’s developer console. And once they are signed in, they can read and write anything in your database.”

Firebase configuration is, it seems, easy to get wrong.

What kind of data did Comparitech find? Email addresses, usernames, passwords, phone numbers and addresses, GPS data (in case the address is not enough), chat messages and more. Occasionally there was passport data, credit cards, and “photos of government-issued identification”.

The apps most likely to be vulnerable are games, with the report claiming that 24.71 per cent of games analysed were vulnerable. Next worst was education (14.72 per cent), followed by entertainment (6.02 per cent), business (5.28 per cent), and travel (4.31 per cent). We have asked Google if it can verify these figures.

Google did respond to Comparitech, saying: “Firebase provides a number of features that help our developers configure their deployments securely. We provide notifications to developers about potential misconfigurations in their deployments and offer recommendations for correcting them. We are reaching out to affected developers to help them address these issues.”

Some of these databases may even be indexed in search results. We know this because the problem is not new. In December 2019, it was reported that Google hides Firebase databases from search results, but you can find them with other search engines such as Bing.

Comparitech appeals to developers to secure their Firebase configurations, but what about users? It is not easy to tell if an application has a secure backend. Comparitech suggests not reusing passwords, to which we might add the obvious: data that is not entered will not be leaked.

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Extreme Hacking | Sadik Shaikh | Cyber Suraksha Abhiyan

Credits: The Register

Hackers are threatening to release 756GB of A-list celebs’ contracts, recording deals, and other personal info allegedly stolen from a New York law firm.

The miscreants have seemingly got their hands on confidential agreements, private correspondence, contact details, and other information belonging to superstars, including Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Sir Elton John, Run DMC, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, and Lady Gaga, and their representatives.

The data was swiped by the REvil, aka Sodinokibi, malware-slinging gang best known for taking down Travelex, infosec biz Emsisoft’s Brett Callow told The Register.

A Tor-hidden website belonging to REvil, which lists dozens of organizations compromised by the crew, includes screenshots of folders, a non-disclosure agreement, Madonna’s 2019-2020 tour arrangements, and Aguilera’s music rights as proof of its cyber-heist.

The gang claims to have hacked entertainment law firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, based in the Big Apple, and siphoned its documents.

The law firm could not be reached for comment. We assume they were otherwise occupied. Their website right now just shows its logo whereas as recently as May 8, it listed its clients and staff.

“The documents purportedly include information about multiple music and entertainment figures, including: Lady Gaga, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Bruce Springsteen, Mary J. Blige, Ella Mai, Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, Cam Newton, Bette Midler, Jessica Simpson, Priyanka Chopra, Idina Menzel, HBO’s ‘Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,’ and Run DMC. Facebook also is on the hackers’ hit list,” reported showbiz industry mag Variety, which was also tipped off by Emsisoft.

The law firm also represents big name personalities in TV, film, and sport, and media and online giants, from Kate Upton and Robert De Niro to Sony, Spotify, Vice, and EMI. It is assumed the swiped data was partially leaked to encourage the lawyers to cough up a ransom demand – or the rest of the information would spill onto the dark web.

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