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Expert discovered a DoS vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP systems A security researcher discovered a flaw in the F5 BIG-IP product that can be exploited to conduct denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The security expert Nikita Abramov from Positive Technologies discovered a DoS vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-27716, that affects certain versions of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM). The F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager is a secure, flexible, high-performance access management proxy solution that delivers unified global access control for your users, devices, applications, and application programming interfaces (APIs). The vulnerability resides in the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) component which processes all load-balanced traffic on BIG-IP devices. A few days after the disclosure of the vulnerability in the F5 Networks BIG-IP product threat actors started exploiting it in attacks in the wild. Threat actors exploited the CVE-2020-5902 flaw to obtain passwords, create web shells, and infect systems with various malware. Leave a Reply
Following some news, the question on our minds right now is: are Google home speakers safe? According to a security expert, certain Google Home smart speakers may have been taken over. This can be done easily in order to remotely listen in on private conversations. Security expert Matt Kunze found the problem. He was rewarded with a prize of $107,500 for responsibly disclosing it to Google. Kunze was looking into his own Google Home mini speaker for potential problems. He also detailed in a blog post how he was able to establish a second Google account for the gadget. Which would be sufficient to be able to listen in on conversations. READ MORE: New Jobs For Tech Workers Are Google home speakers safe: including errant accounts The attacker must first be within the wireless range of the target device. And the attacker must also listen for MAC addresses with Google-related prefixes. The device can then be disconnected from the network and put into setup mode by sending death packets. In the setup mode, they ask for device details, utilize that information to attach their account to the device, and presto! They can now walk away from the WiFi and spy on the device owners online. However, the danger goes beyond merely overhearing talks. Many owners of smart home speakers link their gadgets to other smart devices, like door locks and smart switches. The researcher also discovered a way to misuse the “call phone number” command, causing the victim’s device to call the attacker at a predetermined time and stream live audio. The flaw was identified in early 2021 and fixed by April 2022. To fix the problem, Google developed a new invite-based approach for account linking that blocks any accounts that haven’t been linked to Home. However, Google Home users are encouraged to update the endpoint’s firmware to the most recent version as soon as possible to ensure there is no risk.
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database A SQL injection vulnerability exists in WPEverest Everest Forms plugin for WordPress through 1.4.9. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability would allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary SQL commands on the affected system via includes/evf-entry-functions.php b3log Wide before 1.6.0 allows three types of attacks to access arbitrary files. First, the attacker can write code in the editor, and compile and run it approximately three times to read an arbitrary file. Second, the attacker can create a symlink, and then place the symlink into a ZIP archive. An ... An issue was discovered on AudioCodes Mediant 500L-MSBR, 500-MBSR, M800B-MSBR and 800C-MSBR devices with firmware versions F7.20A to F7.20A.253. A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the search function of the management web interface allows remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or... Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory msr-safe v1.1.0 is affected by: Incorrect Access Control. The impact is: An attacker could modify model specific registers. The component is: ioctl handling. The attack vector is: An attacker could exploit a bug in ioctl interface whitelist checking, in order t...
Cisco has at the time once again preset four earlier disclosed critical bugs in its Jabber video conferencing and messaging app that were inadequately dealt with, leaving its consumers susceptible to distant attacks. The vulnerabilities, if efficiently exploited, could allow for an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on target programs by sending specially-crafted chat messages in team conversations or precise persons. They were reported to the networking tools maker on September 25 by Watchcom, a few months after the Norwegian cybersecurity organization publicly disclosed multiple security shortcomings in Jabber that were observed all through a penetration exam for a customer in June. The new flaws, which were being uncovered right after a person of its clients asked for a verification audit of the patch, has an effect on all at present supported versions of the Cisco Jabber consumer (12.1 – 12.9). “3 of the four vulnerabilities Watchcom disclosed in September have not been sufficiently mitigated,” Watchcom said in a report printed nowadays. “Cisco introduced a patch that set the injection factors we noted, but the underlying trouble has not been mounted. As these, we had been able to 7ind new injection details that could be made use of to exploit the vulnerabilities.” Most critical between the flaws is CVE-2020-26085 (identical to CVE-2020-3495), which has a severity ranking of 9.9 out of 10, a zero-simply click cross-web page scripting (XSS) vulnerability that can be used to achieve remote code execution by escaping the CEF sandbox. CEF or Chromium Embedded Framework is an open-resource framework that’s employed to embed a Chromium-dependent web browser inside of other apps. When the embedded browser is sandboxed to stop unauthorized access to information, the scientists found a way to bypass the protections by abusing the window.CallCppFunction, which is created to open up data files despatched by other Cisco Jabber end users. All an adversary has to do is initiate a file transfer made up of a destructive “.exe” file and drive the sufferer to settle for it employing an XSS attack, then trigger a call to the aforementioned function, leading to the executable to be run on the victim’s machine. Worse, this vulnerability does not demand consumer interaction and is wormable, meaning it can be utilised to automatically distribute the malware to other units by disguising the payload in a chat message. A second flaw, CVE-2020-27132, stems from the way it parses HTML tags in XMPP messages, an XML-based mostly communications protocol utilised for facilitating fast messaging amongst any two or additional network entities. “No additional security actions had been put in spot and it was therefore doable to both equally acquire remote code execution and steal NTLM password hashes working with this new injection point,” the researchers stated. The 3rd and final vulnerability (CVE-2020-27127) is a command injection flaw regarding protocol handlers, which are employed to advise the working system to open up distinct URLs (e.g., XMPP://, IM://, and TEL://) in Jabber, creating it possible for an attacker to insert arbitrary command-line flags by simply together with a space the URL. Supplied the self-replicating nature of the attacks, it is advised that Jabber consumers update to the latest version of the software program to mitigate the risk. Watchcom also suggests that corporations contemplate disabling conversation with external entities by means of Cisco Jabber until eventually all workers have installed the update. Identified this posting appealing? Observe THN on Fb, Twitter and LinkedIn to browse more special articles we submit. Some parts of this report are sourced from:
Security experts at Cyberbit have uncovered a crypto mining campaign that infected more than 50% of the European airport workstations. European airport systems were infected with a Monero “While rolling out Cyberbit’s Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) in an international airport in Europe, our researchers identified an interesting crypto mining infection, where Experts pointed out that the Monero miners were installed on the European airport systems, even if they were running an industry-standard antivirus. Threat actors were able to package the miner evading the detection of ordinary antivirus. The good news is that the miner did not impact the airport’s operations. Experts’ behavioral engine detected a suspicious usage of the PAExec tool used to execute an application named player.exe. Experts also observed the use of Reflective DLL Loading after running player.exe. The technique allows the attackers to remotely inject a DLL directly into a process in memory. “This impacts the performance of other applications, as well as that of the airport facility. The use of administrative privileges also reduces the ability for security tools to detect the activity.” continues the report. In order to gain persistence, attackers added an entry in the systems’ registries for the PAExec. At the time, researchers were not able to determine how attackers infected the European Airport systems. “Because the malware happened to be a “In a worst-case scenario, attackers could have breached the IT network as a means to hop onto the airport’s OT network in order to compromise critical operational systems ranging from runway lights to baggage handling machines and the air-train, to name a few of the many standard airport OT systems that could be cyber-sabotaged to cause catastrophic physical damage,” Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection') A remote code execution issue was discovered in Zoho ManageEngine Applications Manager before 13.6 (build 13640). The publicly accessible testCredential.do endpoint takes multiple user inputs and validates supplied credentials by accessing a specified system. This endpoint calls several internal classes, and then executes a PowerShell script. If the specified system is OfficeSharePointServer, then the username and password parameters to this script are not validated, leading to Command Injection. CWE-78 - OS Command Injection The OS command injection weakness (also known as shell injection) is a vulnerability which enables an attacker to run arbitrary OS commands on a server. This is done by modifying the intended downstream OS command and injecting arbitrary commands, enabling the execution of unauthorized OS commands. This has the potential to fully compromise the application along with all of its data, and, if the compromised process does not follow the principle of least privileges, it may compromise other parts of the hosting infrastructure as well. This weakness is listed as number ten in the 'CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses'.
CmdLineExInstallerExe.exe - Illegal System DLL Relocation The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The system will not run properly. The relocation occured because the DLL C:/WINDOWS/system32/SHELL32.dll occupied an address range reserved for WINDOWS system DLLs. The vendor supplying DLL should be contacted for new DLL. Edited by lolog88, 24 January 2009 - 04:59 AM.
Chapter 8. Wireless Penetration Wireless networks have become increasingly popular for personal and business use. Unfortunately, for wireless networks as for most other technological advances, security has been an afterthought. Thus, the current state of wireless technology is such that wireless networks in general are not secure by default and cannot be easily secured. The three tools (Aircrack, Airpwn, and Karma) presented in this chapter take advantage of weaknesses in 802.11 wireless networks in order to compromise them. Aircrack monitors legitimate wireless traffic in order to crack the encryption key being used. Knowing this key allows an attacker to access the wireless network and paves the way for further attacks. Aircrack is introduced in Aircrack. Airpwn monitors legitimate wireless traffic and, based on preconfigured search patterns, injects attacker-controlled data into the network, thus allowing for sophisticated attacks. Airpwn can use the WEP key uncovered by Aircrack to compromise encrypted networks. Airpwn is introduced in Airpwn. Karma impersonates wireless networks, tricking careless wireless clients into connecting to an attacker-controlled network. Karma is introduced in Karma. The chapter starts with a discussion of wireless encryption technology to establish the current state of wireless security. WEP and WPA Encryption Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is one method of securing the network. Most wireless vendors include it by default as part of the IEEE 802.11 ...
D-Link and Changing Information Technologies code-signing certificates stolen and abused by highly skilled cyberespionage group focused on East Asia, particularly Taiwan ESET researchers have discovered a new malware campaign misusing stolen digital certificates. We spotted this malware campaign when our systems marked several files as suspicious. Interestingly, the flagged files were digitally signed using a valid D-Link Corporation code-signing certificate. The exact same certificate had been used to sign non-malicious D-Link software; therefore, the certificate was likely stolen. Having confirmed the file’s malicious nature, we notified D-Link, who launched their own investigation into the matter. As a result, the compromised digital certificate was revoked by D-Link on July 3, 2018. Our analysis identified two different malware families that were misusing the stolen certificate – the Plead malware, a remotely controlled backdoor, and a related password stealer component. Recently, the JPCERT published a thorough analysis of the Plead backdoor, which, according to Trend Micro, is used by the cyberespionage group BlackTech. Along with the Plead samples signed with the D-Link certificate, ESET researchers have also identified samples signed using a certificate belonging to a Taiwanese security company named Changing Information Technology Inc. Despite the fact that the Changing Information Technology Inc. certificate was revoked on July 4, 2017, the BlackTech group is still using it 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 signed Plead malware samples are highly obfuscated with junk code, but the purpose of the malware is similar in all samples: it downloads from a remote server or opens from the local disk a small encrypted binary blob. This binary blob contains encrypted shellcode, which downloads the final Plead backdoor module. The password stealer tool is used to collect saved passwords from the following applications: - Google Chrome - Microsoft Internet Explorer - Microsoft Outlook - Mozilla Firefox Why steal digital certificates? Misusing digital certificates is one of the many ways cybercriminals try to mask their malicious intentions – as the stolen certificates let malware appear like legitimate applications, the malware has a greater chance of sneaking past security measures without raising suspicion. Probably the most infamous malware known to have used several stolen digital certificates is the Stuxnet worm, discovered in 2010 and the malware behind the very first cyberattack to target critical infrastructure. Stuxnet used digital certificates stolen from RealTek and one from JMicron, two well-known technology companies based in Taiwan. However, the tactic is not exclusive to high-profile incidents like Stuxnet, as evidenced by this recent discovery. \|ESET detection names\| \|Unsigned samples (SHA-1)\| \|Signed samples (SHA-1)\| \|Code signing certificates serial numbers\| \|Changing Information Technology Inc:\|\|73:65:ed:e7:f8:fb:b1:47:67:02:d2:93:08:39:6f:51\|
Cannot connect more computers to the wireless product Make sure that the other computers are within the wireless range and that no obstacles block the signal. For most networks, the wireless range is within 30 m (100 ft) of the wireless access point. Make sure that the product is turned on and in the ready state. Turn off any third-party firewalls on your computer. Chapter 9 Solve problems Make sure that the wireless network is working correctly. Make sure that your computer is working correctly. If necessary, restart the computer.
A serious vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) in the popular open source Apache Log4j logging library poses a threat to thousands of applications and third-party services that leverage this library, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code from an external source. You are a security analyst who needs to respond to this. As well as applying an emergency patch for the vulnerability or applying the appropriate mitigations if upgrading is not possible, you also need to look for the presence of Log4j executing remote code in your systems. How to use Splunk software for this use case To deploy this use case, make sure that you have the Splunk ES Content Updates installed on your Splunk Enterprise Security deployment. This extensive content library empowers you to deploy out-of-the-box security detections and analytic stories to enhance your investigations and improve your security posture. If you do not have Splunk Enterprise Security, these detections will still give you an idea of what you can accomplish with SPL in the Splunk platform or with the free app, Splunk Security Essentials. Some of the detections that can help you with this use case include: - Any Powershell download file - CMD carry out string command parameter - Curl download and bash execution - Detect outbound LDAP traffic - Hunting for Log4Shell - Java class file download by Java user agent - Linux Java spawning shell - Log4Shell CVE-2021-44228 exploitation - Log4Shell JNDI payload injection attempt - Log4Shell JNDI payload injection with outbound connection - Outbound network connection from java using default ports - PowerShell connect to internet with hidden window - Wget download and bash execution - Windows Powershell connect to internet with hidden window - Windows Powershell download file If you determine that you have exposure to Log4j in your environment or Github projects, review the guidance from The Apache Software Foundation on patching for the vulnerability. You should also upgrade to Log4j 2.15.0 as soon as possible or apply the appropriate mitigations if upgrading is not possible. If your searching detects that active exploitation of Log4j has occurred, you'll need to follow your organization's processes for assessing the scale of and mitigating for the attack. In addition, these Splunk resources might help you understand and implement this use case: - Log4Shell overview and resources for Log4j vulnerabilities - Log4Shell - Detecting Log4j 2 RCE Using Splunk Splunk OnDemand Services: Use these credit-based services for direct access to Splunk technical consultants with a variety of technical services from a pre-defined catalog. Most customers have OnDemand Services per their license support plan. Engage the ODS team at OnDemand-Inquires@splunk.
By Keith Glancey, Head of Solutions Architect at Infoblox Over the years, ransomware has become an increasingly popular attack method for hackers looking to make a large return on investment. The COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated this problem further, opening up new opportunities for cybercriminals to cause disruption and find vulnerabilities. As businesses continue to struggle with securing the new remote and hybrid working landscape, cybercriminals will continue to use it to their advantage. In fact, today it is estimated that there is at least one ransomware attack on a business every 11 seconds. These attacks are not just frequent. They are also damaging, with recent research discovering that the average ransomware recovery costs for businesses have more than doubled in the past year, rising from $761,106 in 2020 to $1.85 million in 2021. And that’s without the long-term reputational damage. Whilst tried and tested ransomware distribution tactics – such as malicious websites, email campaigns and even USB memory sticks – are still very much in use, over the last year or so other, newer methods have also increased in popularity. One such method – which is quickly becoming the number one headache for security teams and business leaders – is Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS). A new era in ransomware RaaS is changing the game. A subscription-based model that enables users to use pre-developed ransomware tools to execute attacks, RaaS gives everyone the power to become a hacker. There’s no technical knowledge required; all individuals need to do is sign up for the service. RaaS platforms are closely modelled after legitimate SaaS products. They include support, community forums, documentation, updates, and more. Some even offer supporting marketing literature and user testimonials. Users can choose to sign up for a one-time fee or for a monthly subscription. There are also special features which you can pay for, such as a status update of active ransom infections, the number of files encrypted, and payment information. Although deploying this new type of ransomware requires no specific skills, it still enables threat actors to develop highly targeted attacks on large organisations, where they can ask for large ransoms. In these highly targeted cases, threat actors use carefully researched social-engineering tactics, such as well-crafted emails to entice targets to click dangerous URLs or open malicious attachments. In other cases, threat actors may target a vulnerability that is particular to or commonly used by their target victim group. It’s no surprise that RaaS is becoming so popular. In fact, research discovered that almost two-thirds of ransomware attacks in 2020 used RaaS tools. It has also been behind some of the most notorious attacks this year, including those on the Colonial Pipeline and JBS. The size and sophistication of these attacks should concern all cybersecurity professionals, and their successes highlight how the RaaS market is only likely to grow moving forward. Future proofing with DNS When it comes to ransomware, failing to prepare really is preparing to fail. More often than not, attacks are successful when victims do not have an effective strategy in place. Therefore, businesses need to expect attempted ransomware attacks and prepare accordingly. Getting detection and prevention right can help businesses to gain the upper hand. This is where Domain Name System (DNS) tracking comes in. DNS is a core network service, which means that it touches every device that connects to a company’s network and the wider internet. What’s more, some 90% of malware, including ransomware, touches DNS when entering and exiting the networking, making it a powerful tool in the cyberdefense toolkit. When applied to security, DNS can help protect against ransomware attacks by detecting and blocking communication with known C&C servers that distribute malware, helping to stop an attack before it even starts. To take DNS-based security to the next level, businesses can merge DNS with DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), and IPAM (IP Address Management). This combination of modern technologies – known as DDI – can pinpoint threats at the earliest stages, and paired with DNS security, can identify compromised machines and correlate disparate events related to the same device. With RaaS becoming so established, organisations battling against ransomware need to level up. As with most complex issues, there’s no silver bullet for cybersecurity. However, by focusing on detection and prevention and using core infrastructure like DDI, security teams can get the upper hand.
Information needed by an attacker to begin looking for possible vulnerabilities in a web browser includes any information about the web browser and plug-ins or modules being used. When debugging or trace information is enabled in a production web browser, information about the web browser, such as web browser type, version, patches installed, plug-ins and modules installed, type of code being used by the hosted application, and any back ends being used for data storage may be displayed. Because this information may be placed in logs and general messages during normal operation of the web browser, an attacker does not have to cause an error condition to gain this information. Windows group policy: 1. Open the group policy editor tool with 'gpedit.msc'. 2. Navigate to Policy Path: Computer ConfigurationAdministrative TemplatesMozillaFirefox Policy Name: Disable Developer Tools Policy State: Enabled macOS 'plist' file: Add the following: <key>DisableDeveloperTools</key> <true/> Linux 'policies.json' file: Add the following in the policies section: 'DisableDeveloperTools': true
Snoopers are software or hardware tools that allow you to intercept and record your computer’s internet traffic so that you can view all the data flowing to and from your computer in real time. To learn more about sniffers, what they are used for, and how they can be protected against, continue reading. Table of contents ☰ - What is a sniffer in networking? - What are sniffer programs? - What is spoofing and sniffing? - What is a network sniffer give examples of sniffers? - What is sniffer in Network Security? - What is network traffic sniffing? - Is network sniffer is a attack tool? - Which programs are packet sniffers? - Is IP sniffing legal? - What is a packet sniffer used for? - What is difference between sniffing and spoofing? - What is meant by sniffing attack? - Is sniffing spoofing active or passive attack? - What is sniffing and spoofing in Kali Linux? - What are the examples of network sniffing tools? - How do you detect network sniffers? - What is packet sniffer example? what is sniffer in network security - Related Questions What is a sniffer in networking? Generally, packet sniffers - also known as packet analyzers, protocol analyzers, or network analyzers - are products of hardware or software that, among other things, are used for monitoring traffic over the Internet. Snoopers analyze streams of data packets that come from and go from computers on a network, as well as from and go to the Internet more generally. What are sniffer programs? This program analyses data transmitted over a communication network, including passwords of interest on the Internet, in order to gather intelligence. By utilizing sniffers on compromised systems, crackers can intercept network traffic and steal access information for many other platforms. What is spoofing and sniffing? In the field of Internet security, sniffing and spoofing are both common types of breaches. In sniffing, data packets are intercepted and inspected using sniffer devices over the Internet (software or hardware). As it pertains to spoofing, the act involves impersonating the identity of an individual. What is a network sniffer give examples of sniffers? Can you give examples of network sniffers? In a university or business organization, for example, it is possible to use a network sniffer to track someone who is using excessive bandwidth. As well as finding security holes, they can be used to help. Network sniffers may be used for any of these purposes. What is sniffer in Network Security? Data packets travelling through a network are monitored and captured using sniffing. Monitoring and troubleshooting network traffic is done with sniffer software by network/system administrators. In addition to capturing the data packets containing sensitive information such as passwords, account details, etc., sniffers are also used to capture sensitive information. What is network traffic sniffing? Monitoring network traffic (e.g., packets) using a sniffer collects data on it (e.g., packets). Examples include where the data comes from, what device is used, or the protocol used. In order to optimize their network environment, administrators can use the information provided here. Is network sniffer is a attack tool? A protocol sniffer is a network tool that analyzes data and searches for traces of protocols. Attacker sniffs passwords and gets credentials and other information by attacking the sessions. Without an SSL certificate, a website is more vulnerable to attacks and exploits. Which programs are packet sniffers? With this package, you can perform packet analysis with SolarWinds. Netflow Analyzer by ManageEngine. WeeShark. This monitoring application monitors your networks. A packet analyzer built into the Steel Central Data Center. Dumping TCP traffic. A network analyzer. It was kismet. Is IP sniffing legal? In general, packet sniffing is legal so long as you do not filter out data after 48 bytes (or 96 bytes or 128 bytes). A person may capture information that is illegal, but there is nothing illegal about capturing non-content. Taking advantage of wireless data is legal since it is available to the public.". What is a packet sniffer used for? Data packets are sniffed in order to detect and observe packets that are crossing the network. In the world of computer networks, administrators and hackers use packet sniffers in the same way to monitor and validate traffic. What is difference between sniffing and spoofing? Monitoring, or sniffing, is when all data packets passing through a network are examined. There are several types of sniffers available for systems, including both hardware and software. A spoofer introduces fake traffic that appears to originate from a legitimate source (either legal or legitimate). What is meant by sniffing attack? It is an encyclopedia article from Wikipedia. During network security, a sniffing attack takes place when packet sniffers (a software program used to capture network packets) are used to intercept or steal data. Is sniffing spoofing active or passive attack? Spocking and sniffing are often interchangeable terms. Sniffing, however, is a different kind of attack than spoofing. A sniffer engages directly in the target's activities when they are involved in sniffing. Listening and reading unencrypted data from network traffic is part of their active activity. What is sniffing and spoofing in Kali Linux? Wiretapping and spoofing mean wiretapping a network and viewing all the traffic that flows through it. The top ten sniffing and spoofing tools that are available in Kali Linux. The tools may be sniffers, they may be spoofers, or they may perform both. What are the examples of network sniffing tools? The Auvik region. NetSniffer is part of the SolarWinds product suite. A wireshark program. PRTG by Paessler. Analyze Network Flows with ManageEngine. Dumping TCP traffic. The WinDump program. A network analyzer. How do you detect network sniffers? As soon as an interface is switched to promiscuous mode, it is capturing all network traffic, a tell-tell sign that it is listening for network traffic. Type ifconfig -a and look for PROMISC for your interfaces. What is packet sniffer example? A packet sniffer, such as Tcpdump or Wireshark, is an example. A host's packets will be sent to tcpdump for inspection if this option is enabled. Even multicast and broadcast traffic is included in this setting, regardless of whether the traffic is going to the specific host that you are capturing on.
Linksys is working on a firmware update for 10 security vulnerabilities affecting its “Smart” Wi-Fi series of routers. Tao Sauvage, a security consultant for IOActive, came across the flaws after reverse-engineering the firmware for the EA3500 Series, one of more than 20 Linksys Smart Wi-Fi router models which use the 802.11N and 802.11AC standards. Sauvage and his friend Antide Petit discovered 10 bugs in total. Six of those are vulnerable to exploitation by an unauthenticated attacker.The security holes break down as follows: - An unauthenticated actor can exploit two of the flaws to create a denial of service (DoS) condition and thereby render the router unresponsive. Until the individual ceases their attack, an admin can’t access the router’s web interface and users can’t connect to the network. - Attackers can bypass the authentication measures protecting the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts to collect information from the router. Vulnerable data includes the router’s firmware version, running processes, as well as all connected devices and their respective operating systems. - It’s possible for an actor to execute commands with root privileges on the operating system of the router. The attacker can leverage this unintended functionality to create a backdoor or gain persistent access to the router. Here’s a list of the vulnerable models: To evaluate the impact of the vulnerabilities, Sauvage and Petit used Shodan to identify vulnerable devices exposed on the web. The two researchers explain in a blog post what they discovered: “We found about 7,000 vulnerable devices exposed at the time of the search. It should be noted that this number does not take into account vulnerable devices protected by strict firewall rules or running behind another network appliance, which could still be compromised by attackers who have access to the individual or company’s internal network.” The majority (69 percent) of those affected devices identified by the researchers are located in the United States. IOActive notified Linksys of the flaws back in January 2017. Since then, the two firms have been coordinating responsible disclosure of the security holes. For instance, IOActive has said it won’t release a technical write-up of the issues until Linksys publishes an update, which it says it’s working on in a security advisory. While admins await this fix, Linksys recommends they help protect their devices by enabling automatic updates, disabling Wi-Fi guest networks if they’re not in use, and changing the default administrator password. I can’t emphasize that last recommendation enough. Not only is it a basic step for protecting all Wi-Fi routers, but it will also help defend against malware like Mirai that compromises IoT devices by brute-forcing their default login credentials.
Comment on page Key Croc Payload Development Key Croc payloads are easy to write with Ducky Script. They can be written in any standard text editor. From notepad on Windows to TextEdit on a Mac – even nano on Linux, the best text editor ever. These simple ascii files are processed by the Key Croc's payload framework. Payloads execute when the target types specified patterns of keystrokes. A payload can be as simple as saving keystrokes of interest, to an advanced array of attacks using multiple device emulation modes, complex pentest frameworks and specialized exploits. Multiple payloads, each with a unique file name, may be loaded simultaneously from the Key Croc's udisk payloads folder. In addition to Ducky Script, the Key Croc payloads are executed with bash. which means they can leverage this powerful shell scripting language. For example, conditional statements can be used to construct decision trees based on events, and text processing tools can be used to systematically extract typed key sequences of interest – storing them in variables for use later in the payload. Payloads can take advantage of a number of Key Croc commands, in addition to the standard Linux tools, additional pre-installed tools like nmap and smbclient, or the optionally installed tools like metasploit, responder and impacket. Last modified 2yr ago
Malware doesn’t commonly occur on Macs, but it’s not impossible to get it. Malware can attack your Mac in different forms, such as worms. These cause many problems and can negatively affect the quality of your Mac experience. Worms are malicious software that multiply on your Mac to quickly spread to all connected devices. Your Mac can get infected when you connect to unsecured networks or visit dangerous websites. The question is, once infected, how to get rid of this malware? What is a worm? Worms are one of the scariest types of malware that can infect your Mac. They can multiply and spread without human activity and quickly affect all devices on your network. With no intent to harm, the worms were created as a technological test. However, cyber criminals now create different types of worms as malware to harm users. Your Mac can be infected with worms in several ways, and it doesn’t need to connect to any software to cause damage. They take advantage of security loopholes and vulnerabilities to spread to your Mac. The easiest way to get worms is through spam emails, corrupt internet networks, file sharing and email platforms. How does a worm affect your Mac? Worms work by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in macOS security, Internet connection, and personal ignorance. Worms can slightly mess up your Mac by duplicating themselves to the point of affecting your storage. At the same time, some can cause more serious problems, like modifying and deleting files or installing harmful apps and programs without your consent. Cybercriminals can use worms to steal or destroy your data. Signs of a worm attack on your Mac If you’re having unexplained issues on your Mac, scanning for different types of malware, including worms, is a good idea. You may experience these issues when there is a worm on your Mac. Slow system performance When your Mac starts up slowly and responds slowly to commands, it’s probably because your memory is full. First you need to check what is taking up your memory space. You have nothing to worry about if your files and programs are using up memory space. However, if unidentified and duplicate files are occupying your memory, you might have a worm on your Mac. You can check your RAM in Activity Monitor by following these steps: - Open Searcher from the Dock and click Apps on the left. - Scroll down and select the Utilities folder and open Activity Monitor. - Click it Memory tab at the top of Activity Monitor window to see all applications and programs using memory. - The memory pressure graph is at the bottom of the Memory tab. It shows you the real-time usage of your memory. You can also check how your hard drive’s memory is being used in System Settings: - Click it apple menu and open System Parameters. - Open General on the left and select Storage to see how your Macintosh HD is used to store files. Hidden and missing files If you can’t find your files as you stored them on your Mac, notice a bunch of hidden files in your folders, or discover deleted files, you might have a worm on your Mac. Worms are capable of modifying and deleting your system files. Unrecognized files or programs When browsing through your files and folders, you may notice that some files are different from yours with unusual names and characters. A worm can install programs and applications that do not require your permission. These programs can harm your system or serve as spyware for cybercriminals. Sharing unknown emails Email is a common way to infect your Mac with worms. So, an obvious sign that you have worms on your Mac is when you start receiving excessive spam or your contacts start receiving spam from you. 4 Ways to Deal with a Worm on Your Mac Worm damage to your Mac can be minimized or even reversed if you can take the appropriate steps. Let’s see how you can deal with a worm on your Mac. 1. Isolate infected systems We mentioned earlier that worms spread quickly across devices, so you should check the extent of the spread first. Use antivirus to scan all your devices with shared data and internet connections for worms. Next, disconnect and isolate all infected devices from your local network or any general Wi-Fi network you are using. 2. Configure Mail Filters The easiest way to avoid malware attacks on your Mac is to be careful about the links you click on and the websites you visit. A worm can attack your Mac through links in spam emails. To be on the safe side, avoid clicking on links in emails from unknown senders and spam. After experiencing a worm attack in your email, one of the steps you can take to prevent it from happening again is to set up email filters. An email filter will automatically categorize your emails to reduce spam security risks. 3. Use antivirus with a firewall One of the first steps to take when worms attack your Mac is to install antivirus software. An antivirus helps you identify infected files and also start the process of removing the worm from your Mac. Worms spread quickly to devices on your network through email, file sharing, and network sharing. However, the best antivirus for your Mac is one with a firewall to prevent a worm from replicating itself on your other devices. You can also enable the firewall on your Mac to block worms and other malware on your device’s network. - Open System Parameters by clicking on the apple menu in the menu bar. - Click on Network in the left pane and select firewall on the right. - Toggle firewall and click Choice at the bottom of the page to view additional firewall options for added security. 4. Update your macOS Apple releases regular updates on macOS to fix bugs and improve security. Updating your macOS regularly will protect you from ever-evolving worms and other types of malware. Follow these steps to update your macOS: - Click it apple menu open System Parameters. - Select General in the left pane and click Software update on the right. - Make sure you’re connected to the Internet to allow your Mac to check for available updates. - If an update is available, you will be able to download and install it. - To light up Automatic updates or click the information icon on the right to see more options. Protect your Mac against worms Although the risk is relatively low, your Mac can catch a worm if you don’t take the proper steps and surf the Internet safely. Fighting worms can be quite tedious, but these steps can eliminate infected files and programs from your Mac. You should also always protect your Mac with timely updates and antivirus. This helps protect your Mac from worms in all their forms and keeps it running smoothly.
This new variant of Emotet trojan distributes Nozelesn ransomware via Nymaim malware downloader - Researchers noted the emergence of the new variant in February 2019. - This particular variety of trojan has been found targeting the hospitality sector. Researchers have discovered a new variant of Emotet trojan distributing a malware downloader for ransomware. This particular variety of trojan has been found targeting the hospitality sector. The bigger picture - In a detailed analysis, researchers from Trend Micro have discovered a new version of the infamous Emotet trojan that distributes Nymaim, the malware downloader. This malware, in turn, tends to download the Nozelesn ransomware. Researchers noted the emergence of the new variant in February 2019. For this, they investigated 580 similar Emotet file attachment samples recorded between January 9, 2019, and February 7, 2019. Modus Operandi - The researchers investigated one of the MDR-monitored endpoints EP01 using Root Cause Chain analysis (RCA) and found suspicious files called ‘How_Fix_Nozelesn_files.htm’. These files were hosted on a server called S01. With the type of files hosted on the server S01, it indicated that the server was infected with Nozelesn ransomware and that the files appeared to be written to disk on around February 15, 2019. Furthermore, the researchers noted that the new Emotet trojan is distributed in the form of a Microsoft Word doc. Once the Word doc is opened, it downloads the PowerShell.exe on to the infected system and later connects to various malicious IP addresses. “Based on the RCA, the malicious document file was opened in Microsoft Word and was downloaded via Google Chrome. We knew for a fact that the organization was using Office 365 within their environment, so this fit their normal daily operations. Immediately after the malicious document was opened, PowerShell.exe was spawned. This connected to various IP addresses and eventually created another file in the system named 942.exe,” the researchers wrote. About Nymaim - Nymaim is delivered to the infected systems as secondary payloads. In 2018, security researchers linked the malware downloader to the Nozelesn ransomware. In the attack campaign, Nymaim was found using fileless execution technique to load the ransomware to the machine’s memory. After running a thorough analysis, the researchers came to the conclusion that there can be two possible scenarios of distributing the Nozelesn ransomware: - Emotet variant was first downloaded and executed on the S01 via an administrative share. After that, the trojan downloaded the Nymaim malware, which in turn loaded the ransomware in memory, or - Nymaim loaded the ransomware in EP01, which then encrypted files in S01 via shared folders. Expert note that attackers may have leveraged the first scenario to install the malware as there is no indication of Nozelesn ransomware infection in EP01.
Actiontec GTWG Network Equipments Wireless Router & Gateway Modem download pdf instruction manual and user guide. View full Actiontec Wireless DSL Gateway GTWG specs on CNET. Find your equipment below to download a user guide or manual. Actiontec GTWG gateway Figure depicting Actiontec GTC modem, Figure depicting. \|Published (Last):\|\|23 March 2008\| \|PDF File Size:\|\|19.80 Mb\| \|ePub File Size:\|\|20.78 Mb\| \|Price:\|\|Free* [*Free Regsitration Required]\| Service Acronym Definitions This chapter also include a list actiontec gt704wg manual frequently asked questions. Minimum System Requirements Chapter 5 Configuring Wireless Settings A login window appears. Remote management will not be available on the Gateway until the default password is changed. By pressing ‘print’ button you will print only current page. Actiontec Wireless DSL Gateway GTWG Specs – CNET Accessing Quick Setup Screens Accessing Wired Security Screens Glossary Access Point A device that allows wireless actipntec to connect to one another. Protocols for retrieving E-mail messages. Go to Step actiontec gt704wg manual. No link is established between the DSL router and your computer. Chapter 1 Introduction Accessing Wireless Setup This process usually actiontec gt704wg manual for resetting any router to it’s factory setting. Ensure the Gateway is on and actiontec gt704wg manual properly. To do this, select the day of the week by clicking in the appropriate check box, then create a access period or ruleas explained in step 4a. Ensure that the other end of the power cord is securely actiontec gt704wg manual to the electrical outlet. Configuring Wireless Settings To modify a specific setting, click on its name in the menu bar on the left, or from the list in the middle of the screen. Yes, the Gateway is compatible with the Xbox. Locating Computer Information Both upstream data coming into the network and downstream data going out of the network traffic can be prioritzed using QoS. This easy-to-use product is perfect for the home office or small busi- ness. actiontec gt704wg manual Actiontec GT704WG instruction manual and user guide Remote Syslog Capture Accessing the Utilities Screens To access the Utilities configuration screens, follow these instructions: Setting Up A Network If you are still unable to connect to the Internet, actiontec gt704wg manual contact Verizon Online at Page 7 Verizon Online 6. Go to Step actiohtec. If Single Static Address was select- ed, enter the address in the appropriate text box. Appendix A Reference 4. Actiontec GTWG Wireless Router & Gateway Modem download instruction manual pdf Comments to this Manuals Your Name. To activate the password to protect the Gateway, change the default password. Troubleshooting This chapter contains a list of problems that may be encountered while using the Gateway, and techniques to try and overcome the problem.
An Italian malware author going by the name “z3r0” is currently offering a remote access Trojan for as low as $58, according to researchers at Symantec. Dubbed Remvio, the backdoor Trojan comes with an end user license agreement (EULA) that denies responsibility if the buyer uses it for malicious activity. Depending on the type of license agreement the buyer wants, the malware’s price could go to as high as $389. Remvio was designed to target all versions of Windows and can be used against both corporations and private users, Symantec’s Christian Tripputi explains. However, the security researcher also notes that it is still unclear whether the backdoor Trojan is already being used in live attacks or not. After purchase, the malware can be distributed through various methods, including watering hole attacks, spam emails that contain a link to the Trojan, or malicious attachments. Overall, the possibilities are endless for cybercriminals, as the malicious software can also be distributed via exploit kits and droppers. According to Symantec, the Trojan was built in C++ and has a small size of only 24-70 KB, but still includes a great deal of capabilities. The security researchers also discovered that the Trojan’s builder and control panel is approximately 6.3MB and that it was developed using the Delphi programming language. “The control panel includes functionalities like automation tasks, which facilitate exfiltration activities without requiring the cybercriminal to physically operate the threat when the victims come online,” Tripputi notes. What’s more alarming, however, is that the malware can act as a remote access Trojan (RAT), being designed to log keystrokes, capture screenshots, record webcam audio and video, and record microphone audio. At the same time, the malware can extract passwords from a broad range of applications, researchers say. According to Symantec, although Remvio’s control panel claims it can steal credentials from Safari, no evidence that the builder supports the creation of Mac OS X malware has been found. Even so, the Trojan was confirmed to support the gathering of passwords from popular browsers and instant messaging applications such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Pidgin, Trillian, Miranda, ICQ, Digsby, PaltalkScene, and Windows MSN/Live Messenger. Additionally, Symantec found that Remvio can be fully configured to evade most security technologies and that it packs anti-analysis options as well. Should the Trojan detect that it is running inside a virtual machine or a debugger, it would terminate and then delete itself, Tripputi explains. By default, the malware uses port 2404 for network communication, but the builder interface allows the Trojan’s operators to change that. Researchers also discovered that “pass” is used as the default encryption network password, but say that this can be changed. The registry hive name, where the backdoor is dropped, and how it starts on the compromised computer are also customizable. Related: OS X Backdoor Provides Unfettered Access to Mac Systems Related: Cisco Finds Backdoor Installed on 12 Million PCs Related: New Dripion Backdoor Powers Targeted Attacks in Taiwan
NetworkMiner is a Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT) for Windows. NetworkMiner can be used as a passive network sniffer/packet capturing tool in order to detect operating systems, sessions, hostnames, open ports etc. without putting any traffic on the network. NetworkMiner can also parse PCAP files for off-line analysis and to regenerate/reassemble transmitted files and certificates from PCAP files. Network Miner is for those who are not much familiar with using WireShark. Network Miner made easy to sniff packets from the network and categories and sort it in different tabs so you can interesting sniffed stuff. You can also analyze pcap files which are dumped using WireShark. Some cool features can be found : Fully GUI application run on Windows platform. Open source application. Sniff User names of any mailing or social website e.g facebook,twitter,gmail and paypal so on… All sort of cookies can be sniffed with one click. Extraction of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Windows Live(Hotmail) messages. (You don’t need password of someone to see his emails 😉 ) All web application security scanners report false-positives, which means they report vulnerabilities that don’t exist. Netsparker will try lots of different things to confirm identified issues. If it can’t confirm it and if it requires manual inspection, it’ll inform you about a potential issue generally prefixed as [Possible], but if it’s confirmed, that’s it. It’s a vulnerability. You can trust it. Netsparker confirms vulnerabilities by exploiting them in a safe manner. If a vulnerability is successfully exploited it can’t be a false-positive. Exploitation is carried out in a non-destructive way. When Netsparker identifies an SQL Injection, it can identify how to exploit it automatically and extract the version information from the application. When the version is successfully extracted Netsparker will report the issue as confirmed so that you can make sure that the issue is not a false-positive. Some of great features supported by Netsparker Detailed Issue Reporting RTF / Word Integrated Exploitation Engine Exploitation of SQL Injection Vulnerabilities Getting a reverse shell from SQL Injection vulnerabilities Exploitation of LFI (Local File Inclusion) Vulnerabilities Downloading source code of all crawled pages via LFI (Local File Inclusion) Downloading known OS files via LFI (Local File Inclusion) Custom 404 Detection Heuristic URL Rewrite Detection List of Vulnerability Checks List of issues Netsparker is looking for. XSS (Cross-site Scripting) XSS (Cross-site Scripting) via Remote File Injection XSS (Cross-site Scripting) in URLs Local File Inclusions & Arbitrary File Reading Remote File Inclusions Remote Code Injection / Evaluation OS Level Command Injection CRLF / HTTP Header Injection / Response Splitting Find Backup Files Finds and Analyse Potential Issues in Robots.txt Finds and Analyse Google Sitemap Files Detect TRACE / TRACK Method Support Detect ASP.NET Debugging Netsparker identifies if ASP.NET Debugging is enabled. Detect ASP.NET Trace Netsparker detects if ASP.NET Tracing is enabled and accessible. Checks for CVS, GIT and SVN Information and Source Code Disclosure Issues Finds PHPInfo() pages and PHPInfo() disclosure in other pages Finds Apache Server-Status and Apache Server-Info pages Find Hidden Resources Basic Authentication over HTTP Source Code Disclosure Auto Complete Enabled ASP.NET ViewState Analysis ViewState is not Signed ViewState is not Encrypted E-mail Address Disclosure Internal IP Disclosure Cookies are not marked as Secure Cookies are not marked as HTTPOnly Stack Trace Disclosure Access Denied Resources Internal Path Disclosure Programming Error Messages Database Error Messages For more detailed features screen shots & demo click here
A newly identified Python-based hacking tool called FBot has been targeting web servers and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Office 365, PayPal, Sendgrid, and Twilio. The researchers said FBot was primarily designed for threat actors to hijack cloud, SaaS, and web services. There’s a secondary focus on obtaining accounts to conduct spamming attacks, and bad actors can use the credential harvesting features to obtain initial access, which they can sell to other parties. Balazs Greksza, threat response lead at Ontinue, said security pros should think of FBot as a collection of high level scripts: the tool only runs about 200 KB or 4,000 lines of Python code with 22 options, meaning each functionality is pretty simplistic. By comparison, Greksza said network mapper (NMAP), which the industry considers the Swiss Army knife of port scanning, is 17 megabytes compressed. The FBot “port_scanner” only attempts some specific checks for 7 HTTP headers. The script works with publicly available data or assumes the access keys of sensitive, already compromised credentials, so it does not take care of the hacking-brute forcing at all. “For more important targets, AWS security teams shouldn’t be all too worried about FBot, rather, should focus on the general cloud security concerns,” said Greksza. “The AWS attack options check simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) targets, Amazon elastic compute cloud (EC2) instances, and list resources. As long as they follow AWS identity and access management (IAM) best practices, don’t use AWS root users, and configure MFA [multi-factor authentication] for normal users, monitor new identities, as a means of persistence and potential actors of attacks, the AWS operators should be fine.” John Bambenek, president at Bambenek Consulting, added that the important defenses here are enabling MFA for at least the most sensitive transactions, such as adding or deleting users, creation of new API keys, or the creation of new resources, as well as to ingest all of the logs for these SaaS platforms into a SIEM. “Much of this abuse can be detected by simple frequency analysis or by detecting login anomalies,” said Bambenek. “While the quality of logging varies greatly, all of the platforms have audit logs for logins and resource modification, which give security pros the raw tools for rapid detection and remediation of misuse, as long as those logs make it to the SIEM.” Emily Phelps, director at Cyware, said to safeguard against Python-based hacking tools like FBot targeting cloud and SaaS platforms, security teams should focus on a multi-pronged approach: enforce MFA, conduct regular credential audits, train employees on security awareness, and implement endpoint security. “They should also engage in network segmentation, enhance activity monitoring, maintain up-to-date software, and enforce strict access control policies,” said Phelps. “Regular penetration testing, data encryption, and collaboration with cloud service providers are also crucial for comprehensive protection against such cyber threats.”
If the web is a digital Wild West, it’s time to lock your doorways and shut your home windows. Whereas the quantity of cyber attackers and exercise alone is alarming, on this episode, the featured villain is a hacker group backed by the Iranian authorities. In a weblog put up revealed Thursday, Google’s Risk Evaluation Group, also referred to as TAG, revealed that it had despatched greater than 50,000 warnings to customers whose accounts had been focused by government-backed hacker teams finishing up phishing and malware campaigns to this point this yr. Receiving a warning doesn’t essentially imply your Google account has been hacked—Google does handle to cease a few of the assaults—however relatively that the corporate has recognized you as a goal. Google said that this amounted to an almost 33% enhance when in comparison with the identical time final yr and attributed the exercise to a big marketing campaign launched by the Russian-sponsored group Fancy Bear, which U.S. and UK safety companies discovered had been on a worldwide password guessing spree since no less than mid-2019, in response to a report revealed in July. Russia’s not alone although. Greater than 50 international locations have hacker teams working “on any given day,” Google defined. “We deliberately ship these warnings in batches to all customers who could also be in danger, relatively than in the meanwhile we detect the menace itself, in order that attackers can not monitor our protection methods,” Google stated. “On any given day, TAG is monitoring greater than 270 focused or government-backed attacker teams from greater than 50 international locations. Which means that there may be sometimes multiple menace actor behind the warnings.” Whereas that statistic alone is mind-boggling, the corporate additionally put a highlight on APT35, a cyber attacker backed by Iran that has hijacked accounts, deployed malware, and spied on customers utilizing “novel methods” lately. Specifically, Google highlighted 4 of the “most notable” APT35 campaigns it’s disrupted in 2021. One among APT35’s common actions is phishing for credentials of so-called high-value accounts, or these belonging to folks in authorities, academia, journalism, NGOs, international coverage, and nationwide safety. The group makes use of a method during which it compromises a legit web site after which deploys a phishing package. In early 2021, Google stated APT35 used this system to hijack an internet site affiliated with a UK college. The hackers then wrote emails to customers on Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo with an invite hyperlink to a faux webinar and even despatched second-factor identification codes to targets’ units. As you might be able to infer, legitimacy seems to be essential to APT35, so it’s no shock that one other certainly one of its logos is impersonating convention officers to hold out phishing assaults. This yr, members of APT35 pretended to be representatives from the Munich Safety and the Suppose-20 Italy conferences, which are literally actual occasions. After sending a non-malicious first contact electronic mail, APT35 despatched customers who responded follow-up emails with phishing hyperlinks. APT35 has additionally carried out its evil deeds through apps. In Could 2020, it tried to add a faux VPN app to the Google Play Retailer that was in reality spy ware and will steal customers’ name logs, textual content messages, contacts, and site information. Google stated it detected the app and eliminated it from the Play Retailer earlier than anybody put in it however added that APT35 had tried to distribute this spy ware on different platforms as lately as July. The group even misused Telegram for its phishing assaults, leveraging the messaging app’s API to create a bot that notified it when a person loaded certainly one of its phishing pages. This tactic allowed the group to acquire device-based information in real-time of the customers on the phishing website, equivalent to IP, useragent, and locales. Google stated it had reported the bot to Telegram and that the messaging app had taken steps to take away it. Hats off to Google for publishing this invaluable info—information is energy, particularly in cybersecurity—however dang is it nerve-racking. Let’s be clear, no one is completely secure on-line, however there are issues you are able to do to scale back the chances of being hacked, equivalent to enacting two-factor authentication and utilizing a safety key. You may try our full information of secure on-line practices right here, or simply, you understand, by no means use something with a display screen ever once more. The information might be simpler. Your name, although.
An extremely convincing phishing attack is using a cross-site scripting vulnerability on an Italian Bank's own website to attempt to steal customers' bank account details. Fraudsters are currently sending phishing mails which use a specially-crafted URL to inject a modified login form onto the bank's login page. The vulnerable page is served over SSL with a bona fide SSL certificate issued to Banca Fideuram S.p.A. in Italy. Nonetheless, the fraudsters have been able to inject an IFRAME onto the login page which loads a modified login form from a web server hosted in Taiwan. The fraudsters' login form presented inside the bank's SSL page. This attack highlights the seriousness of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities on banking websites. It shows that security cannot be guaranteed just by the presence of "https" at the start of a URL, or checking that the browser address bar contains the correct domain name. Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities on SSL sites also undermine the purpose of SSL certificates - while the attack detailed here injects external content via an IFRAME, it is important to note that a malicious payload could also be delivered solely via the vulnerable GET parameter. In the latter case, any SSL certificate associated with the site - included Extended Validation certificates - would display a padlock icon and apparently assure the user that the injected login form is genuine. The vulnerable page, decoding arbitrary GET parameters. Netcraft has contacted the bank affected by this attack and blocked the phishing site for all users of the Netcraft Toolbar, and propagated the block to the companies which licence the Netcraft PhishFeed.
If you’ve been reading about security bugs online, you’ve probably ran into scores given to exploits. These are scored based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, used to categorize exploits into the Common Vulnerability and Exposures database. We’ll discuss what makes up the score. For software companies following an agile development process, releasing software every day is an intensive process. Jenkins is a tool that can speed up your workflow by automating many of the repetitive tasks, such building, testing, and releasing. React is often used to make dynamic web apps that respond to user input, but it’s also quite useful for static sites. React sites can even be pregenerated during the build process to save on precious milliseconds during page load.
Twilio, a communication tool provider, has confirmed that a data breach that occurred in July had more implications than previously recognized. The same malicious actors that compromised the firm in July were also responsible for a breach the month prior that exposed customer information, the company says. The firm released an incident report that was concluded earlier this week and focuses mainly on the data breach incident. The attackers sent hundreds of smishing text messages to the mobile phones of current and former Twilio employees during the attack. The attackers posed as IT administrators or Twilio employees, managing to trick some recipients into clicking password reset links. The links then transported the victim to fake Okta login pages that harvested credentials. The credentials were later used by the attackers to access internal administrative tools, apps, and customer information. The same threat actors were responsible for another phishing attempt, Twilio says, that occurred over the phone. Customers whose information was impacted were notified over the summer. Read More: Twilio Reveals Further Security Breach
A RAT is malicious malware software that runs on your computer. It gives access to a hacker when he wants to steal information from you or install other malicious software. RATs are difficult to detect, but you can take measures to ensure that you’re protected. This article describes RATs and five ways you can detect one running on your computer. A remote access trojan (RAT) gives a malicious hacker access to your desktop. A hacker doesn’t even need to create his own RAT. These programs are available for download from dark areas of the web. As a user, you should understand how a RAT works and what you can do to detect and remove it from your computer. How a RAT Works Trojans have been around for two decades. The term “RAT” is new, however. Trojans are programs that run in the background and give unauthorized access to your machine. What hackers do with the access is up to the individual hacker, but they have several options once you accidentally install a RAT on your system. RATs usually start out as executable files you download from the Internet. It could be masked as another program, or a malicious coder could add one to a seemingly harmless application. Once the RAT installs, it runs in system memory. The RAT adds itself to system startup directories and registry entries, so each time you start your computer, the RAT starts too. The RAT subsequently after installation opens a port on your computer. Ports are virtual “connections” that listen to activity across a network. For instance, when you connect to your favorite website, the web server “listens” on port 80 for connection requests. When you open a website in your browser, your computer sends a request to the web server on port 80 and triggers events that display pages in your browser. The same activity happens with a RAT only the hacker software lets malicious connections control your desktop. Firewall and Antivirus Software Firewall software blocks incoming and outgoing port connections, so they are your number one defense against RATs. Firewalls combined with antivirus software catches most threats, but you’re not 100% safe. Even with these two defenses, new malware is always created to avoid detection. Always use common sense before installing an executable from an unknown source. View Processes Running Right-click your Windows toolbar and select “Task Manager.” Click the “Processes” tab in Task Manager. This window gives you a list of programs running on your machine. Review them for any strange names or names that you don’t recognize as typical programs. If you don’t recognize the name, type it into Google. Several sites tell you if a process is malicious, so you know if you have a RAT on your system. Odd Startup Programs In some cases, the hacker might want another program to start when you boot your computer. If you notice any strange programs that start up when you boot your computer, you might have a RAT. These secondary programs are usually malicious software also, so you’ll need to remove them when you remove the RAT. View the List of Installed Programs Open Windows Control Panel and view the list of programs installed on your computer. If you notice any odd programs, then it could be malicious. In fact, the popular software TeamViewer used to collaborate remotely with people is often used as a RAT. If you didn’t install it on your computer, you should remove it. This application gives remote access to authorized and unauthorized people. Slow Internet Connection It’s hard to quantify a slow Internet connection. If you normally have fast speeds but lately your Internet connection is extremely slow, you should first check the router and wireless connection. However, if the hacker is downloading information from your computer, he uses the bandwidth and creates noticeable lag on the network. If you suspect that someone is remotely accessing your computer, the fastest way to stop it is to disconnect from the Internet. These are five ways you can determine if you have a RAT installed. These applications are extremely malicious, so always be wary of strange programs on the Internet. Stick to installing known programs to avoid the hassle of RAT removal.
Key-based encryption is used to create a secure subnet for communication, making it difficult for attackers to decipher the VPN traffic. A replay attack (also known as a playback attack or playback attack) is a form of network attack in which a valid data transmission is maliciously or fraudulently repeated or delayed. This is done by the author or by an adversary who intercepts the data and transmits it, possibly as part of a spoofing attack by replacing IP packets. This is one of the lower-level versions of a man in the middle attack. Replay attacks are usually passive in nature. IPsec uses cryptographic techniques to protect the integrity, confidentiality, and authenticity of data and to defend against attacks. It uses protocols such as Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) and Authentication Header (AH) to defend against attacks. These protocols prevent attackers from intercepting and manipulating network traffic. These duplicate packets can indicate that an attacker is intercepting legitimate traffic and attempting to forward it later. By providing robust encryption and authentication mechanisms, secure communication over IP networks is guaranteed and protected against replay attacks. Replay attacks can be considered a subset of MitM attacks, but they focus on reusing intercepted data rather than altering it. Now that you have a deeper understanding of replay attacks and their implications, it's critical to take proactive steps to protect your network. The Challenge-Handshake (CHAP) authentication protocol protects against this type of repetition attacks during the authentication phase, since it uses an authenticator challenge message in which the customer responds with a hashed value based on a shared secret (for example, the implementation of encryption mechanisms further improves security by protecting data transmission against interception and replay). This method of improving the security of ad hoc networks increases network security with a small overhead. Organizations must prioritize security measures, such as network monitoring tools, secure routing protocols, and encryption mechanisms to maintain the integrity of their communication systems. These keys are used to encrypt and decipher the data exchanged between the client and the server, making it extremely difficult for attackers to decipher the intercepted information. The Kerberos protocol provides a secure method for authenticating users and preventing replay attacks. The anti-replay protocol uses a one-way security association to establish a secure connection between two nodes on the network. The additional danger of replay attacks is that a hacker doesn't even need advanced knowledge to decipher a message after capturing it from the network. In a MitM attack, the attacker can modify the intercepted data before transmitting it, acting as an intermediary in real time. Taking proactive steps to protect your network will help keep your data safe from prying eyes and potential threats. By including a timestamp in every request, it's virtually impossible for an attacker to reuse or reproduce previously intercepted messages.
Shell Execute Hook Help The term “shell execute hook” may be a familiar one to computer techs and geeks (said nicely and with admiration), but for the rest of us common folks, it sounds like something a boxer might use in the ring. However, that’s not at all what a shell execute hook is. Without sounding techie, a shell is computer lingo for a basic computer function that is supported by most Windows versions. Shells are part of the computer’s brain coding that make it do its thing, without you having to know what it is or how to control it. A shell execute and Shell Execute Hook are used by Windows to start most operations and functions within Windows Explorer. If something gets messed up at that point, you’re going to see problems. Basically, everything that you do through the shell, or function within Windows, is completed through the shell execute hook. A shell execute hook is a way for Windows to add what are called hooks to message handling systems within Windows. When used legitimately and legally, they help your computer do what it’s supposed to do. When a shell execute hook is used as a method for attack against your computer, you’ll have to try to isolate it and dispose of it as soon as possible. Such hooks are able to intercept messages in a desktop and are used in conjunction with what are called DLL extensions. To keep it simple, suffice it to say that any spyware that invades your Registry system, which is the inner brain of the computer. Various spyware and viruses and even Trojans can have different effects on the registry files in your computer so it’s best not to allow them any opportunities to get in there in the first place. This type of infection can alter your computer behavior, cause crashes, redirecting your browser to something else, sluggish transitions and a multitude of pop up windows, but such behavior will depend on the type of virus or spyware that has gotten in. The problem with this is that spyware has managed to piggy back into many computers through a Trojan that disguises itself as a necessary shell execute hook function. The name for this little bug is Ljack.ShellExecuteHook, but it can be known as a different type of Trojan or by another name, but basically, they work the same way, by invading through a warning that your computer has been compromised and that you need to install this to make it all better. This type of shell execute hook Trojan attack was popular a year or so ago and occurred through infection of what was called the Klez worm. If you know something about your program files, you may be able to spot a Shell Execute Hook spyware, but if not, it’s best to purchase an anti spyware or anti virus program to try to clean out your files. In severe cases of infections or invasions, you may have to give your computer a complete lobotomy and start fresh. That’s why you should always make backups of your system files and your working files. Flash drives make this procedure much easier than it used to be, and doing so will help to save the bulk of your computer files in the case of an attack.
Nsdtool is a toolset of scripts used to detect netgear switches in local networks. The tool contains some extra features like bruteforce and setting a new password. Netgear has its own protocol called NSDP (Netgear Switch Discovery Protocol), which is implemented to support security tests on the commandline. It is not being bound to the delivered tools by Netgear. UsageDefine your interface and possible delay in the config.ini. # cat config.ini [NSDP] SourcePort = 63323 <--- nsdp source DestPort = 63324 <--- nsdp dest Interface = eth0 <--- your network interface DestIP = 255.255.255.255 Delay = 0.01 <--- interval delay
Hundreds of millions of Dell desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets will need to update their Dell DBUtil driver to fix a 12-year-old vulnerability that exposes systems to attacks. The bug, tracked as CVE-2021-21551, impacts version 2.3 of DBUtil, a Dell BIOS driver that allows the OS and system apps to interact with the computer’s BIOS and hardware. In a report published today and shared with The Record, security firm SentinelOne said it found a vulnerability in this driver that could be abused to allow threat actors access driver functions and execute malicious code with SYSTEM and kernel-level privileges. Researchers said the DBUtil vulnerability cannot be exploited over the internet to gain access to unpatched systems remotely. Instead, threat actors who gained initial access to a computer, even to a low-level account, could abuse this bug to take full control over the compromised PC — in what the security community typically describes as a privilege escalation vulnerability. The “vulnerable” driver landscape This bug is nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it’s the typical bug found in system drivers these days, many of which have been coded years ago and have not always followed secure coding practices. For the past few years, many in the security research community have found similar privilege escalation issues in drivers from a wide spectrum of hardware vendors. The most extensive research on driver security issues was carried out by security firm Eclypsium in its “Screwed Drivers” paper, presented at Black Hat 2019. The general conclusion of all previous work was that most drivers lack the most basic security coding practices and often expose the systems they’re installed —even something such as ATMs— to user privilege escalation attacks. As a result, researchers are now arguing that the community and vendors should do more to scour drivers for security bugs and have vulnerabilities patched before attackers realize that a computer’s driver installbase is such a fertile ground for privilege escalation possibilities. Right now, a few threat actors have already realized this. For example, security firm Sophos observed the RobbinHood ransomware gang deploying an older version of a Gigabyte driver on infected systems so it could exploit it to gain full control over infected hosts. As for this Dell bug, SentinelOne said it worked with Dell since December to make sure fixes are available. The company said it plans to release proof-of-concept code for CVE-2021-21551 on June 1. It recommended that system administrators and users apply the Dell DBUtil updates until then. However, the issues reported today were not new, at least to Dell. According to CrowdStrike security expert Alex Ionescu, this was the third time in two years that someone reported the same issue to the hardware vendor. It’s a shame that it eventually took 3 separate companies over the span of 2 years to keep reporting the same issue, but ultimately Dell users are now protected, which is the outcome that matters. Thanks to @rickmartinez06 for keeping the pressure on.— Alex Ionescu (@aionescu) May 4, 2021 Great write up @kasifdekel !
Department of Labor Watering Hole Attack Confirmed to be 0-Day with Possible Advanced Reconnaissance Capabilities Update 2 5/9/2013: Microsoft has released a “Microsoft fix it” as a temporary mitigation for this issue on systems which require IE8. At this time, multiple sites have been observed hosting pages which exploit this vulnerability. Users of IE8 who cannot update to IE9+ are urged to apply the Fix It immediately. An exploit for this bug is now publicly available within the metasploit framework. Users of the affected browser should consider updating to IE9+ or using a different browser until a patch is released. Given the nature of this vulnerability additional exploitation is likely. At the end of April a Watering Hole–style attack was launched from a United States Department of Labor website. Many are theorizing that this attack may have been an attempt to use one compromised organization to target another. Visitors to specific pages hosting nuclear-related content at the Department of Labor website were also receiving malicious content loaded from the domain dol.ns01.us. Initially it appeared that this attack used CVE-2012-4792 to compromise vulnerable machines; however, Microsoft is now confirming that this is indeed a new issue. This issue is being designated CVE-2013-1347 and is reported to affect all versions of Internet Explorer 8. The domain dol.ns01.us may look official, but in reality it belongs to a company named changeip.org. Changeip.org offers “Free Dynamic DNS” among other services. Essentially, a changeip.org customer pays for a base domain name, then if the third-level name is available, it’s included for free. Passive DNS shows that the first sighting of dol.ns01.us was April 30, 2013, and the name is associated with IP address 188.8.131.52. An nmap TCP connection scan of the IP indicates a Windows box, it is interesting that the MSRPC service is not being firewalled. MSRPC is a very rich attack surface on unpatched/unmaintained machines. It is possible that this could be a compromised machine. Reportedly a phone home server is located at microsoftUpdate.ns1.name, another changeip.org address. This was hosted on two different IP addresses previously: The payload itself is base64 encoded within a web page. This is sometimes used in an attempt to evade detection. On the victim machine the browser will automatically decode the payload and will be exploited while attempting to render the web page. Here is some of the decoded payload: AlienVault has reported that the web page hosting the exploit contained advanced reconnaissance techniques designed to gather information about the targeted systems which visited the page. This included antivirus and various browser plug-in information. This information will likely be used to facilitate and ensure the success of future attacks. Despite initial reports, CrowdStrike has not yet come to the conclusion that the command and control is related to DeepPanda. If it is, this could mean this is part of an advanced exploit kit. These techniques, combined with the attempts to bypass security devices by encoding the payload, make this one of the more technically interesting attacks so far this year.
Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') (CWE-79) A vulnerability in the web-based management interface of Cisco AsyncOS Software for Cisco Web Security Appliance (WSA) could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to conduct a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) attack against a user of the interface of an affected device. The vulnerability exists because the web-based management interface does not properly validate user-supplied input. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by inserting malicious data into a specific data field in an affected interface. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary script code in the context of the affected interface.
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This section goes into the details of how the managed Windows agent launcher actually works. Jenkins uses multiple protocols to install the actual agent as a Windows service and then start it. These protocols have been around for a quite some time. \|The installation process assumes that the JRE is installed and accessible on the agent. Please see Troubleshooting WMI Windows Agents if you need further help.\| It first uses CIFS (also known as "Windows file share protocol") to push files into the agent. When used by someone with administrative privileges, Windows file shares expose what’s commonly known as "administrative shares", which are hidden exported directories that cover every drive in the system.
RDP port 3389 continues to be a popular service abused by ransomware actors to gain initial access to systems located and connected to on-premises infrastructure. However, as more organizations move to cloud services for file storage and Active Directory systems, ransomware groups will look for more opportunities to develop and/or exploit vulnerabilities that have not yet been extensively exploited. The gradual evolution of current state-of-the-art ransomware models as we know them is expected to be fine-tuned to adapt to the triggers that drive them. From a business perspective, these are “naturally occurring” movements that encourage movement from the current state. In this section, we list two gradual evolutions of her that ransomware attackers are likely to undergo to adapt to upcoming triggers in the short term. For a complete list of evolutions and a discussion of each, you can download the paper here. Evolution 1: Targeted Endpoint Change – Internet of Things (IoT)/Linux The emergence of the Mirai botnet in 2016 was a crucial point in realizing its potential to extend its reach to Linux devices and the cloud. Although not ransomware, the availability of the botnet’s source code allows interested parties and skill sets to download the code, recompile it, infect Linux-based routers, and create their own bots. I was able to create a net. These correspond to his two points in this particular evolution. - It has code ready to target Linux based devices and can be easily recoded for other similar devices. - They are ready to use this feature as soon as there is a visible target with security gaps facing the internet. From these two points, ransomware groups can find new Linux-based targets or tweak current threats at hand to target new platforms such as cloud infrastructure, thus increasing their potential for development. urge. - Ransomware groups set their sights on regular Linux servers - Ransomware Group Begins Targeting Backup Servers - Ransomware Group Begins Targeting Other IoT Linux-Based Devices With the increasing use of Linux-based servers, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT) as another entry point, ransomware groups have realized an attack opportunity against these devices as endpoints. This could be a favorable shift for the following reasons: - They are powerful enough to support advanced features. - They are almost always connected to the internet. - They host large amounts of personal or other valuable information. - Often fragile and unsupported. Relatedly, reports of attacks and exploits against network-attached storage (NAS) devices are well-documented examples of this expansion, but it would be an understatement to think that threat groups will stop there. Evolution 2: Scale up through increased professionalism and automation As the RaaS group gained notoriety for the chaos and losses it caused to organizations and users, some ransomware actors were interviewing the media. Unbeknownst to them, the interviewee’s RaaS infrastructure had already been compromised and was being monitored by security researchers while these ransomware actors spoke to journalists. Many RaaS groups have websites on servers hidden by Tor, but security researchers and law enforcement have uncovered distinct web IP addresses for these attacks. This can mean that unencrypted data stored on these backend servers is an easy target for law enforcement. In contrast to these notorious players, other ransomware actors have better OpSec, no media involvement, minimal interaction with victims, and undocumented network intrusions. Hmm. Allowing these notorious ransomware attackers to follow the example of their lesser-known colleagues and work with a higher level of professionalism while keeping a low profile can extend the life of RaaS programs. Similarly, automating ransomware attacks not only reduces risk, but also enables gang scalability. Coordinated, manual attacks are more likely to succeed, but the more manual work, the higher the risk, because more people are required for the task. Aside from the risk of human error in criminal activity, there are also instances of disgruntled cybercriminals revealing the identities of other cybercriminals or leaking information about them on the internet. Automation then allows ransomware groups to calculate and weigh which channels bring in more revenue. Increasing automation can reduce revenue per ransomware victim, but can also increase total revenue as far as the volume of targeted deployments is concerned. Affiliates responsible for initial access and lateral movement can also achieve lower costs and faster operations as they are subsequently removed from the model through automation such as the use of large-scale exploits and worm-like features. Another possible alternative is to replace ransom negotiators with automated chatbots. For example, reduce communication between perpetrators and victims. As big game hunters realize the benefits of automation in terms of risks and rewards, they may become more drawn to implementing automation. A stack of small evolutions can lead to big changes between ransomware groups. Security researchers have moved from profit-oriented attacks to becoming part of the objectives of nation-state attackers, benefiting nations and their leaders, and using ransomware as a smokescreen for their real objectives. We have already documented some of the other RaaS groups may be driven by the evolution of cloud adoption, or by the evolution of exploits and vulnerabilities. Still others are driven by the promise of higher profits to further change their criminal business model. This section describes two of his revolutions that ransomware attackers are likely to employ in the long term. For a complete list of revolutions and their respective arguments, download Insights and Research here. Revolution 1: Hacking cryptocurrency exchanges/stealing cryptocurrencies
Most high-profile intrusions of the past decade haven’t been found due to intrusion detection sensors or complicated forensic tools. Instead, it was the malfunctioning code in the rootkits that made them crash the system with weird error messages. Most of you already know that the rootkit is the basic set of tools an intruder uses to keep control over a compromised system. Common features of a rootkit include: - Remote access - Ability to intercept data - Hiding modifications on the filesystem - Hiding processes - Hiding ‘magic’ users - Hiding remote access ports/connections. There are two types of rootkits, based on the way they interfere with user actions: userland and kernel land rootkits. The difference between them comes from the methods they use to hijack the operating system functions. Rootkits work by subverting the normal operations of the system, either by modifying files on the system with backdoor versions (userland rootkits) or hijacking the operating system function/handler pointers in memory to alter the normal behavior (kernel land rootkits) in order to keep SUPER USER rights. In order to be able to keep control over a compromised system, a userland rootkit has to modify or alter a binary file in some way, either by replacing the file, modifying parts of the file on disk or modifying parts of the process memory space. Such modifications are, however, easily spotted by a trained admin eye because userland rootkits provide a poor means of disguising the presence of the attacker and his tools, a poor means of hiding the remote connection, not many options to survive reboot, etc. On the other hand, kernel land rootkits need to interfere with binaries only during the booting phase, to make sure they are loaded during the system initialization procedure. Also, they provide an incredible means of hiding an attacker’s presence inside a computer system, by manipulating the most low-level routines of the operating system. Also, they make remote access really easy for the attacker, with little to no warnings to the administrator. They are very hard to detect by rootkit detection tools. However, the complexity of code may result in unexpected behavior. So how do anti-rootkit tools work? They are founded on the principle that the rootkit needs to make certain changes to an operating system in order to work. User land rootkits will alter files on disk, timestamps, file sizes, the directory structure, etc. Kernel land rootkits alter system calls and functions, most of them focusing on the syscall table. Any type of rootkit will add files to the file system; maybe start new processes or new remote connections. For instance, the fact that rootkits keep the same file structure for their own files makes them easily spotted by traditional anti rootkit tools such chkrootkit or rkhunter because these tools use the directory and file structure of rootkits to generate signatures of malware presence (Figures 1-5). They parse certain system directories looking for files known to be the part of malware, so when such a suspected file is found, the user is alerted. However, as you can easily see, newer or slightly modified versions of rootkits go undetected by traditional signature scanning methods. Therefore, there is a need for a periodically updated database with the latest rootkit signatures and even then, there is no guarantee that a rootkit did not evade the signature scan. The new technology has been developed in order to avoid relying on signatures or known-to-be-sane system fingerprints to scan for. Instead, it uses live system information it gathers to be able to heuristically determine signs of rootkit activity. Furthermore, we are able to uniquely pinpoint the rootkit code, thus being able to analyze it and determine its exact functionalities, and also extract a unique signature specific to the typology of the rootkit that can be used to speed up further scans, and also, to heuristically determine new or slightly modified versions of the rootkit. So, how do newer rootkits get detected using traditional means? Well, they don’t. Instead, rootkits make visible changes to the operating system, sometimes resulting in system crashes and weird error messages, mostly due to insufficiently tested code. For example, Phalanx tries to disguise itself as Xnest to access /dev/mem without checking if there is Xnest on the system. An admin would be irritated seeing a message such as “Program Xnest tried to access /dev/mem between 0->8000000” when he doesn’t even have Xnest running. And other kernel rootkits have their own distinctive flaws. So basically, rootkits are found because they hijack predictable places, mostly aiming at the syscall table, Interrupt Descriptor Table or hijacking filesystem operations. Most modern anti-rootkit detection tools check all these places for inconsistencies with the values previously gathered in their database making visible such a modification. The major flaw of this approach is that if the system is already compromised, or if the attacker has access to the stored fingerprint, or fingerprint update mechanism, they can easily go unnoticed. Another problem of a rootkit is that they usually tend to employ as many functionalities as possible. This leads to complex code which is a very dangerous bet, especially in Kernel land as it increases the number of possible points of failure. Also, most rootkits don’t get a consistent grasp of the specifics of the system they run on. Another major problem of a rootkit is the remote access, because an alert admin could easily spot unknown traffic going to suspicious ports, especially if it’s encrypted or encapsulated. Eavesdropping the connection can provide important information about the intruder. But as we have realized, current Unix anti-rootkit tools provide little to no accuracy in detection of rootkits, the impossibility to clean the system from a rootkit infection or the ability to analyze the malware. It looks like anti-rootkit tools have to step the notch up a bit and raise the bar a little higher for rootkit programmers, so that they come up with better and newer detection mechanisms instead of relying on known fingerprints or signatures, as these can easily be evaded or forged. AB Consultancy Software SRL Is a newly merged computer security company located in Bucharest, Romania whose main area of activity is penetration testing and forensics examination. Our experts have over 20 years of international experience in the field of computer security research, both offensive and defensive security, ranging from malware and antimalware research, software audit, exploit development or cryptology. Our customers range from government, military and financial industries, both based in Romania and abroad.
\|Check Point Reference:\|\|CPAI-2017-1060\| \|Date Published:\|\|7 Dec 2017\| \|Last Updated:\|\|18 Dec 2017\| \|Protection Provided by:\|\| \|Who is Vulnerable?\| \|Vulnerability Description\|\|Mailsploit is a collection of bugs in email clients that allow effective sender spoofing and code injection attacks. The spoofing is not detected by Mail Transfer Agents (MTA), leading to a remote attack gaining arbitrary code execution on the affected system.\| This protection detects attempts to exploit this vulnerability. In order for the protection to be activated, update your Security Gateway product to the latest IPS update.For information on how to update IPS, go to SBP-2006-05, click on Protection tab and select the version of your choice. This protection's log will contain the following information: Attack Name: SMTP Protection Violation. Attack Information: Mailsploit Unsanitized Sender Remote Code Execution
When our security analysts discovered suspicious traffic patterns in one of our networks, they took a closer look. Had this customer not have had the protection through us that they do, the outcome could have been much worse. In early September 2019, our security analysts discovered suspicious traffic patterns in one of our customers networks. On closer examination, unencrypted web traffic was observed against an external IP with a negative reputation, where one of the customer’s PCs downloaded both exe files and an abnormal amount of text documents. By putting this into a larger context and expanding the search area for the surveys, deviations from normal usage patterns around mail traffic from the internal PC emerged. You can read more about this hacker campaign in Checkpoint´s research paper published October 16th 2019. With these findings, our team of security analysts initiated further investigations to identify what had happened. By examining customer logs in our SIEM tool, our analysts were able to quickly determine that this was a machine that was a member of a bot network. A further spread within the customer’s system could not be detected. Based on threat information and own surveys, the analysts found that the text files that were downloaded were full of account details that most likely originated from known email and password leaks on the Internet. Further investigations revealed that the infected PC had an abnormally high number of DNS requests, as well as a very high number of connections to external mail servers. The team formed a suspicion that this was a “sextortion” campaign, where one of the customer’s PCs was used as a tool to send out blackmail emails to thousands of email addresses. See example of a extortion email below: Our Security Operation Center classified this as a risk of reputational and financial loss. The case was thus notified to the customer and the analysts assisted them with action points to rectify the situation and take future security measures. Over 90% of leaders are not prepared to deal with a cyber-attack, but attacks occur regularly. This time around our security analysts were able to detect abnormal traffic at an early stage before others knew about the hacker campaign. This illustrates the importance of having good analysts, who can keep track of the traffic. It is not enough to have a firewall or antivirus if no one has an overview of the situation, or the ability to interpret what emerges.
Cisco has issued software updates for a large number of enterprise devices, after security researchers discovered easily exploitable vulnerabilties in them that allows remote code execution, denial of service attacks and network segmentation traversal. Security researchers Armis homed in on the Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP), which is used to keep track on which devices are connected to certain local area networks (LANs). CDP is Cisco's variant of the standard Link Layer Discover Protocol (LLDP). It is enabled by default in almost all Cisco devices, which send regular broadcast packets that are parsed and stored by network switches. Armis found [pdf] that it was possible to exploit several trivial coding flaws in the discovery protocol implementations to create attack packets that trigger crashes and memory corruption in Cisco devices. An attacker would have to be on the same Layer 2 network broadcast domain as the vulnerabile device to exploit the flaws which Armis dubbed CDPwn. If that's possible, an attacker could exploit CDP flaws for remote code execution, fully compromise and control devices, man in the middle interception and denial of service attacks, Armis discovered. Exploiting the CDPwn flaws also allows traversal between virtual LAN segments, the security vendor said. Cisco has rated the bugs as high impact. They affect a large number of devices, including the Cisco FXOS, IOS XR and NX-OS software that runs on the company's enterprise routers and switches. On Cisco IOS XR, CDP is disabled by default; however, it is enabled by default on Cisco FXOS and NX-OS both globally and on all network interfaces. On Cisco IP phones CDPwn can be exploited for remote code execution, ditto on the Video Surveillance 8000 Series IP cameras which can also be crashed by the flaw. Armis hinted that there could be further vulnerabilities lurking in discovery protocols. "In addition to the discovered vulnerabilities, it seems the attack surface of Layer 2 protocols, used by network appliances is significant and largely unexplored. These protocols are in use by a wide array of devices, and are enabled by default in the majority of them," the researchers wrote.
The Qualys vulnerability signatures team has released a new series of signatures (detections) for EulerOS, allowing security teams to identify EulerOS hosts and detect their vulnerabilities. EulerOS is a Linux distribution developed by Huawei Technologies and widely adopted by customers in Asia, specifically China. It is based on CentOS source code for enterprise applications and integrates with advanced Linux technologies meeting the requirements of Linux OS for these applications. The newly released set of 58 signatures (QIDs) covers the most recent 2020 EulerOS advisories. Qualys plans to release another 87 QIDs covering the rest of the 2020 advisories later this quarter, followed by QIDs for previous years’ advisories in the coming months. Security teams should use Qualys Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response (VMDR) to discover, assess, prioritize, and patch critical vulnerabilities in real time, including for EulerOS, as part of your security and compliance programs. Identify EulerOS Assets & Vulnerabilities Qualys VMDR enables easy identification of EulerOS systems: Once the hosts are identified, they can be grouped together with a ‘dynamic tag’, let’s say – “EulerOS”. This helps in automatically grouping existing EulerOS hosts as well as any new host that spins up in your environment. Tagging makes these grouped assets available for querying, reporting and management throughout the Qualys Cloud Platform. In order to identify EulerOS hosts and detect their vulnerabilities, Qualys recommends running an authenticated scan using a Qualys scanner. EulerOS QIDs are included in signature version VULNSIGS-2.4.964-1 and above. Customers can search for all EulerOS vulnerabilities using the following QQL query : Using VMDR, the EulerOS vulnerabilities can also be prioritized in your environment: Configure Unix Authentication Record Authenticated scanning should be configured via a standard Unix auth record, which is similar to auth records for other Linux OSes, like Redhat, Ubuntu, and others. As seen below, simply go to : Scans -> Authentication -> New > Unix Record. Enter the Unix login credentials (user name, password) that the Qualys service should use to log in to Unix hosts at scan time. Target Type is “Auto” for Linux OS distributions. Online help is always available to assist you. Scan EulerOS Hosts Scanning for EulerOS vulnerabilities does not require root privileges; however, the account must be able to perform following commands: 1) execute “uname” to detect the platform for packages, 2) read “/etc/os-release” and “/etc/system-release-cpe”, and execute “rpm” commands Scan reports identify EulerOS as: Qualys VMDR automatically detects new EulerOS vulnerabilities as their associated detections (QIDs) are added to the KnowledgeBase. As with all detections, EulerOS QIDs contain recommended steps to address the vulnerability.
Good News for organized crime, and other criminal, system attackers: Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) has coughed up another furball of coding incompetence (aka CVE-2019-0708): Microsoft’s Security Response Center’s Director of Incident Response – Simon Pope, has announced a newly discovered ‘wormable‘ exploit (a pre-user-authentication) attack, that is). More good work from the company helmed by Satya ‘The Miracle Worker’ Nadella (who, in reality is a superb leader of the Leviathan of Redmond (so ignore my gentle snark – if you are a fan). Today’s Must Read. “Today Microsoft released fixes for a critical Remote Code Execution vulnerability, CVE-2019-0708, in Remote Desktop Services – formerly known as Terminal Services – that affects some older versions of Windows. The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) itself is not vulnerable. This vulnerability is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction. In other words, the vulnerability is ‘wormable’, meaning that any future malware that exploits this vulnerability could propagate from vulnerable computer to vulnerable computer in a similar way as the WannaCry malware spread across the globe in 2017. While we have observed no exploitation of this vulnerability, it is highly likely that malicious actors will write an exploit for this vulnerability and incorporate it into their malware.” – via Microsoft Corporation’s MSRC Director of Incident Response – Simon Pope *** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Infosecurity.US authored by Marc Handelman. Read the original post at: https://www.infosecurity.us/blog/2019/5/14/fan-mail-from-a-flounder-newly-discovered-wormable-exploit-on-microsoft-garbage-code-ostesibly-at-wannacry-levels
IBM Security scientists have found a new kind of malware focusing on on the internet banking end users in Brazil. Dubbed Vizom, the malware disguises by itself as preferred video conferencing software package and uses convincing remote overlays to consider in excess of user units in serious-time. Investigation displays that hackers are providing the malware through spam-based phishing email strategies. According to IBM Security researchers Chen Nahman, Ofir Ozer and Limor Kessem, the new malware also takes advantage of remote overlay tactics and DLL hijacking to evade detection. After embedded on a compromised Personal computer, Vizom sorts an an infection chain by way of dynamic link library (DLL) hijacking – it pressure-hundreds destructive DLLs by naming its Delphi-primarily based variants with unsuspecting file names observed in directories of genuine videoconferencing software. In Brazil’s case, the DLL is Cmmlib.dll, a file connected with Zoom. What comes about next is stealthy and treacherous. Through an ongoing online transaction, the malware connects remotely to the compromised Computer system. It produces powerful and plausible HTML overlays and hundreds them in the Vivaldi internet browser in application mode. It then launches a keylogger that logs the user’s every single keystroke when accessing their bank account. The malware then ships the acquired details to the attacker’s command-and-regulate (C2) server. Vizom can also abuse Windows API functions, simulate mouse clicks and get screenshots. There are no reviews of hijacking in the US, but attacks have been observed throughout South America and Europe. Some parts of this posting are sourced from:
\|Title:\|\|Security notice: Blackshades malware Update\| \|Description:\|\|This notification is an alert about malware known as "Blackshades," which is being used by hackers to remotely access personal computers and monitor users for extortion purposes.Â The malware can be used to turn on a computer's webcam, listen through its microphone and steal information. \| To prevent against this threat, all members of the Queen's community should take the following recommended actions: - Always make sure your computer is fully patched and all software is up to date. - Regularly run virus and malware scans. - Make sure you are using strong passwords, and never reuse the same password for multiple accounts. - Do not open email or attachments from unknown sources.Â You can find information on how to tell if your computer is infected on the FBI website: http://1.usa.gov/1h8YgL2 For more information, see this news story: \|Publish Date:\|\|May 23, 2014, 1:39 PM\| \|Contact:\|\|ITServices Support Centre\|
Multiple vulnerabilities in NConf version 1.3 could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks. The vulnerabilities are in the handle_item.php script due to insufficient sanitization of user-supplied input. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities by convincing a user to follow a malicious URI with a crafted item parameter. If successful, the attacker could execute SQL queries or arbitrary script code in the user's browser session. This could allow the attacker to access sensitive information. Proof-of-concept code that exploits these vulnerabilities is publicly available. Administrators are advised to implement an intrusion prevention system (IPS) or intrusion detection system (IDS) to help detect and prevent attacks that attempt to exploit these vulnerabilities. For additional information about cross-site scripting attacks and the methods used to exploit these vulnerabilities, see the Cisco Applied Mitigation Bulletin Understanding Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Threat Vectors Vendor has not confirmed the vulnerabilities and software updates are not available.
Since the first emerging in the 1990s [solar-rop], code reuse attack has become a big threat to software and system security, especially after code injection has been defeated by hardware features, including NX/SMEP/SMAP on x86 and XN/PXN/PAN on ARM. Specifically, after hijacking the control flow through memory corruption, attackers could chain existing code snippets (called code gadgets) together to perform malicious operations. This is called return-oriented programming (ROP in short) [ROP, ROPRISC]. Previous studies showed that given a large codebase (such as Linux kernel or libc), ROP has been shown to be Turing complete [roemer2012return], making it a powerful attack. To defend against the ROP attack, multiple solutions have been proposed, which are roughly falling into two categories. The first category includes systems to make attackers hard to obtain necessary information to launch the attack, either by randomizing memory layout [aslr, aslr1, Oxymoron, wartell2012binary], or reducing the number of available gadgets [GFREE]. However, address randomization has been proven to be ineffective [aslrattack1, aslrattackT1], since the address information could be leaked or inferred. Moreover, the large codebase makes it impossible to totally eliminate code gadgets. The second category includes systems to protect the integrity of control flow (CFI in short) [CFI, zhang2013practical, zhang2013control]. Though CFI is a promising technique, its effectiveness has been weakened [CFB] due to the inaccurate control flow graph and the practical strategy to trade security for performance. In recent years, hardware-assisted control flow enforcement [mashtizadeh2015ccfi, mohan2015opaque] has drawn much attention. These systems mainly borrow hardware features that were designed for other purposes. Nowadays, vendors have directly embedded security features for CFI in modern CPUs. For instance, ARM introduced Pointer Authentication (PA) in ARMv8.3 [arm-pa]. Specifically, it reuses unused bits in the virtual address of the ARM64 architecture to calculates and embed an authentication code for the pointer, thus the name Pointer Authentication Code (PAC). When the pointer is de-referenced, the embedded authentication code could be used to verify its validity by the hardware. To facilitate its use, multiple instructions are added. Since its debut, PA has been considered as a promising defense due to its powerful security guarantees and efficient pointer value verification [qualcomm-ret-addr]. However, to leverage this feature, programmers need to change and recompile their programs to use the new instructions. Though a couple of papers are adopting PA to protect code and data pointers in user programs [hans2019pac, HANSCALLSTACK, HANSCANARY], there is no open implementations that leverage PA to protect privileged software, i.e., OS kernel 111We are aware that Apple has adopted PA in its latest version of iOS XNU kernel. However, its implementation details are unknown.. Due to the differences between OS and user programs (for instance, while user programs could assume that the underlying kernel is trusted to provide cryptography keys to generate the authentication code, OS kernels cannot make such an assumption), how to effectively use PA to protect OS kernel is still an open research question. Our work In this paper, we shed lights on how to leverage PA to protect control flows of OS kernels, and present the first design and implementation of such a system. Specifically, we propose PACKER, which is short for Pointer AuthentiCation for KERnels, protects both function pointers and return addresses in Linux kernel, thus providing both forward- and backward-edge control flow integrity. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first open implementation of applying PA to Linux kernel. In order to leverage PA to provide complete protection of function pointers, PACKER needs to append the authentication code to the value of a function pointer 222In this paper, if not specified, we use “function pointer” to denote its value, i.e., the jump target., track the propagation of function pointers, and verify its validity when loading its value from memory or branching to the jump target. Specifically, PACKER calculates an authentication code (PAC) for each function pointer (we call the function pointer with an authentication code as a PACed pointer) before it is written into memory. The PAC is computed using the combination of a hardware cryptography key, the function pointer value, and a context. Then PACKER tracks the propagation of the function pointer with the help of the LLVM compiler. When a PACed pointer is loaded from the memory, PACKER verifies the value to ensure that it has not been modified (attackers have arbitrary memory write capability). However, the previous step is not enough since an attacker could directly jump before the instruction that dereferences a function pointer (the blr instruction for instance). In this case, PACKER verifies the jump target in indirect branch instructions before jumping to it. When calculating the authentication code, unlike the previous work that leverages the function type as a context [hans2019pac], PACKER takes the address of a function pointer as its context. That’s because for each function pointer, the function type is not unique. Attackers could obtain the PACed function pointer and reuse it for another function pointer. This is called pointer substitution attack. By using the unique address of a function pointer as its context, PACKER is immune to this attack. However, the challenge is the location of de-referencing a function pointer may be far from the location where it is loaded, thus we need to propagate the address of a function pointer between procedures. PACKER takes a clean design to piggyback the pointer address into the pointer value (Figure 4) to solve this problem. To protect return addresses, PACKER will generate the PAC for a return address before saving it to the stack and check the PAC after loading it from the stack. The stack pointer is used as the context, so that the signed return addresses cannot be replayed across different stack frames. As a result, the return address corruption and return address replay attacks will be defeated by PACKER. Moreover, different from existing works, PACKER uses a single instruction to authenticate the loading return address and return it atomically, which defeats the time of check to time of use attacks. We have implemented a prototype system with LLVM and applied it to Linux kernel v5.0.1. Specifically, we developed LLVM passes to identify function pointers, add authentication code, propagate and verify function pointers by emitting new machine instructions into the binary. To apply PACKER to Linux kernel, we also modified the kernel to patch the statically initialized function pointers, and solved multiple practical issues, including function pointer comparison, function pointer arithmetic operations and function pointers inside a union. The security analysis shows that PACKER can protect all the function pointers and return addresses in Linux kernel, with a performance overhead between % to , using the micro benchmark of system calls. This paper has the following contributions: We propose the first design of using the ARM pointer authentication to protect control flow transfers of Linux kernels. Our design protects all function pointers and return addresses in Linux kernel, thus providing both forward-edge and backward-edge control flow integrity. To implement PACKER, we have proposed a series of new techniques to solve technical challenges. In particular, we proposed address-base authentication code generation to defend against pointer substitution attacks, and pointer address piggyback to propagate function pointer address. We also proposed methods to identify function pointers, and verify them when loading, storing their values, and branching into targets. We have implemented a prototype of PACKER based on the latest Clang/LLVM and applied it to protect the latest version of the Linux kernel. PACKER successfully protects 100% of indirect call sites and return addresses. The organization of this paper is as follows: background knowledge is given in section II. section III discusses the threat model and assumptions. PACKER design is presented in detail in IV. We discuss the implementation details in section V and evaluate both the security and performance of PACKER in section VI. We compare PACKER with related works in section VII. Finally, we conclude the whole paper in section VIII. In this section, we give preliminary background knowledge of the techniques used by this paper, including pointer authentication and ROP/JOP attacks. Ii-a ARMv8.3 Pointer Authentication ARM has introduced a new hardware security feature in ARMv8.3, named Pointer Authentication (PA) [ARM_PA], to protect integrity of pointers saved in memory. The basic idea of PA is to compute a cryptographic keyed hash, trunk the hash and embed it into the unused bits in the pointer. The functionality of the cryptographic keyed hash is the same to message authentication code (MAC), therefore it is termed as Pointer Authentication Code (PAC). Figure 1 depicts the format of a PACed pointer on ARM64. VA_BIT represents the size of the virtual address space, which is usually 39 or 48 bits. The other bits of a pointer are not used for address translation, therefore can be used to hold the PAC. Note that the top 8 bits are occupied by memory tag if the ARM memory tag extension (MTE) [ARM_MTE] is enabled. Therefore, depending on the configuration, the PAC size can be 7 or 15 bits. ARMv8.3 PA uses QARMA block cipher algorithm [avanzi2017qarma] for PAC generation: PAC = QARMA(key, pointer, context). QARMA takes a 64-bit pointer with a 64-bit context as inputs and outputs a 64-bit cipher block. QARMA uses 128-bit key, which is kept in dedicated registers. ARMv8.3 PA provides five key registers, out of which, APIAKey and APIBKey are designed for encrypting code pointers; APDAKey and APDBKey are designed for encrypting data pointers; and APGAKey can be used for general purpose. The output cipher is then truncated to a suitable size and embedded into the PAC field showed in Figure1. ARMv8.3 also provides a new set of instructions for PA support. pac* instruction are designed for generating and embedding the PAC. For example, pacia x0, x1 accepts x0 as the pointer and x1 as the context, generates the PAC using APIAKey, and embeds the PAC into x0. Correspondingly, aut* instructions are designed for PAC authentication. For example, autia x0, x1 will verify the PAC embedded in x0 by using APIAKey and x1 as the context, if x0 has a valid PAC, x0 will be changed into a normal pointer, otherwise its top bits will be flipped and an address translation error will be triggered upon de-referencing the pointer. Some instructions are designed for specific usages, such as paciasp generates the PAC using x30 as the pointer and stack pointer sp as the context by default. Similarly, autiasp authenticates the PAC using x30 as the pointer and stack pointer sp as the context. Besides the basic PAC generation and authentication instructions, ARMv8.3 PA also provides PA combined instructions. For example, function pointer branch (call) operation is usually done by blr instruction, which branches to the function pointer and updates the link register with the correct return address. PA now provides blraa, which authenticates the function pointer first before branching to function pointer. Similarly, for the function return, PA provides retaa, which authenticates the return address before returning to it. Guarded by pointer authentication, even though the attacker can corrupt function pointers with memory corruption vulnerabilities, the corrupted function pointer cannot pass the authentication without the knowledge of the key. Therefore, ARMv8.3 PA can be a cornerstone for designing new control flow protection schemes. However, due to the limited number of key registers, PA is vulnerable to pointer substitution attacks if the context is not selected properly. Existing works [hans2019pac] propose to use function types as the context, which still allows the same type function pointer substitution attacks. Ii-B ROP and JOP Attacks Software memory corruption bugs have existed for more than 30 years [Song13oakland], during which lots of attacks and defenses mechanisms have been proposed. In early years, attackers would inject assembly codes (called shellcode) into the application memory and then jump to the injected instructions. However, since Data Execution Prevention (DEP) has been proposed, the WX has been supported by almost all mainstream architectures, and injection code in the writable memory area became impossible. With code injection being defeated, attackers cannot inject new code, begin to reuse existing code to construct new attack functions. This kind of attack is termed as code reuse attacks. To launch a code reuse attack, the attacker first hijacks the program’s control flow to execute deliberately selected assembly instruction snippets, called gadgets. Gadgets can be chained together to construct new functions for malicious ends. Depending on the control data that the attacker hijacks, code reuse attacks can be divided into two categories: return-oriented programming (ROP) and jump-oriented programming (JOP). In return-oriented programming (ROP) attacks, the attacker controls the call stack through vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflows, then by injecting the gadgets’ addresses as the return addresses, the control flow of the program is redirected to the gadgets. In ROP, each gadget ends with a return instruction ret, and that is why it is called return-oriented programming. To defend against ROP attacks, security researchers proposed address space layout randomization (ASLR), which randomizes the address of code, stack, and heap, making it hard to predict the code gadgets’ addresses and the buffer overflowed address. However, ASLR is vulnerable to address leaks [belleville2019kald]. Its design cannot solve the return address corruption problem fundamentally. JOP attack, on the other hand, overwrites the function pointers. When the program calls the corrupted function pointer via instructions like blr or br, the program’s control flow is hijacked by attackers. Gadgets in JOP end with a jump instruction, such as blr or br on ARM and jmp on x86, hence gains the name of jump-oriented programming. To defend against the JOP attack, researchers proposed control-flow integrity. The main idea is to check the function pointers jumping targets according to the Control Flow Graph (CFG) or function pointer type so that only the targets are in the CFG or jump targets are the same type with the function pointer, then the jump is allowed. Iii Threat Model and Assumptions Iii-a Threat Model The attacker in our paper is powerful with arbitrary kernel memory read and write capability. However, the attacker cannot change existing kernel code or inject new code to the kernel. This is reasonable as WX is supported by all mainstream CPU architectures. Moreover, new isolation based designs [azab2014hypervision, azab2016skee] use trust execution environments, such as TrustZone [arm-tz], to protect the kernel code against different kinds of kernel vulnerabilities. Even though the attacker gains arbitrary kernel memory read and write capability via kernel vulnerabilities [zhang2019pex], he/she still cannot read or write the registers directly, such as the PA key registers. However, the attacker is able to read and write the register contents that are saved to the kernel memory. With the arbitrary kernel memory read and write capability, the attacker tries his/her best to change the control data, such as function pointers or return addresses, to gain code execution capability in kernel space. The attacker can corrupt the function pointers in the kernel data section, stack, and heap or the return addresses on the kernel stack. The attacker may also try to guess the PAC value or launch pointer substitution attacks to replace the original pointer value with the interested PACed pointer values. We assume that the kernel boot-up process is trusted. This is a valid assumption as the bootloader can verify the cryptographic hash of the kernel binary easily when loading kernel image to memory. The boot time verification guarantees the integrity of the kernel image, as well as the trustworthiness of the kernel boot-up. After the kernel fully boots up, allowing system calls, that is when the vulnerabilities can be triggered, and the kernel can be attacked. We further assume the random number generation in the kernel is trusted so that the generated random number has the expected random entropy. As a result, the attacker cannot guess the PA key easily. Finally, we assume that the hardware works as defined by the ARM specification, especially for the Pointer Authentication related hardware. Iv PACKER Design As mentioned in section II-A, due to the limited number of key registers, ARMv8.3 PA is vulnerable to pointer substitution attacks. For example, even though the attacker does not have the key, it can trigger vulnerabilities to leak a PACed code pointer, and substitute the attacking pointer with this leaked code pointer. The leaked code pointer already has a valid PAC, thus can pass the PA authentication. In this way, the attacker can still launch JOP attacks, in which the function pointers become the replayed PACed function pointers. Existing works [hans2019pac] proposed to use function type as the context when generating PAC, which achieves the same protection with the fine-grained CFI [tice2014enforcing] that only allows a function pointer to jump to a set of functions with the same function signature at runtime [qualcomm-ret-addr]. Pointer substitution attacks still exist for the code pointer with the same type (function signature). To defeat pointer substitution attacks, PACKER proposes address-based PAC, in which the virtual address of a function pointer variable is used as its context when computing the PAC. Therefore, we have PAC = QARMA(key, pointer, address), where the key the 128-bit encryption key, the pointer is the function pointer value while address is the virtual address of the function pointer variable. The basic idea behind address-based PAC is that all function pointers in kernel memory are within the same address space, therefore all of them have different virtual addresses. To defend against pointer substitution attacks, PACKER leverages the unique virtual address to generate unique pointer PAC, so that one PAC is bonded to one particular address, cannot be replayed to other addresses. Overall, PACKER consists of two stages: compiling stage and run-time stage, as shown in Figure 2. During the compiling stage, PACKER relies on Clang to compile kernel source code to LLVM IR. Then on the kernel IR, PACKER first analyses global variables and all data structures inside a module, and then identifies function pointers inside the module section IV-C. After that, with the identified function pointer information, PACKER instruments the IR and the backend instructions that involve the function pointer store, load and branch operations section IV-D. Finally, for the return address, PACKER inserts PAC generation code in the function prologue, as well as the PAC checking code in the function epilogue section IV-E. After the compiling stage, a PA-instrumented vmlinux binary is generated. During the runtime stage, especially the kernel boot-up process, PACKER first configures the registers and initializes the PA keys section IV-F. Then PACKER generates PAC for the statically initialized function pointers and dynamically function pointer assignments that happen before PA initialization section IV-G. After that, PACKER functionality is complete, it protects all code pointers inside kernel memory, including function pointers and return addresses. Iv-B Function Pointer Address Propagation Pointers with PAC should be authenticated at both the function pointer load (loading a function pointer from memory to a register) and the function pointer branch (jumping to a function pointer). In address-based PAC, authenticating at load site is straightforward as the pointer’s address and value can obtain easily from the load instruction. However, for PAC authentication at branch (call) site, deciding the address of a function pointer becomes much harder. If the function pointer call is within the same function as the pointer loading, we can get the function pointer address by going through the use-def chain of the function pointer. However, in kernel, the gap between the loading and branching can be inter-procedure. For example, the kernel has hundreds of places that load a function pointer and pass its value as a parameter to a callee function, while the actual function pointer branch is in the callee function, as shown in __async_schedule in Figure 3 and do_dentry_open function in Figure 6(a). In those cases, it is impossible to specify the function pointer address at the callee site. One native solution can be changing the callee function by adding the address as an additional parameter. However, changing hundreds of calling functions is not practical. In order to address the function pointer address propagation problem, we propose pointer-address piggyback. The basic idea is to piggyback the address on the function pointer, so that the function pointer always carries its address. As a result, we can always get the function pointer’s address whenever we use the function pointer. To achieve pointer-address piggyback, we encode the function pointer value so that the encoded function pointer contains the point-to value, the PAC, and the address, as shown in Figure 4. Our key observation is that for kernel with defconf configuration, the total number of address-taken functions is less than 10k, which can be encoded by 14 bits (). Therefore, we can use 14 bits to index a function pointer value (the point-to address). PAC needs 7 bits, giving us 43 bits for encoding the address, as shown in Figure 4. As ARM/ARM64 are word (4 bytes) aligned, which means the 43 bits can be used to index 45 bits of virtual memory. Iv-C Identifying Function Pointers To locate instructions to be instrumented, identifying function pointers among all the variables inside a module is required to be precise. Any mistaken instrumentation causes unexpected behaviors or even kernel panic. Note that only relying on function pointer type can hardly cover all of the function pointers, as some function pointers are typed as void* or worse, 64-bit integer. Only when we combine program semantics on these variables, e.g., they become targets of indirect calls or they are assigned with function pointers, can we identify them as function pointers. We have also found that some fields inside a struct type are not function pointer type but contain function pointers, as shown in Figure 5. Recording these fields can help us to discover more corner cases. Following these insights, we have developed an intra-procedure and field-sensitive analysis method to precisely identify all the function pointers based on LLVM IR, whose details are given in Algorithm 1. Note that function pointer identification is totally different from function pointer alias (point-to) analysis. PACKER only requires to distinguish function pointers among all variables, while the later one tries to determine the point-to set of a function pointer. Before diving into the details, we need to clarify the terms. M denotes a module, F denotes a function and I denotes an instruction. Set S in AnalyzeModule contains all the identified function pointers by our algorithm. We use function pointer field to denote a field that contains a function pointer inside a struct. STI stores all function pointer fields to support our analysis. Iv-C1 Global Information Collection The first step is to analyze data structure and statically initialized global variables, whose results can serve as basic information for subsequent function pointer identification and function pointer patching during kernel’s early boot section IV-G. In AnalyzeGlobalFP at creftype 2, we first walk through the initialization list of all global variables. The set of global variables which are initialized by function names are used to initialize S, including those laying inside a struct. If they are part of a struct, the struct as well as their fields inside the struct are also stored into the set . The set enables us to pick out initial function pointer fields: if a field with its struct type in set , or if it is of function pointer type, it will be stored to STI. This step is done at creftype 3. Each record of a function pointer field consists the type name of a struct and a sequence of indices to reach this field. These struct names and indices can be duplicated because a struct can be nested in kernel, such as task_struct. We organize STI by a directed acyclic graph so that we can store all function pointer fields with faster query speed and less memory overhead. A node in the graph represents a struct type that contains a function pointer field, or just a basic type which may contain function pointers if it has no successor. An edge from node A to B indicates type B is included in type A. By analyzing module global information, we get initialized S and STI, which hold basic information for analysis on each function. After finishing analysis on a function, S and STI are also updated by the analysis results. We analyse each function inside the module in one iteration and our algorithm will iterate continuously until S no further changes. Iv-C2 Per-Function Pointer Identification As described from creftype 14 to creftype 18, rather than considering conditional or loop relationships among basic blocks, we linearly walk through each instruction inside a function because they do not affect the analysis result. More specifically, we focus on type information and its propagation across values, taking a loop just once or multiple times makes no difference on our analysis. For each IR instruction, all its operands that can be identified as function pointers by global information are first added to S, i.e., we check for each operand if it is of function pointer type, or comes from a function pointer field. Then a propagation rule based on the kind of the IR instruction, namely the transfer function of the IR, is enforced to decide whether the rest operands and the instruction output should be added to S. So far we have implemented transfer functions for seven kinds of IR instructions: bitcast, icmp, phinode, store, load, getelementptr and call, the details of which are further revealed in section V-B. Note that our algorithm iterates twice—-first in forward and then in backward directions inside a function as indicated at creftype 16 and creftype 21. We do not simply iterate only once since an indirect call instruction does not propagate function-pointer attribute but generates the attribute for the called pointer. The function pointer operand added to set S by an indirect call cannot propagate to the operands in the previously visited instructions. Therefore, we add an extra backward iteration to fully propagate function-pointer attribute. Intuitively, set S will become stable after the two rounds as no more function pointer attribute is generated during the second iteration—-it just propagates along the instructions. Our pointer identification algorithm is able to precisely identify most of function pointers inside the kernel, can eventually achieve 100% after handling the corner cases in kernel. These corner cases and our measures will be later detailed in section V-D. Generally, the precision of our algorithm comes mainly from three aspects: Exclusiveness of function pointers: we assume a function pointer is exclusive, i.e., it should always point to executable code after initialization and should not contain data of any other types at any time. In fact, this rule works in most times because mix use of function pointers and other data in one variable could be dangerous. For example, a variable that contains a data pointer could be called in this case, which leads to arbitrary code execution. The exclusiveness has made our analysis more precise because in our algorithm, a variable must or must not be a function pointer, rather than may be. Semantic awareness: Rather than depending only on type information, PACKER also utilizes program semantics to identify function pointers. Based on the semantics of the seven kinds of instructions we have modeled, PACKER are capable of identifying more function pointers. Field sensitivity: PACKER takes advantage of field-sensitive analysis to achieve higher precision. Figure 5 gives us a code snippet in kernel. At line 13, both bdev->bd_holder and holder are of void* type and they are neither called or assigned with function pointers within blkdev_get. Consequently, an algorithm with only semantic awareness will not identify them as function pointers. However, PACKER records all the function pointer fields to assist function pointer identification. Note that the same field bd_holder in block_device has been assigned a function bd_may_claim. So PACKER considers this field as a function pointer field and records it in STI. When PACKER encounters the same field inside bdev->bd_holder, it immediately identifies the variable as a function pointer. Then, holder is also identified as a function pointer from semantics of the assignment. The precision of our algorithm ensures that instrumentation instructions are inserted into correct locations. Inserted instructions will enforce function pointer integrity and return address integrity, which are introduced in the next two sections. Iv-D PAC Instrumentation on Function Pointer Store/Load/Branch Iv-D1 Generating PAC on Function Pointer Store All function pointers in memory should be protected by PAC to defeat attacker’s corruption, thus they should be PACed before storing into memory. Function pointers are stored into memory under the following three cases: 1) Statically initialized function pointers which are loaded from binary to memory. 2) Dynamically assigned function pointers which are saved by store instructions. 3) Byte-object function pointers which are treated as a sequence of bytes and copied from another address by memcpy and memmove. Function pointers in the first case are PACed dynamically during kernel initialization after PAC keys setup. In fact, some dynamically assigned function pointers before PAC key initialization also need to be patched and we leave the details to section IV-G. Most of kernel function pointer store falls into the second case. For this case, PACKER gets the function pointer and the address to be stored, PACs the function pointer before the storing instruction, as shown in Figure 6. Line 12 in Figure 5(a) shows that ptmx_open is saved into function pointer open inside struct ptmx_fops. Line 6 in Figure 5(b) shows the actual store instruction. Figure 5(c) shows the assembly code after PACKER instrumentation. Line 7 shows the PAC generation instruction, in which x0 holds pointer value while x1 holds the pointer’s address. Some already loaded function pointers may be in piggyback form by our design, while others may be in normal form, e.g., immediate function addresses. PACKER is able to distinguish these two kinds of pointers as normal kernel function pointers have a fixed pattern in most times. But piggybacked pointers never follow this pattern. They are decoded to normal pointers before PACed. The third case is more special as function pointers are decomposed to bytes and lose their type information during memcpy or memmove. We wrap these functions with pac_memcpy and pac_memove and replace them. Our wrapper functions check every byte of the destination object and use the pattern of PACed function pointers to match function pointers. We do not match on the source object as it could be overlapped with the destination and changed during memmove. Strict matching rules are adopted in matching. Old PAC is stripped from a recognized function pointer, which is then patched with new PAC calculated by its new address as the context. Iv-D2 Authenticating PAC on Function Pointer Load and Branch PACKER authenticates function pointers on both function pointer load and branch. Authenticating function pointers on branch instructions is easy to understand because it prevents function pointer branch instructions from being abused as JOP gadgets to jump to arbitrary addresses. However, function pointer loads also need to be authenticated for two reasons. First, the function pointer is loaded from memory, thus may be corrupted by the attacker, as the attacker has arbitrary memory write capability. Second, the function pointer is loaded into registers, thus it may propagate across different registers and used by other instructions, such the PAC generation instruction and store instruction. Without function pointer load authentication, the attacker can corrupt one function pointer in the memory to be a malicious code address. When the function pointer is loaded, a malicious code address can propagate to the PAC generation and store instructions. As a result, the PAC generation and store instructions can be abused by the attacker as a signing gadget. To break this signing gadget, we either authenticate function pointer before PAC generation instruction or authenticate on function point load. As the PAC generation instructions must accept un-PACed function pointers, we cannot authenticate them before PAC generation. Therefore, PACKER authenticates all function pointer loads, so that no illegal function pointer can sneak into registers. To authenticate function pointer load, PACKER instruments all loads with PAC authentication. Line 6 in Figure 6(a) shows a function pointer load, which is compiled into ldr instructions of Line 3-4 in Figure 6(b). Line 6 in Figure 6(c) shows the PACKER instruments PAC authentication instruction that authenticates the PACed pointer in x0 with x1 holding the address as the context. The other place to check PAC is at function pointer branch instruction (indirect call site). If a function pointer passes PAC check upon loading, it is transformed into piggyback form. A piggyback pointer is then extended to a PACed function pointer for the second PAC check at function pointer call site (function pointer branch). As shown in Figure 6(c), at the function pointer call site, the original blr instruction is replaced by blraa in Line 14, which authenticates the pointer in x8 first by using address in x18 before branching. Iv-D3 Function Pointer PAC Instruction Insertion To insert PAC generation and authentication code shown in Figure 5(c) and Figure 6(c), PACKER performs instrumentation in both LLVM IR and LLVM backend, as shown by the “Store/Load/Branch Instrument” block and the “FP PAC Instruction Insertion” block in Figure 2. In LLVM IR, PACKER first inserts IR instructions to indicate function pointer store, load, and branch respectively. The inserted calling instructions call different functions depending on the instrumented instructions, such as a call to pac_store is inserted to replace function pointer store, pac_load to replace function pointer load. For function pointer branch, things are a little bit different. We do not replace function pointer call, but add a pac_call just before it. The parameters for pac_store and pac_load are the function pointer and its address, which can be fetched from operands of store and load instructions. For pac_call, its parameter is the called function pointer, which is supposed to be a pointer in piggyback form at run-time and can be decoded to a PACed pointer with its address. The inserted instructions will then be lowered from IR to LLVM machine instructions in the backend. Different from LLVM IR, LLVM machine instructions are closely related to the target architecture, including CPU-specific instructions. Therefore PAC-related instructions, which are only available on ARMv8.3 and newer ARMv8 architectures, are inserted in LLVM backend. Inserted machine instructions will replace the stub function calls we have added. For example, when PACKER backend encounters a call to pac_store, it replaces it with a PAC-generating instruction followed by a store instruction storing the PACed pointer to the address just like what Figure 5(c) shows. Note that the original function pointer and the address are already in register X0 and X1 as the function parameters of our stub calls. Dealing with pac_load is just a similar process. However, stub calls to pac_call is a little different. We must decode the input piggyback pointer into a PACed pointer and its address, which are needed to be stored in two registers for blraa. Note that we cannot directly use X0 and X1 to save them because they are parameters passed into the indirect call. Instead, we save them to virtual register provided by LLVM backend. The virtual registers will be mapped to registers that are not live at this point automatically by LLVM backend. Figure 6(c) displays the output of PACKER backend for indirect calls. Iv-E Return Address Protection The return address PAC generation and checking reuses the existing idea [qualcomm-ret-addr]: using the stack pointer as the context, generating the PAC for the return address register before pushing it to the stack and verify the PAC right after loading it from the stack, as shown in Figure 7(a). However, the existing design uses separate PAC authentication instruction autiasp and return instruction ret. The interrupt may happen in between, giving the attacker chances to launch time of check to time of use (TOCTTOU) attack. For example, during the interrupt, the authentication of x30 already passes, and its value will be saved on the interrupt stack. The attacker can overwrite x30 value on stack and jump to an arbitrary place on return. To address this problem, PACKER proposes to use the retaa instruction to authenticate and ret in one instruction. PACKER guarantees the atomicity and improves the security by eliminating the gaps between time of check and time of use. Note that in kernel space, every thread has its dedicated kernel stack, while the stack pointer points to the stack frame within these per-thread kernel stacks. In other words, the stack pointer sp for different thread is guaranteed to be different, while using these stack pointer as the PAC context makes sure that the PAC cannot be replayed across different thread in kernel. More specifically, the stack pointer is per-thread, and per-stack-frame, making it virtually impossible to launch the pointer substitution attacks. Iv-F Pointer Authentication Initialization Before utilizing pointer authentication (PA) to protect kernel function pointers and return addresses, we must first setup pointer authentication keys. Current Linux kernel only provides the PA for user space, not for kernel itself yet [kernel-pa, kernel-padoc]. Moreover, PA keys in Linux kernel are saved in kernel memory without any protection [kernel-pakey], makes it vulnerable to arbitrary kernel memory read/write attacks. To setup the PA environment for kernel, we set TBI and TBID bits in tcr_el1 as soon as start_kernel is called to ensure PAC is 7 bits. Then we configure the sctlr_el1 to enable the IA and IB keys for PA. After that, PACKER needs to invoke kernel random number generation functions to generate 128 bits random numbers and set it into PA key registers. Note that randomness functionality is not enabled at the very beginning of kernel boot. As a result, even the PA key registers are setup right after kernel randomness initialization, hundreds of functions that invoking function pointers are already executed before PA initialization. This will impose several challenges to PACKER. First, before PA key setups, a call to a function pointer may happen. As we mentioned before, a PAC check would occur at a function pointer callsite, the check will never pass without setting the keys. To avoid checking failure and crash, PACKER adds key setup check, if key has not setup, PACKER will not check PAC signature. Here PACKER only adds the check code to codes executed at kernel initialization process, and all those codes will be freed after kernel boot up, so this will not jeopardize the security of PACKER. Second, hundreds of function get executed before PA initialization. These functions may have pointer load and store operations. Right after key setup, PACKER will patch the statically allocated function pointer with the correct PAC. However, the store operations happens before PA key ready stores the un-PACed pointer values. Therefore, PACKER must be able to trace all the store operations and patch all these locations. To address this problem, PACKER proposed to instrument all store operations. If PA is not ready, will allow the operation proceed, but will record the target address for later patch, details in section IV-G. Iv-G Statically and Dynamically Initialized Function Pointer Patch Same with userspace case [hans2019pac], the statically allocated and initialized function pointers do not contain PAC signature, as the pointer authentication key is not available at the compiling time. Those function pointers need to be patched with proper PAC after we set PA key. However, different from user space, the kernel cannot rely on the loader, so it must figure out the addresses which need to be patched. To address this problem, during the compiling time, PACKER emits all addresses of the statically allocated functions. Especially for statically allocated kernel structures that contain function pointer fields, PACKER emits the address of the kernel structures and the offsets of the function pointer members. For patching, PACKER maps this information to the actual pointer addresses during the kernel booting up. For each statically allocated and initialized function pointer variable or the function pointer member inside a statically allocated structure, PACKER first reads its value, calculates the PAC value, and writes back to the memory. Note that this is all done after PA key is set. As mentioned before, kernel randomization is not enabled at the very beginning. As a result, hundreds of functions get executed before the PA key is ready. These functions involve function pointers assignment. In other words, besides the statically initialized function pointers, PACKER also needs to patch function pointers that get initialized dynamically before PA key is ready. To do this, as all function pointer stores are already instrumented, PACKER checks the PA key status before the PA code generation and the store. If PA key is not ready, PACKER skips the PA code generation, just stores the raw pointer value. At the same time, PACKER will record the address of this function pointer. After PA key initialization, PACKER will come back to calculate the PA code for all recorded addresses, and update the pointer value with the correct PAC. In the implementation section, we first give out the environment settings we used for our implementation. Then we talk about the PACKER modification on compiler and the kernel. Finally, we present the details of the practical issues we encountered during our implementation. V-a Environment Settings We have implemented PACKER on LLVM 10 and Linux kernel v5.0.1. PACKER kernel is built at optimization level O2. The kernel binary is running on ARMv8-A Fixed Virtual Platforms (FVP) based on Fast Model v11.7.30. FVP is a software simulator from ARM, which provides pointer authentication hardware simulations. FVP environment is set up on Ubuntu 18.04, running on Intel i7-7700. To boot up the kernel with PACKER on FVP, we also wrap a bootloader with PACKER kernel using boot-wrapper and build a minimal initram file system with buildroot. V-B Compiler Modifications PACKER Clang/LLVM implementation contains 3 passes, about 2600 lines of code. LLVM organises all its analysis and optimization functionalities in the unit of pass, therefore, both of our works on IR level and on backend are implemented in passes. LLVM passes are executed in a serial order and the positions of our passes in the order can affect the result. On IR level, IR output of the prior passes may be optimized by the optimization passes. Therefore, to avoid our inserted IR from being optimized, we put all our IR passes together at the end of all IR passes. On backend, LLVM machine code is lowered by passes. In this process, it loses high-level information, such as the type info and the virtual registers info, and gets closer to the real target assembly code. Some of our backend passes use virtual registers so they must run before the register allocation pass. The others are put to the end of the machine code passes. For ease of use, We have also modified Clang/LLVM backend to support command line flags. One can pass -mkfpi flag to enable IR-level functionalities while pass -mllvm -aarch64-enable-kfpi flags to enable backend instrumentation. V-B1 IR-level Implementation First, the InitPass analyzes global variable initialization and data structure that contains function pointers, and store the results for subsequent use. Note that it does not change IR code and will pass the IR to MarkPass as soon as it finishes its work. MarkPass is responsible for identifying all IR values which are function pointers, i.e., calculating the set S in Algorithm 1. Here we focus on implementation details about the transfer functions of the seven instructions: bitcast transforms the type of an IR value and we put both the output and the input value into set S if any of them is in S. icmp compares two integers and decides the result according to the input condition. Therefore, either one of the two operands belonging to S indicates the other should be also added to S. phinode is an implementation of in static single assignment(SSA) form. It chooses one of inputs as its output according to its predecessor basic blocks. We just add all the values including the output to S if one of these values is in S. The strategy is based on our insight that in most cases, no value could be a function pointer in one condition but a data pointer or a normal integer in another. A special case is the union type which may violate our assumption, details in section V-D. store instruction saves the first operand into the memory pointed to by the second operand and has no output. If the first operand is a function pointer, then the second operand should be a pointer to a function pointer. Note that we have to distinguish function pointer and the pointer to a function pointer for store so we add an extra attribute level to each element in set S. Level 0 means the element is a function pointer, level 1 means a pointer to a function pointer and so on. Consequently, the second operand in store must be one level higher than the first operand. load instruction just does the opposite process of store. getelementptr, also known as GEP, takes a struct or array pointer and a sequence of indices as its inputs. It calculates the offset from the indices and outputs the pointer incremented by the offset. The instruction is usually used to index a field inside a struct or array. As we maintain all function pointer fields information including the struct types and indices in a DAG STI (Algorithm 1), we can decide the result of a GEP is a level 1 function pointer if its inputs forms a path in the DAG. Finally, call instructions just adds the called operand to S. IR code is not modified in MarkPass either and passed to InstrumentPass, where the instrumentation IR code is finally added according to S. InstrumentPass also outputs the global variables initialized by function pointers with their offsets inside a struct to support function pointer patching during early kernel boot. V-B2 Backend Implementation We have added four backend passes to LLVM AArch64 backend, i.e., VirtRegPass, BranchPass, RAPass and MemcpyPass. VirtRegPass allocates virtual registers to save the PACed function pointer and its context needed by blraa. BranchPass changes all the blr to blraa using the two virtual registers as inputs. Both of the two passes must execute before register allocation. The other two are executed at the end of all the backend passes. RAPass is for return address protection, it first locates function frame setup and destroy and then inserts paciasp before frame setup and autiasp after frame destroy. MemcpyPass replaces all calls to __memcpy and __memmove to pac_memcpy and pac_memmove, respectively. Although this has been done once in IR, we do this just in case that a sequence of assignment on continuous memory is optimized to __memcpy at backend, which actually happens at optimization level O2. V-C Kernel Patching PACKER’s kernel modification has about 600 lines of code, including initializing pointer authentication hardware and patching the un-PACed function pointers. The PA initialization is mainly set up the registers to enable PA functionality. Moreover, it also calls the kernel random number generator to generate PA key. As a result, the PA can only be initialized after kernel enables the random number generation functionality. Therefore, PA initialization is done right after add_device_randomness in start_kernel. It is worth mentioning that PA initialization code contains the sensitive instructions that loading the PA key. To guarantee the security and remove all PA key manipulation related instructions, we mark all PA initialization code as init text, so that it will be freed by free_initmem as soon as the kernel boot completes. As mentioned before, PACKER replaces all blr instructions to blraa. For br instructions, PACKER changes kernel build by adding -fno-jump-tables to instruct the compiler not use br instructions. For function pointer patching, PACKER patches all statically initialized function pointers and the function pointers that get assignment before PA initialization. To achieve this, PACKER uses a giant array to hold all the addresses of pointers to be patched. It also inserts code after PA initialization to generate PAC for each pointers. Again, the array is marked as init data, so that it will be freed after booting up to save the memory. Note that PACKER is designed only for kernel code pointer protection, with only one PA key register is used, and leaving the other four PA key registers for user space PA protection. Therefore, PACKER is design with the consideration of user space PA compatibility. V-D Practical Issues We encountered numerous practical issues during our implementation of PACKER. Due to the space limitation, here we only discuss several of them in detail. V-D1 Function Pointer Comparison In kernel, function pointers are usually used to compare with a function name directly, as shown by Line 6 in Figure 9. The comparison can be against a function name, which is the constant address of a function, or in some rare cases, against magic numbers like 1 or 2. In our implementation, the value loaded from the pointer would be transformed into the piggyback form, therefore its value will not match at every comparison. In those cases, we need to restore the function pointer after loading from the memory. The implementation of this part is pretty straightforward: our IR pass will traverse every CmpInst and check if the type of the operand is function pointer, if yes, replacing the operand with the restored value. V-D2 Function Pointer Arithmetic Besides comparison, arithmetic on function pointers also exists in Linux kernel. For instance, do_initcall_level in Line 15 of Figure 10 passes function pointer fn to do_one_initcall while fn is calculated using the base address and the offset, as shown in Line 17. Fortunately, such case only appears once at kernel boot up stage. As we trust the kernel boot up, we consider the content in variable initcall_levels as benign values, so in our implementation, after the function pointer is calculated, we generates the PAC using a constant context and the value of the pointer, so that it could pass the PAC authentication at blraa. V-D3 Function Pointer Holding Physical Address In Linux, for certain memory management unit (MMU) related function, the kernel will use its physical address directly, rather than virtual address (More precisely, for identical map, the virtual address and the physical address are the same). As shown in Figure 11, function idmap_cpu_replace_ttbr1’s physical address is assigned to function pointer replace_phys at Line 7. After that, the kernel turns off the memory management and directly branch to the physical address holding in replace_phys at Line 11. Unfortunately, this breaks our rule that all operands of an indirect call should be a piggyback form pointer, and the system will go panic when the corresponding blraa is executed. As we mentioned in previous section, we add several instructions to change the pointer into piggyback form with a constant context before the indirect call, and this will not increase attack surface as the address is constant value from a adrp instruction, which cannot be changed by the attacker. V-D4 Function Pointer in Union Union type in kernel can contain a field that can be both function pointers and data such as integers, as shown in Figure 12. The data inside union variables are treated as function pointers or integers accordingly. This case breaks our assumption that a function pointer variable cannot contain data of other types. As a result, Algorithm 1 may mistake an integer for a function pointer. To address this problem, we use the alignment size of the field to distinguish whether a union field is a function pointer or not. Our key observation is that function pointer value is 64-bit, need to have 64-bit alignment. Therefore, if the program is using the field as an int32, the entry is considered to be used as data, either _pad or _tid in the figure; otherwise the type of the field is a function pointer, and we need to insert the PACKER code. Note that the case is rare in Linux kernel and once we adopt the above rule, we can filter out all the troubles brought by union type. In this section, we evaluate both the security and performance of PACKER. Vi-a Security Analysis For the security evaluation, we want to examine if PACKER can protect both function pointers and return addresses. Therefore, we first analyse the function pointer and return address coverage. We objdumped the generated vmlinux and extracted all the function pointer branch instructions and function return instructions. For function pointer branch instructions, PACKER compiler component replaces all blr instructions in C code by blraa instruction during the compiling process. PACKER also manually changes the blr instructions in assembly code to blraa. As a result, 100% of all function pointer branch are checked by PACKER. Compared with iOS kernel PA implementation which has blr residuals, PACKER contains no raw blr instructions, thus is more secure. Note that blraa does the PAC authentication and function pointer branch in one single instruction, giving the attacker no chance to launch time of check to time of use attacks. For function pointer storing and loading, the pointer authentication hardware on ARMv8.3 does not provide the atomic instructions for the authenticate-store as well as the load-authenticate. Therefore, function pointer store and load are still vulnerable to time of check to time of use attacks. Here, we want to argue that this is a hardware limitation. Also, even though the store and load are not atomic, the final function pointer branch will be authenticated before branch atomically by PACKER, which can defeat any function pointer corruptions. For the return address, we check all functions in vmlinux dump to examine that for all functions that pushing return address in prologue and popping return address in epilogue should be protected by PACKER. We go through the whole kernel dump using a script and our result shows that PACKER protects all return address pushing operations. For all return address pushing operations, PACKER inserts a PAC generation instruction. For all return address popping from stack, PACKER changes the return to retaa so that the return address will be authenticated before the actual return. Here, different from existing schemes of separating the PAC authentication instruction and the return instruction into two instruction [qualcomm-ret-addr, arm-pa], PACKER uses a single instruction retaa to achieve the atomicity of both authentication and return. Therefore, returns protections in PACKER is more secure by defeating time of check to time of use attacks. Vi-B Performance Analysis We choose Unixbench to evaluate PACKER performance. Unixbench is dedicated for unix-like systems and can measure performance of a system from different aspects. Three Linux kernels, which have the same version and configuration but different security level, are tested. One of them is compiled with original LLVM and is used as our baseline. The other two are both protected by PACKER, but one of them does not have return address protection. For each kernel, we have conducted all the tests listed in Figure 13 and these tests focus on critical system calls. Note that all the syscall-unrelated arithmetic tests like whetstone and arithoh have little connection with the performance of PACKER kernel, so their performance overhead are averaged and treated as the userspace arithmetic test in Figure 13. Compared with the original kernel without PACKER protection, PACKER introduces around 10%-20% performance overhead. Complex syscalls like fork and write introduce more overhead because the number of stack frames and function pointer calls is larger. PACKER also introduces around 1%-2% overhead on userspace arithmetic because PACKER also protects kernel context switch and makes it a little bit slower. Note that performance overhead does not mean PACKER kernel is 10%-20% larger than the original kernel. In fact, PACKER image size is 7.0% larger. We believe that the performance overhead is not low, but reasonable and acceptable. It is reasonable because kernel itself is much more complex than most user application. It contains many function pointers and indirect calls. The calling stack in kernel is also badly nested. Besides, protection of context switch and indirect calls inside interruption handlers also add to our overhead. We argue that the result is also acceptable because it reflects the upper bound of PACKER overhead. In this evaluation, it is the pure syscall overhead that we have measured. A user application cannot call complex system calls like fork all the time. So for users of PACKER system, the overhead is better than our result. In our future work, we are planning more evaluation of PACKER, including the instruction count and performance overhead break down. We also plan to optimize the performance of PACKER based on the evaluation results. Vii Related Work There are variant CFI mechanisms to defend code reuse attacks. Among all defense mechanisms proposed against ROP, ASLR is widely used in modern operating systems, the address of the program will be randomized under such protections so that attackers can’t easily locate the gadgets. Beside ASLR, function pointer encryption is proposed with different encrypt methods [EncodePointer, Shuffler, PointGuard] to defend JOP attacks. In those methods, function pointers will be encrypted with a process/thread specific secret key and decrypted when being used. CFI will compute a control-flow graph in advance to ensure the control transfers are within the pre-computed graph. And most CFI mechanisms can not protect both user programs and kernels due to the huge differences in between. Moreover, as most software control-flow protection techniques suffer from high performance overhead, hardware-assists control flow protection mechanisms are proposed. These techniques [davi2014hardware, davi2015hafix, qiu2016physical, qiu2017control, zhang2018hcic, hans2019pac] leverage hardware feature or add extra hardware modules to realize protection operations, thus reduce the overhead. Vii-a User CFI Vii-A1 Software-Based CFI Compact Control Flow Integrity and Randomization (CCFIR) [zhang2013practical] protects both forward-edge and backward-edge control-flow integrity for binary executables. CCFIR implements a new code segment named Springboard which contains stubs of all indirect targets (i.e. function pointers and return addresses). CCFIR redirects all indirect jump/call instructions and ret instructions to jump to stubs in Springboard with specified policies. Bin-CFI [zhang2013control] provides control-flow integrity for COTS binaries. It uses a similar design to CCFIR instrument to enforce control-flow integrity. However, both CCFIR and bin-CFI are found to be insufficient [goktas2014out, davi2014stitching]. Vii-A2 Hardware-Assisted CFI Cryptographic CFI (CCFI) [mashtizadeh2015ccfi] employs cryptography mechanism to protect the control-flow integrity. Similar to PACKER, CCFI uses cryptographic MACs which is produced with AES. CCFI calculates and checks MACs of function pointers and return address when they are loaded. Thus, CCFI protects both forward-edge and backward-edge control flow integrity. And CCFI uses address as context to compute MAC which is the same design as PACKER. Opaque control-flow integrity (O-CFI) [mohan2015opaque] protects control-flow integrity by restricting indirect branch targets within an address bound. The address bound can be derived from source code or object code and can be randomized by code layout randomization [wartell2012binary]. When a program is loaded, O-CFI randomly selects a bound pair, which indicates the legal branch address region, from a bounds lookup table. And O-CFI needs the help of x86 segmentation selector to prevent accident leakage of the bounds lookup table. The overhead of O-CFI is 4.7%. As ROP attacks need to continuously execute several gadgets, KBouncer [pappas2012kbouncer], as well as ROPecker [cheng2014ropecker], use Last Branch Recording (LBR), which records last executed branches, to detect ROP attacks. And the latter one has an average overhead of 2.6%. Since LBR only records last 16 branches, CFIMon [xia2012cfimon] uses branch trace store to break the limitation. The authors argue that CFIMon prevents both JOP and ROP attacks. And CFIMon has an overhead of 6.1%, higher than KBouncer and ROPecker. Vii-B Kernel CFI [li2018fine] and [ge2016fine] proposed fine-grained control-flow integrity solutions for kernel. Since computing kernel control flow graph is a tricky thing, they mainly focus on reducing the number of indirect control-flow targets in static analysis and both of them achieved more than 99% of indirect control-flow targets. For enforcing control flow integrity [ge2016fine] uses restricted pointer indexing [wang2010hypersafe] to enforce kernel control-flow integrity while [li2018fine] uses a similar scheme named indexed hooks [li2011comprehensive]. KCoFI [criswell2014kcofi], which extends secure virtual architecture (SVA) [criswell2007secure], provides a coarse-grained but complete kernel control-flow integrity solution. KCoFI needs to recompile the whole operating system kernel into a virtual instruction set which benefits the security by ensuring security policies are not violated. And the formal model of KCoFI is only partial proved. Both KCoFI and PACKER need support of the compiler. However, KCoFI introduces a significant performance overhead due to the virtual instruction set while PACKER employs existing hardware feature and introduce a much lower overhead. This paper presents PACKER, which utilizes ARMv8.3 pointer authentication for kernel code pointer protection. In particular, PACKER generates PAC for every function pointer store and return address pushing to stack, and authenticates the PAC on every function pointer load and branch, and return address popping from stack. Moreover, to defeat pointer substitution attacks, we propose a novel address-based PAC generation based on the observation that all function pointers in kernel have a different virtual address, which can be used as the context to achieve unique PAC. To achieve address-based PAC, we design the pointer-address piggyback for address propagation. We also proposed new techniques for identifying function pointers, for pointer store, load and branch authentication and for handling statically initialized function pointers. We have implemented a prototype of PACKER based on Clang/LLVM and Linux kernel. In our implementation, PACKER is able to protection 100% of indirect call sites and return addresses. We further evaluated our implementation on ARM Fixed Virtual Platforms. For all eight tests, the performance overhead introduced by PACKER ranges from 15% to 25%. In our future work, we plan to test the performance of PACKER thoroughly, by using different techniques such as the instruction counting. Based on the evaluation results, we also plan to optimize PACKER.
Multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in index.php in ViHor Design allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via (1) a remote URL in the page parameter, which is processed by an fopen call, or (2) HTML or script in the page parameter, which is returned to the client in an error message for the failed fopen call. Note:References are provided for the convenience of the reader to help distinguish between vulnerabilities. The list is not intended to be complete. BUGTRAQ:20060324 VihorDesing Script Remote Command Exucetion And Cross Scripting Attack Disclaimer: The entry creation date may reflect when the CVE-ID was allocated or reserved, and does not necessarily indicate when this vulnerability was discovered, shared with the affected vendor, publicly disclosed, or updated in CVE. This is an entry on the CVE list, which standardizes names for security
The _CalcHashValueWithLength function in FastBackServer.exe in the Server in IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) FastBack 220.127.116.11 through 18.104.22.168 and 22.214.171.124 through 126.96.36.199 does not properly validate an unspecified length value, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon crash) by sending data over TCP. NOTE: this might overlap CVE-2010-3060. Note:References are provided for the convenience of the reader to help distinguish between vulnerabilities. The list is not intended to be complete. BUGTRAQ:20100929 ZDI-10-186: IBM TSM FastBack _CalcHashValueWithLength Remote Denial of Service Vulnerability Disclaimer: The entry creation date may reflect when the CVE-ID was allocated or reserved, and does not necessarily indicate when this vulnerability was discovered, shared with the affected vendor, publicly disclosed, or updated in CVE. This is an entry on the CVE list, which standardizes names for security
What are the common things to keep in mind while resetting the password in TP-LINK Wireless Router? TP-LINK Wireless Router is a high performance router. To meet diverse users’ requirements, different models of TP-LINK Wireless Routers are available. Wireless antenna is used for connecting different devices like NIC, wireless repeaters, wireless access points, Wi-Fi and wireless bridge. TP-LINK Wireless Router is one of those wireless routers suited for home and small office needs. Installation is quite easy and has same set of procedures like any router. The reset of wireless router password is necessary for various reasons. You may reset it when you lost password or you cannot access TP-LINK device web interface. There may be problems with the router functions and you can adopt various troubleshooting steps to solve it. After reset, the router password will be reset to default. Following are the common things to keep in mind while resetting the password of TP-LINK Wireless Router: - Create password after reset - Reconfigure router settings - Removal of Encryption Create password after reset TP-LINK Wireless Router might be reset at any time. However, you need to be careful while resetting password as the process might affect the security of the network. The security of the network is seriously affected when the data sent is unencrypted in a network. You need to create a login address and password for the computer for encrypting the network. Make sure that you create a strong password for router. Reconfigure router settings When the router is reset, sometimes you won’t be able to access the network. The router settings need to reset in some circumstances. The TP-LINK Wireless Router needs to be configured with various parameters like the network standard, IP addresses, speed of data transfer etc. These settings are set from the configuration page of the router. You need to adjust the settings of the router, such that the network is configured and the router works properly. Removal of Encryption Since the wireless transmission of data could often lead to security breach, care should be taken to encrypt the data. The intruders might easily interfere into the network and tap the data. When the data is not encrypted, there are special devices with which the data could be decoded. This might cause confidential and sensitive data to be hacked by intruders. You need to encrypt the network right after you reset the TP-LINK Wireless Router password. Annual Unlimited Subscription Plan iYogi is the fastest growing online and remote tech support provider in the direct-to-consumers and small businesses sector. Our highly skilled and experienced tech experts available, 24x7x365 will provide the best issue resolution and customer satisfaction. Our award winning and low priced Annual Subscription covers the following services: - Comprehensive support for resetting a password on TP-LINK Wireless Router. - Diagnostic & repair for your technologies. - Troubleshoot software errors. - Update drivers and security to protect against online threats. - Connect to Internet, devices and peripherals. - Optimize your computer’s speed and performance. Unlimited access to great tech support, all year around! We promise the lowest wait-time and highest resolution rate in the industry.
In this chapter, we learned how DRQN is used to remember information about the previous states and how it overcomes the problem of partially observable MDP. We have seen how to train our agent to play the game Doom using a DRQN algorithm. We have also learned about DARQN as an improvement to DRQN, which adds an attention layer on top of the convolution layer. Following this, we saw the two types of attention mechanism; namely, soft and hard attention. In the next chapter, Chapter 10, Asynchronous Advantage Actor Critic Network, we will learn about another interesting deep reinforcement learning algorithm called Asynchronous Advantage Actor Critic network.
Understanding and Mitigating the New Microsoft Teams Vulnerability In the era of digital transformation and remote work, collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams have become integral to everyday business operations. However, the cybersecurity landscape is evolving alongside these digital tools, posing new challenges and threats to organizations and their employees. Recently, IT security researchers from Jumpsec discovered a Microsoft Teams vulnerability that could potentially allow external attackers to deliver malware directly to users’ inboxes. Microsoft Teams, by default, allows communication requests from external tenants. Although security controls should prevent external users from sending files to internal users, Jumpsec researchers found a loophole. By switching the internal and external recipient ID on the POST request, an external tenant could bypass client-side security controls and send a potentially malicious file directly to the inbox of an internal user. The incoming message with the malicious payload appears with an “External” banner, warning the recipient to be extra careful. However, the researchers suggest that many employees may likely overlook this warning. This vulnerability, coupled with sophisticated social engineering tactics, could lead to a high rate of successful malware attacks. Microsoft’s Response and Proposed Solutions Despite acknowledging the vulnerability, Microsoft stated that it “did not meet the bar for immediate servicing.” As such, the responsibility to mitigate the risk falls primarily on individual organizations and their cybersecurity strategies. If organizations can function without external tenant communications, they should consider disabling this option to mitigate the vulnerability. For those needing to maintain external communication channels, setting up an allow-list of specific domains can limit potential attack avenues. In addition to these administrative measures, organizations should actively educate staff about the potential risks associated with productivity apps like Teams. Employees should be reminded to be cautious when interacting with “external” users and advised against downloading files without verifying the source. The discovery of this vulnerability in Microsoft Teams underscores the importance of maintaining robust cybersecurity practices, even within trusted applications. It’s essential for organizations to stay aware of the evolving threat landscape and adjust their security settings and protocols accordingly. By taking proactive steps and fostering a culture of cybersecurity awareness, organizations can better safeguard against the potential misuse of collaboration tools and protect their digital workspace.
Researchers discovered a new Go-based malware that is used in a campaign targeting Redis servers, which is an open-source im-memory database and cache. Threat actors are exploiting a critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-0543. This particular flaw is a Lua sandbox escape flaw that impacts Debian and Debian-derived Linux distributions. The vulnerability, with a CVSS score of 10, could be exploited by a remote attacker with the ability to execute arbitrary Lua scripts to possibly escape the Lua sandbox and execute arbitrary code on the underlying machine. Juniper Threat Labs researchers reported that the Muhstik botnet has been observed targeting Redis servers exploiting the CVE-2022-0543 vulnerability. The flaw has been fixed in February 2022, but threat actors continue to exploit it in attacks in the wild due to the public availability of a proof-of-concept exploit code. The attack chain starts with scans for the Redis server exposing port 6379 to the internet, then threat actors attempt to connect and run the following Redis commands: - INFO command - SLAVEOF command - REPLCONF command - PSYNC command - MODULE LOAD command - SLAVEOF NO ONE command Attackers loads the library file exp_lin.so and executes the exploit code for the above flaw. The file contains the implementation of the command system.exec which allows the attackers to execute an arbitrary command and launch the attack. The first use of the command is activated to receive information about the CPU architecture. The second use of the command is done to download the newly discovered malware from the attacking server – Redigo. After downloading the malware file, the attackers elevate the permissions of the file to execute, and execute it. Threat actors simulate Redis communication over port 6379 to evade detection. Researchers believe that threat actors are using the Redigo malware to infect Redis and add them to a botnet used to launch DDoS attacks, run cryptocurrency miners, or steal data from the servers. This research was documented by researchers from Aqua Nautilus Indicators Of Compromise - IP 220.127.116.11
In general, the account takeover definition is the success of a malicious third-party attacker gaining access to a user’s account via stolen credentials for the purpose of fraud. This happens when a bad actor acquires another person’s login credentials, most often by leveraging reused or similar passwords from previously breached sites, and gains access to existing accounts. A botnet attack leverages a network of infected devices, also known as bots, that are used to perform malicious activity. A botnet attack is typically carried out by a lone attacker controlling the computers (bots), often up to millions of bots. A credential stuffing attack occurs when a threat actor uses stolen credentials (username and password) from one website to gain access to other sites to attempt an account takeover. These attacks often occur long after a data breach, when older stolen credentials have been packaged for sale and traded on the dark web. The dark web is a hidden section of the web that is only accessible using specialized software like Tor or I2P, which allows users to browse anonymously, hiding their IP addresses and other identifying information. The dark web is known for hosting illegal trade, though it also serves as a platform for privacy-focused individuals and groups. A deepfake is a synthetic media, typically a video or audio recording, in which a person's likeness or voice is replaced with someone else's through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) or deep learning which is a type of machine learning. Infostealers are a type of malware designed to infiltrate computer systems to steal information. They exfiltrate various data, including login credentials, session cookies, financial info, and personally identifiable information, sending it to a remote server controlled by cybercriminals. An insider threat is a security risk that originates from within an organization. It typically involves employees, contractors, business partners, or other individuals who have inside information concerning the organization's security practices, data, and computer systems. These threats can be malicious or unintentional. Leaked credentials refer to the unauthorized dissemination and exposure of personal or organizational login information, including usernames, passwords, and other authentication details. These credentials can come from various accounts, such as email, social media, banking, or corporate networks. When it comes to a malware definition, these days malware isn’t just one thing. Broadly, speaking, malware is malicious software that can steal information, damage files and networks, or gain unauthorized access to organizations. MTTR stands for Mean Time to Remediate. It is an incident metric that quantifies the average time required to repair a failed component (system, product, service, or application). MTTR can also stand for Mean Time to Respond, Mean Time to Recover, or Mean Time to Resolution. OSINT is the collection and analysis of publicly available information from various sources like websites, social media, public records, and more. It is used to gather intelligence for security assessments, threat analysis, and other purposes without the need for intrusive methods. OSINT is typically gathered to answer a specific intelligence question. Passkeys are a passwordless authentication method designed to solve issues with current methods like passwords. A passkey is a digital credential that is uniquely tied to a website or application, enabling authentication without the need for a username, password, or even additional authentication factor. Passwordless authentication is a security method that allows users to log in to systems, applications, or data without entering a traditional password. It enhances user experience and security by utilizing alternative means of verification, such as biometrics, tokens, or passkeys, eliminating the need for users to remember and enter a password. Phishing is a social engineering attack where cybercriminals pose as trustworthy individuals or entities to deceive victims into providing sensitive information, like usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, or other personal details. Ransomware is malicious software designed to block access to a computer system or files until a sum of money is paid. It encrypts the victim's files, making them inaccessible, and threat actors can then demand a ransom for the decryption keys. Session hijacking is a cyberattack where an unauthorized user leverages stolen session cookies to take control over an established user session, gaining unauthorized access to a protected system or web application. This allows the attacker to impersonate the victim and perform actions on their behalf, potentially leading to data theft, fraudulent transactions, or unauthorized access to sensitive information. A threat actor is an individual or group that exploits vulnerabilities or uses deceptive tactics to harm digital devices, systems, or networks. Threat actors execute cyberattacks, such as phishing, malware attacks, and ransomware.
herbivore is a packet sniffing and crafting library. Built on libtins herbivore 0.0.3 and below download binary resources over HTTP, which leaves it vulnerable to MITM attacks. It may be possible to cause remote code execution (RCE) by swapping out the requested resources with an attacker controlled copy if the attacker is on the network or positioned in between the user and the remote server. Feedly found the first article mentioning CVE-2016-10665. See article EPSS Score was set to: 0.2% (Percentile: 59.4%)
Security researchers “Decoder” and Chris Danieli have discovered a vulnerability in the Windows client software for the popular cloud storage service Dropbox that would allow an attacker to use an unprivileged user account to gain SYSTEM permissions–the highest level of permission possible on a local Windows system. The unpatched flaw affects standard Dropbox installations and relates to the updater that runs as a service, which is responsible for keeping the application up-to-date. For an attacker to exploit this vulnerability, they must first have compromised a user’s account. Attackers usually gain access to a user account through a phishing campaign to get an employee to open a malicious file. The researchers provided Dropbox with proof of concept (POC) code to exploit the vulnerability on September 18th and gave them a 90-day window before they made the flaw public. The researchers have not shared the POC code publicly, to avoid giving tools to attackers. Dropbox initially responded that the problem is known, and a fix would be available before the end of October. As of December 23rd, Dropbox has not yet released a patch to fix the vulnerability. Until Dropbox provides a security update, the only currently available patch is provided by a company called “oPatch,” a platform that delivers micro patches for known issues before a permanent, official fix becomes available. Because attackers have to compromise a user account to exploit this flaw, organizations are also recommended to implement multiple layers of defense, including email threat scanning, user education about phishing, centralized logging, and an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution that detects attacker behaviors such as low-privileged user accounts gaining SYSTEM permissions and running commands that are unusual for that account. Source Article: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/dropbox-zero-day-vulnerability-gets-temporary-fix/
No, the DNS Changer Bug is not a FatPipe related issue. It is a virus that exists on the LAN - the outside world would see the IP address of the WAN interface the packet exits and flag that IP - but it is not a FatPipe related issue - the device on the LAN that is causing the issue/bug would need to be found and quarantined. Additional information regarding DNSChanger is provided below: In order for the REN-ISAC to learn how we can best aid the education community with network security matters we'd greatly appreciate hearing back from you regarding action on this incident and how, if at all, this information proved useful. Research and Education Networking ISAC 24x7 Watch Desk: +1(317)278-6630, [email protected] http://www.ren-isac.net "DNSChanger is a trojan that will change the infected system's Domain Name Server (DNS) settings, in order to divert traffic to unsolicited, and potentially illegal sites." Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Femad (Sunbelt Software) TROJ_DNSCHAN (Trend Micro) Rogue DHCP servers DNS changer Trojan for Mac (!) in the wild (part 1) (Minor) evolution in Mac DNS changer malware (part 2) OS X DNS Changers part three (part 3) Attachment: The incident data presented above is also provided in IODEF format in the attached file. If you have questions about using the IODEF-formatted data in automated processing with your incident tracking system, see:
The techniques for attacking users of digital services are varied. As we know, every time you access an online service, you endanger not only your data but also your wealth. Recently it was discovered that cyber criminals could use social media buttons to initiate computer attacks. This is thanks to a new type of malware that can be used directly on the web. This malware can hide inside images, which are used for certain buttons such as sharing on social networks. Its feature allows hackers to steal information from credit cards entered into online payment forms, uses said infected button. This article will also interest you: Fraud in banking transactions This malware is called the "Magecart script" or "web skimmer." The Dutch computer security company called Sanguine Security (SangSec) made its discovery last September on some online shopping sites. The technique used by hackers, in the context, is known as shorthand. It is a method that allows hackers to hide information in another format, such as text in images or videos or images in videos. If the technique was not initially used for cybercrime, hackers use it to hide malicious codes in formats that would normally go unnoticed in front of security scanners. In making history of this practice in the cybercrime sector, it has been observed that hackers have tended to initiate forms of attack by hiding malware inside some image files often in JPEG or PNG format. "As the use of shorthand has grown, security companies have also begun to search and analyze image files for irregularities. The interesting detail of these recent attacks is that the malicious code was not hidden in PNG or JPG files but in SVG files, a type of image file for loading vector images. The cybersecurity company explains. However, SangSec acknowledges that cybercriminals were smart enough to have used shorthand in such a context. "The malicious payload takes the form of an HTML < svg > element, using the item as a < path > container for the payload. The payload itself is concealed using a syntax that looks a lot like the correct use of the < svg > item," read a report published last week by SangSec. The Dutch company adds that: "While hackers have added their malicious payload to files like images in the past, this is the first time that malicious code has been constructed as a perfectly valid image. The result is that security scanners can no longer find malware by simply testing the valid syntax." SangSec added that it had detected cyber criminals last June when they were testing their malware on websites. It was the same during the month of September, "with the malicious payload hidden in social media sharing icons for sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. SangSec notes. Therefore, vigilance is required. Users are encouraged to be very careful when making their various online transactions. They can contact specialists to help them get around this problem. The use of antivirus or any other security solution is also recommended. Now access an unlimited number of passwords:
Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a dynamic mapping protocol that maps the IP address of a computer to it’s MAC address. ARP maps the 32-bit IPv4 address of the receiver to 48-bit MAC address of the receiver. The Address Resolution Protocol is a Network Layer protocol. There also exists a reverse ARP protocol (RARP) that translates MAC address to IP address. In this section, we will discuss the cases when the ARP services can be used. We will also discuss the working of ARP and the packet format of ARP in brief. Content: Address Resolution Protocol When the services of ARP are used? If a host wants to send a data packet to another host in a global network, it must have the IP address of the corresponding receiver. But, as we know the packet has to pass through several physical networks before reaching the corresponding receiver. To pass through these physical networks, the sending host requires the physical MAC address of every hop in between sender and receiver & also MAC address of the receiver to deliver the packet. This service of ‘mapping’ the ‘IP address’ of the receiver to the ‘MAC address’ of the receiver is done by ‘Address Resolution Protocol’ (ARP). Below are the four scenarios where the services of ARP protocol are needed: Case 1: A host has a data packet to send it to another host in the ‘same network’ as that of sender host. In this scenario, the IP address of the receiver host needs to mapped with the MAC address of the receiver host. So, sender host will send ARP packet to the receiver host requesting for its Mac address. Case 2: A host has a data packet to send it to another host which is in a ‘different network’ as that of the host. In this scenario, the sender host scans its routing table and discover the IP address of the ‘next router (hop)’ in the path of the destination host. If the sender host doesn’t have a routing table, then it searches for the IP address of the ‘default router. So, the sender host will send the ARP packet to the next-hop router to get its MAC address. Case 3: A router has received a data packet that has to be forwarded to the receiver host which is in ‘another network’. Then the router will search its routing table to find the IP address of the next-hop router in the path. Here, the router that has to forward data packet, send the ARP request to the next router in the path requesting its MAC address. Case 4: A router has received a data packet that is destined to the host in the ‘same network’ as of router. In this scenario, the router has to send an ARP request packet to the destined host requesting its MAC address. How Does Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Work? Whenever a host has to send a packet to any other host it knows the target hosts IP address. You must be wondering; How does a sender host know the IP address of destination host? A host knows the other host by its ‘name’. Like, you know Google by its ‘hostname’ or ‘domain name’ i.e. google.com, you don’t have to worry about its ‘IP address’. It is the ‘DNS server’ who resolve the domain name into the IP address. So, whenever a host has to send a packet to another host. It only knows the target hosts name. DNS resolves the target hosts name into it’s IP address. Thus, we say whenever a host wants to send a packet to target host it knows its IP address. Coming back to the ARP, as we have said that a sender knows the receivers IP address. But, the packet has to pass through the physical network so, it requires the physical MAC address of the target host. The IP protocol asks the ARP protocol to prepare a request packet with senders IP address, senders MAC address, target hosts IP address and the target hosts MAC address field is not filled. The packet is then passed to the data link layer. Here, the packet is encapsulated inside a frame which has source address as sender’s physical address and destination address as a physical broadcast address. As the encapsulation packet has broadcast address in the destination address field, it is received by each host in the network. The target host keeps the packet as it identifies its IP address in the ARP packet. The host other than target host rejects the packet. Now, the target host prepares an ARP reply packet with its physical MAC address. This reply packet is unicast to the sending host. The sender now receives the ARP reply message and thereby now knows the physical MAC address of target host. The sender now passes the IP datagram which has the data for target host to the data link layer where it is encapsulated in a frame with sender’s MAC address as a source address and target hosts MAC address as the destination address and this frame is unicast to the destined target host. Packet Format of ARP After getting the working of ARP let us discuss the packet format of ARP. The figure below shows the ARP packet format: Below we have described the fields of ARP packet: 1. Hardware Type: This field describes the type of network. Actually, each network is assigned an integer which defines its type. Like, Ethernet is assigned the type 1. This is a 16-bit field. 2. Protocol Type: This field is of 16-bit and is used for defining the protocol. 3. Hardware Length: This field defines the length of the MAC address in bytes. This is an 8-bit field. 4. Protocol Length: This is also an 8-bit field and it defines the length of IP address in bytes. 5. Operation: This field defines the type of ARP packet i.e. ARP request (1) or ARP reply (2). This is a 16-bit field. 6. Sender Hardware Address: This field defines the MAC address or the hardware address of the sender. This field has a variable length. 7. Sender Protocol Address: This is a variable-length field and it defines the IP address of the sender. 8. Target Hardware Address: This is a variable-length field and it defines the MAC address of the target host. 9. Target Protocol Address: This a variable-length field and it defines the IP address of the target host. - Address Resolution Protocol is a network layer protocol. - Knowing the IP address of the target host ARP protocol retrieves the MAC address of the target host. - ARP maps 32-bit IP address of the target host to 48-bit Mac address of target host. - ARP request packet is broadcasted in the network. On the other hand, the ARP reply packet is unicast. So, this was all about the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) which dynamically maps the IP address to the MAC address. ARP has a reverse protocol i.e. Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) that maps MAC address to the IP address.
Troubleshooting is an essential skill for all wireless networking professionals. Wireless networks have become a ubiquitous network access technology in the enterprise as well as the home. A wireless network provides convenience and increase in productivity; however, troubleshooting wireless networks can be vastly more complex than troubleshooting traditional wireless LANs. Wired Ethernet LANs are inherently easier to troubleshoot from the following perspectives: • Client configuration: Some, if not all, of the client configuration options such as speed/duplex/DHCP are either automatically negotiated or invisible to the user. When using a wired Ethernet connection, the user simply plugs in a patch cable. For the most ...
Wave of Online Frauds Follow Boston Tragedy, Reports Trend Micro According to Trend Micro the security company, after the terrible bombing of April 15, 2013 during the marathon race at Boston (USA), cyber-criminals have been launching e-mail scams exploiting the incident. In merely 24-hrs since the disastrous event, security researchers at Trend Micro noticed a spate of over 9,000 spam mails connecting to the BlackHole Attack Toolkit while commonly using the tragedy as their subject. A few spam mails depicted the headers "Video of Explosion at the Boston Marathon 2013," or "Aftermath to explosion at Boston Marathon." The junk e-mails merely included one web-link that asked end-users to take down certain file, actually harmful and identified as WORM_KELIHOS.NB obtainable through drive-by downloads. Threat Response Engineer Aisa Escober at TrendLabs says the web-link's Internet Protocol appears different whenever it's accessed, while it bears an association with the discoveries of Kaspersky Lab. There's a common behavior pattern as also identical file-size of the download URL, only the icons utilized along with the filenames become altered, Escober adds. Scmagazineuk.com published this during the 3rd-week of April 2013. Escober further says TrendLab's examination as well reveals that WORM_KELIHOS.NB conceals each-and-every directory that any attached detachable drive contains while substituting them all by one .LNK file depicted as a folder. Consequently, the worm becomes active prior to its opening the real folder. Moreover, Kelihos crafts .LNK files that are included in the contaminated detachable drives using a command: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe F/c "start %cd%\game.exe, adds Escober. The worm can seize credentials from various FTPS i.e. File Transfer Protocol namely FTP Control, P32bit FTP, LeapFTP, FileZilla, BitKinex, SecureFX amongst others. A particularly routine task Kelihos performs is that of garnering electronic mail ids listed on the infected PC. Remarking about the above scams, Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley at Sophos another security company posted that clearly cyber-criminals maintained no limit in acting malicious during their search to locate victims. Detestably further, malware creators as also Web-hackers felt least anxiety in exploiting innocent public that died at the marathon, when solely aiming at infecting PCs to steal identities, resources and money, he asserted. Ibtimes.co.uk published this during the 3rd-week of April 2013. Related article: Web Flaws Among the Top Three Common Vulnerabilities » SPAMfighter News - 01-05-2013
An IT security firm Check Point Software Technologies who are well known for firewalls and other It security products have found malware applications in the Android marketplace which have compromised more than 1 million Google accounts. The majority of these would be free personal email accounts “ @gmail.com” however many others are said to be organisation email accounts used by G Suite (formally known as Google Apps) posing a huge threat to organisations data. Check Point have labelled the malware as Gooligan which has been found in at least 86 apps available in third-party marketplaces. Once a user installs an app containing this malware, it uses a process known as rooting to gain highly privileged system access to devices running version 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and KitKat) and version 5 (Lollipop) of an Android mobile phone, tablet or other device. Once the device is compromised it then download and install software that steals the authentication tokens that allow the phones to access the owner’s Google-related accounts without having to enter a password. This allows cybercriminals to access many of the Google Services on that device including Gmail, Google Photos, Google Docs & sheets, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Keep and other applications as part of G Suite. If your organisation uses G Suite, then staff may have compromised your business data in Google Drive or Gmail, so you should act to rectify the situation. Check Point published a blog with their discoveries, informing the public that: “The infection begins when a user downloads and installs a Gooligan-infected app on a vulnerable Android device. Our research team has found infected apps on third-party app stores, but they could also be downloaded by Android users directly by tapping malicious links in phishing attack messages. After an infected app is installed, it sends data about the device to the campaign’s Command and Control (C&C) server. Gooligan then downloads a rootkit from the C&C server that takes advantage of multiple Android 4 and 5 exploits including the well-known VROOT (CVE-2013-6282) and Towelroot (CVE-2014-3153). These exploits still plague many devices today because security patches that fix them may not be available for some versions of Android, or the patches were never installed by the user. If rooting is successful, the attacker has full control of the device and can execute privileged commands remotely. After achieving root access, Gooligan downloads a new, malicious module from the C&C server and installs it on the infected device. This module injects code into running Google Play or GMS (Google Mobile Services) to mimic user behavior so Gooligan can avoid detection, a technique first seen with the mobile malware HummingBad. The module allows Gooligan to: Steal a user’s Google email account and authentication token information Install apps from Google Play and rate them to raise their reputation Install adware to generate revenue Ad servers, which don’t know whether an app using its service is malicious or not, send Gooligan the names of the apps to download from Google Play. After an app is installed, the ad service pays the attacker. Then the malware leaves a positive review and a high rating on Google Play using content it receives from the C&C server” Director of Android Security Adrian Ludwig said he and other Google officials have worked closely with Check Point over the past few weeks to investigate Gooligan and to protect users against the threat it poses. He said: “We’ve taken many actions to protect our users and improve the security of the Android ecosystem overall,” Ludwig wrote. “These include: revoking affected users’ Google Account tokens, providing them with clear instructions to sign back in securely, removing apps related to this issue from affected devices, deploying enduring Verify Apps improvements to protect users from these apps in the future and collaborating with ISPs to eliminate this malware altogether.” Who is affected Gooligan potentially affects devices on Android 4 and 5, which is over 74% of in-market devices today. About 57% of these devices are located in Asia (including Australia) Image from http://blog.checkpoint.com/2016/11/30/1-million-google-accounts-breached-gooligan/ How do you know if your Google account is breached You can check if your account is compromised by accessing the following web site that we created: https://gooligan.checkpoint.com/. Simply enter email address and it will advise if your account is breached or not. (you can trust entering your email address with CheckPoint, they are the good guys, I can vouch for their products) If your account has been breached, the following steps are required: - Backup all your data on your android device, especially photos. (not including applications as some may be compromised) - A clean installation of an operating system on your mobile device is required (a process called “flashing”). As this is a complex process, we recommend powering off your device and approaching a certified technician, or your mobile service provider, to request that your device be “re-flashed.” - Change your Google account passwords immediately after this process. How to protect your G Suite organisation from these threats As BYOD (Bring Your own Device) is very popular for employees these days, IT departments or small business owners need to put measures in place to protect their company data on staff mobile devices. Here are a few recommendations to protect your organisation’s data. - Enforce 2-step authentication for all Google account. 2-step authentication prevents cybercriminals from logging into your Google account if your email address & password is compromised like in the example above as they require an additional code which is often a sms sent to your mobile. Read more here http://www.onsitehelper.com/blog/99-2-step-authentication - Use Device Management in G Suite admin control panel to allow/deny staff access to G Suite on their mobile devices. Also enforce password policies to protect the allowed devices. Read more here https://support.google.com/a/answer/1734200?hl=en - Setup Chrome management to only allow approved application & extensions to be installed on Chrome webstore. Perform thorough research and testing on Chrome & Android apps before you put it on the allowed list for staff to install on their Chrome browser or Android device. Read more here https://goo.gl/ZqErfl - Implement a 3rd party backup of your G Suite accounts to protect your data. We partner with Spanning backup & Backupify to protect our clients G Suite accounts. Read more here http://www.onsitehelper.com/blog/108-the-importance-of-backups-particularly-when-using-cloud-based-applications/
I am trying to install beEF on the iso version of Kali, and things were going well until I ran into several errors that are preventing it. service: Failed with result 'exit-code'. Apr 16 18:47:27 cerberus systemd: beef-xss.service: Consumed 4.333s CPU time. This error happens when you change the. [] [] You might need to refresh your browser once it opens. [] [] Web UI: http://127.0.0.1:3000/ui/panel [] Hook::3000/hook.js">watch the video Kali Nethunter error - Beef advanced attacks tool Something: Beef linux error \|Error code 40022\| \|BWIN. FATAL ERROR. THE APPLICATION WILL SHUTDOWN\| \|Error interface flags\| \|Beef linux error\| Ethical Hacking (Part 12): Browser Exploitation Framework (BeEF) Out of all the attacks I’ve covered in my articles so far, I think this is one of my worst. I don’t like it because it is so difficult to prevent. The other attacks I’ve shown you have a light at the end of beef linux error tunnel in the sense if you know what the attack is you can put measures in place to prevent it. The only way I know of to stop this attack is to make the browsing experience extremely limited and restricting for users and that isn’t much fun. Browser Exploitation Framework (BeEF) BeEF comes bundled with Kali Linux. I’m going to assume you have access to a Kali Linux instance and if not I recommend setting it up by following my other article, “Ethical Hacking (Part 2): Introducing Kali Linux”. You can also download it here on other Linux variants. The location of BeEF in Kali Linux is, “/usr/share/beef-xss”.[email protected]:~# cd /usr/share/beef-xss We will need to configure BeEF before we are able to use it. Please open, “/usr/share/beef-xss/config.yaml” which is a symbolic link back to “/etc/beef-xss/config.yaml”.[email protected]:/usr/share/beef-xss# vi /etc/beef-xss/config.yaml Please locate the “credentials” section of the configuration.credentials: These are the credentials we will use to access the framework GUI. BeEF won’t start unless you change these, beef linux error. I recommend changing both the username and password to something non-standard and strong. Please locate the “http” section of the configuration.http: debug: false #Thin::Logging.debug, very verbose. Prints also full exception stack trace. beef linux error host: "0.0.0.0" You need to set the host IP of your Kali Linux server where the hacked browser will connect back to. In my case I’m going to set the host to, “192.168.1.2”. Now run BeEF…[email protected]:/usr/share/beef-xss# ./beef [22:07:06][] Browser Exploitation Framework (BeEF) 0.5.0.0 [22:07:06] Site: beefproject.com Jun 09 13:29:26 kali beef5325: 13:29:26 Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing - Third Edition by Vijay Kumar Velu, Robert Beggs BeEF is installed by default in Kali distribution, beef linux error. It is located in the directory. By default, it is not integrated with the Metasploit framework. To integrate BeEF, you will need to perform the following steps: - Edit the main configuration beef linux error located at to read the following: - Edit the file located atbeef linux error. You need to edit the ,and lines to include your IP address and the location for the Metasploit framework. A correctly edited file is shown in the following screenshot: - Startand load the module, as shown in the following . Get Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing - Third Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform. O’Reilly members experience live online training, plus books, videos, and digital content from nearly 200 publishers. [22:07:09] Blog: blog.beefproject.com Jun 09 13:29:26 kali beef5325: 13:29:26 Beef linux error - idea_ Wiki: https://github.com/beefproject/beef/wiki [22:07:06][] Project Creator: Wade Alcorn (@WadeAlcorn) [22:07:06][] BeEF is loading. Wait a few seconds... [22:07:09][] 8 extensions enabled: [22:07:09] _ UI URL: http://192.168.1.2:3000/ui/panel [22:07:09][] RESTful API key: 43f6880f37e0c0b41b1e98935862bb2cf6a63266 [22:07:09][!] [GeoIP] Could not find MaxMind GeoIP database: '/var/lib/GeoIP/GeoLite2-City.mmdb' [22:07:09] Hook URL: http://192.168.1.2:3000/hook.js
Organizations are confronted with various privacy and data security issues as they continue to transition to the digital domain. In addition, organizations must abide by compliance laws and regulations to protect multiple types of data appropriately. 2021 has broken all records for zero-day attacks. Cyber security defenders have found out the highest number ever in this year. *Minimum 66 zero-days have been found in use, almost double the total for 2020, and more than in any other year on record. Regardless of the increased urgency in understanding the threat itself, there […] According to news reports, North Korea has started targeting foreign aerospace, defense and industrial sectors through their sophisticated hackers and hacker groups. There have been growing concerns about the North Korean cyber army, which is estimated to be of 6,000 hackers and handpicked by Pyongyang’s cyber warfare agency. They are trained to infiltrate international banks, […] ‘Crash Override’, a malware with the most cyberpunk name of all time, is a cyberattack tool capable of taking out an entire power grid. Doing justice to its name ‘Crash Override’ is “the most evolved specimen of grid-sabotaging malware ever observed”, as claimed by WIRED. The malware is extremely aggressive and highly customizable, with a […] Cloud computing trend is shifting towards the small business; more and more, small businesses are moving towards cloud computing and its alluring benefits. Many Small businesses have collaborated with MSPs and other private cloud providers, but the fact still remains, “is the small business sector really pulling towards the cloud?” Or is the security risks associated, […]
The open source Mirai botnet code has evolved beyond attacking IoT devices and the new variant of Mirai has been used to attack vulnerable routers around the world. The upgraded Mirai code was first blamed for causing service disruptions for nearly one million Deutsche Telekom customers in Germany, but researchers have found the worm spreading to vulnerable routers around the world, with Brazil and the U.K. being the most heavily impacted countries. "Flashpoint confirms that this malware is a new Mirai variant and its involvement in the recent Deutsche Telekom outage. Flashpoint also assesses with high confidence that this variant is an attempt by one of the existing Mirai botmasters to expand the number of infected devices in their botnet," Flashpoint researchers wrote in a blog post. "This new Mirai variant is using some of the same [command and control servers] used by existing Mirai infrastructure, strongly suggesting that the infected devices are controlled by the same group." The original Mirai botnet code propagated over Telnet in IoT devices that used insecure or default administrator login credentials. According to security researchers from Flashpoint, the new version of Mirai has the added ability to scan for a flaw in the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) service embedded in various routers, many of which are made by Zyxel. "The new Mirai variant utilizes the TR-064 and TR-069 protocols over port 7547 and exploits a known vulnerability to gain control of the device. The protocol TR-069 runs the 'provisioning networks' used by ISPs and telecoms to remotely manage modems and routers in their consumer networks," Flashpoint wrote. "The new Mirai variant exploits these provisioning networks further to freely spread within the modem or router's network 'segment,' which can vary wildly and amount to the size of street, municipality, or entire country." Experts said this is especially worrying because of the previous DDoS attacks performed using Mirai. These botnets were linked to a DDoS attack on the website of security reporter Brian Krebs clocked at 620 Gbps, and another attack with rates up to 1.2 Tbps that took down Dyn DNS servers and impacted websites including PayPal, Twitter, Reddit, GitHub, Amazon, Netflix and Spotify. The attack on Dyn reportedly leveraged a Mirai botnet of just 100,000 devices, and Flashpoint said there could be as many as five million routers vulnerable to the modified version of Mirai. "Some estimates put the total number of devices with port 7547 open at around 41 million, and devices that allow non-ISPs access to provisioning networks number up to five million," Flashpoint wrote. "If even a fraction of these vulnerable devices were compromised they would add considerable power to an existing botnet." Deutsche Telekom has pushed a firmware update for the affected routers in Germany. Craig Young, computer security researcher for Tripwire's Vulnerability and Exposures Research Team, told SearchSecurity the scale of attacks possible with a Mirai botnet is the real threat. "The danger isn't coming from Mirai, but rather from the fact that Mirai offers an easy platform to infect embedded devices. Since embedded devices are generally not running any security software and there is such an abundance of vulnerable devices connected to the internet, the threat comes from scale of attack," Young said. "In the past when botnets were limited to using traditional computing devices as their zombies, it was much easier to recognize and remediate the threat. With embedded devices, most people would never know that there was any problem and would certainly have little idea as to how to remove a virus if they did notice it." However, Chris Carlson, vice president of product management at Qualys, said the scale of attacks from Mirai botnet is made worse because of how easy it is to infect devices. "Traditional DDoS attacks require enslaving PCs, which requires a lot of expertise and work. This slows down the rate at which botnet owners are infected systems under their control," Carlson told SearchSecurity via email. "With Mirai targeting internet-connected and unprotected IoT devices, the botnet owners can add hundreds of thousands or millions of infected devices into their networks at a much faster rate. This scale and speed completely changes the tenor of DDoS attacks against targets -- larger volume attacks for longer periods from larger number of devices -- making it very difficult to stop or mitigate active attacks." Young said he expects Mirai to be a growing problem and although he wouldn't call the situation hopeless, he has "not seen any feasible or realistic plans to get ahead of this threat in the short-term future." "Minimizing external attack surface is a first step. So far, the Mirai variants have utilized worm-like behavior in which only devices attached directly to the internet are affected and therefore systems behind NAT or appropriate firewalls with no ports exposed to the internet are insulated from attack. This is not guaranteed to be true forever, however," Young said. "The full solution to this problem will require action from many parties and most likely both consumers and device makers." Carlson said the open source nature of Mirai means the problems will likely "get worse before it gets better." "We'll see more types of systems being infected from a larger number of threat actors. Additionally, I expect that we'll start to see different forks of Mirai created and extended to target specific systems since the Mirai source code has been published on the internet," Carlson said. "What's interesting about the Mirai botnet compared to other malware attacks, like ransomware, is that users of the infected IoT systems are not significantly impacted (and are not the intended end-victim of the DDoS attack), so there isn't a clear driver for them to patch or update their IoT devices." Dilip Pillaipakkam, vice president and general manager of service provider business at Infoblox, said situational awareness and application of patches, blocking, filtering and other traditional methods are some of the best ways to beat these threats. "The nature of security is defense, and you're always playing from behind. In this arena, until IoT and other internet devices are more securely built, updated, protected by users and ISPs and retired appropriately, we'll never 'catch up' as there will always be more holes to find and exploit," Pillaipakkam told SearchSecurity. "Situational awareness and application of patches, blocking/filtering and other traditional methods are some of the best ways to beat these threats. Further, understanding what is on your network, locking down communications to only those things necessary, knowing where attackers are coming from and how they operate to deploy effective countermeasures, and ensuring you have all your best practices for weathering DDoS deployed, and response plans not only drawn up, but tested." Learn more about IoT botnets connected to DDoS attacks. Find out how a nematode worm could potentially dismantle a Mirai botnet.
Operators behind the Stantinko botnet, which has been active since 2012, have released a new version of their Linux trojan masqueraded as httpd, the legitimate Apache web server process. The new variant was discovered by researchers at security firm Intezer Labs, and is believed to be a part of a broader campaign that takes advantage of compromised Linux servers. The Stantinko botnet is known for targeting Windows operating systems, with campaigns primarily aimed at users in Russia and Ukraine. The Stantinko group’s malware mainly consists of coin-miners and adware botnets. The Stantinko botnet’s operation was detailed by ESET in 2017, at the time the botnet infected nearly half a million computers worldwide. The researchers said that the new httpd Linux trojan was uploaded to VirusTotal on November 7, 2020 from Russia, at the time of the analysis the malware had only one detection in VirusTotal. “Upon execution, the malware will validate a configuration file which is delivered together with the malware on the infected machine. The malware expects the configuration file to be located at “/etc/pd.d/proxy.conf”. If the configuration file does not exist, or if it lacks the required structure, the malware exits without conducting any additional malicious activity,” the report said. The malware then creates a socket and a listener to accept connections from a client. “Once a client connects to the listener, the program calls the on_client_connect function. First, it checks if the request method is GET, POST or NOTIFY. If the request method is GET, the program will reply with a 301 redirect HTTP response containing the redirect_url parameter from the configuration file. This means that if the C&C IP is simply searched, using a browser for instance, the response could be misleading by redirecting to a benign website, leaving no trace of an extra payload that is used in the attack. If the request method is POST or NOTIFY, the malware will build a POST request to send to the C&C server based on the client’s HTTP request headers and content, using the create_post_data function. The program will then call the mysql_server_do_request function which is in charge of sending the POST request to the C&C,” Intezer explained. The researchers noticed some differences between the new variant (v2.17) and old version (v1.2) of the malware. The new version is more simple and has fewer features than the previous release. “Stantinko is the latest malware targeting Linux servers to fly under the radar, joining threats such as Doki, IPStorm and RansomEXX,” the report concludes.
Welcome to the Virus Encyclopedia of Panda Security. It downloads several files from a certain website and uses rootkit techniques in order to hide them. It creates a proxy server and harvests information, such as the connection speed of the affected computer. \|First detected on:\|\|Oct. 25, 2006\| \|Detection updated on:\|\|Oct. 25, 2006\| \|Yes, using TruPrevent Technologies ProxyServer.D is a Trojan that downloads several files from a certain website and uses rootkit techniques in order to hide them. It also installs a driver on the affected computer and creates a proxy server on a random port. Additionally, it attemps to download the ICQ program from a certain website, in order to measure the connection speed of the affected computer and sends a ping to several IP addresses in order to know the speed of response. Then, it sends the gathered information to a certain website. ProxyServer.D does not spread automatically using its own means. It needs an attacking user's intervention in order to reach the affected computer. The means of transmission used include, among others, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, email messages with attached files, Internet downloads, FTP, IRC channels, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, etc. ProxyServer.D is difficult to recognize, as it does not display any messages or warnings that indicate it has reached the computer.>
Proofpoint, a cybersecurity firm has discovered a sextortion scam which is targeting the US residents and includes links in the mail pointing to the ransomware installer. Comparing it to other sextortion campaigns, the scam alleges that it has information gathered over months and compiled in a video. However, when the victim clicks on the link to verify if they were actually secretly recorded they end up installing ransomware “ GandCrab”. Once the user installs ransomware, a payment of $500 is demanded in Bitcoin or Dash. The ransomware was discovered in January 2018 and it is the first ransomware to extort payment in Dash. For the first time this week, we observed a sextortion campaign that also includes a link to #ransomware with #SocialEngineering designed to extort money from recipients. https://t.co/Fol821L2wU pic.twitter.com/PGo9FZfu2p — Proofpoint (@proofpoint) December 7, 2018 Proofpoint researchers say that the cyber criminals are basing their success on lurking fears in panic-stricken victims who will not think twice about clicking on these links. “This particular attack combines multiple layers of social engineering as vulnerable, frightened recipients are tricked into clicking the link to determine whether the sender actually has evidence of illicit activity,” the cybersecurity researchers wrote in a blog post. Proofpoint researcher also found out that the criminals are also increasing their chances of making money if the sextortion attempt fails. For instance, only when the victims seek to see the evidence the ransomware is installed and the device locked. The victims are then again demanded a ransom to unlock it. Spreading False Claims Although, the ransomware creators claim to have the credentials of victims, this is not the reality. In one of the mails the attacker claimed to have the password, though it has not been determined as yet. “The supposed password for the potential victim’s email address in this case appears to be the same as the email account. Therefore, in this case it may simply be a bluff and the attacker does not actually possess the victim’s password. It is claimed that in a minor span of two months GandCrab since it’s discovery has extorted US$600,000 from more than 50,000 victims mostly in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Scandinavia.
Written by MyHow Crack Wifi PasswordWifi has over 750 million users worldwide. Unfortunately, this tech is susceptible to cracking thus, rendering it insecure. There are 10 major ways used by the trick stars to crack Wifi password. These methods are not static, they keep on changing and therefore, it is necessary that you be updated about them. One thing that needs to be noted is that technology is changing rapidly and the new methods are becoming complex every passing day. - Wifi Phishing Wifi Phishing remains the leading method employed by tricksters to crack Wifi passwords. This vector is updated and can be carried out in different fashions. The victim is then lured in to logging in to the account and this is how it becomes easy to get the email address and the passwords that are required to successfully crack Wifi passwords. To make it easy for them to crack Wifi passwords, the cracker downloads the text that enables him to quickly get the victims credentials. - Stealing Users Cookies The other method that is used to crack Wifi passwords is to use the browser to steal the password which is normally stored there. Most of the stealers who use this convenient method, which is equally dangerous, are a software specialist who specializes in capturing the password that had been saved and stored in the victims’ browser. Session hijacking is the other method that is used by crooks to crack Wifi passwords. The method is dangerous and works by stealing the victim’s cookies. Since the cookies are used to authenticate the user on a website, the cracker uses them to access the users’ Wifi account. It is mostly applied in Lan’s. - Side Jacking With Firesheep The other method that is used to crack Wifi passwords and whose popularity is growing is the side jacking with firesheep. This method was common in the last quarter of 2010 and is still being used. For this method to work well, the victim and the attacker must all be on the same Wifi network and hence it targets Wifi users. Mobile phone cracking is also one of the methods used to crack Wifi passwords because some people access Wifi using their mobile devices. In this particular scenario, the victim’s mobile phone is used to gain access to his account. A lot of software is then used to monitor the cell phone. - The DNS Method DNS is also among the many methods used to crack Wifi passwords. The victim and the attacker should be on the same network for the method to work. The attacker uses DNS to change the Wifi formats, a thing that helps him gain access to the victims Wifi account.
Working with Wireless Systems The days of coax running through the room are past. More and more, we are moving to an environment where wireless is the networking topology of choice. To make that environment successful, and to pass the CompTIA exam, you need to understand the 802.11 standards that are applicable, as well as the technologies—the implementations of those standards—in use today. This section looks at the protocols you need to know, as well as the transport layer implementation. IEEE 802.11x Wireless Protocols The IEEE 802.11x family of protocols provides for wireless communications using radio frequency transmissions. The frequencies in use for 802.11 standards are the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz frequency spectrum. Several standards and ...
JPMorgan Chase & Co customers are being targeted in a e-mail “phishing” campaign which is uncommon since it tries to obtain credentials for the bank as well as infect PCs using malware that steals passwords from other sites. The campaign, dubbed “Smash and Grab,” was introduced on Tuesday using a widely distributed email that prompted users to click to see a secure message from JPMorgan, as outlined by security researchers with corporate email supplier Proofpoint Inc. “It looks like they sent it out to lots of people in hopes that some of them might be JPMorgan Chase customers,” said bank spokeswoman Trish Wexler. She explained the bank feels the majority of the spam was halted by filters at large Web providers, adding how the email appeared authentic because the attackers used a screen shot from a genuine email provided by the bank. Users who click the malicious link are instructed to enter credentials for accessing accounts with JPMorgan. Even when they didn’t comply, the site tries to quickly install the Dyre banking Trojan on their PCs, according to Proofpoint. Proofpoint observed about 150,000 emails from the group last Tuesday, the first day it noticed the campaign among its customers in the Fortune 500 and higher education. This makes it a reasonably significant campaign, but the major efforts involve sending more than 1 million pieces of spam in a couple of days to Proofpoint clients. The firm manages over 100 million email accounts.
Home / malware First posted on 23 April 2019. HackTool:Win32/Fgdump is also known as W32/Trojan2.MHUK, W32/Suspicious_Gen2.AZQUW, Tool.Pwdump.82, PWCrack-Pwdump, Trojan.Win32.Generic.521A8E67, PasswordCrack, Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT, Pwdump, Application/Pwdump.J. HackTool:Win32/Fgdump is a tool used to write files to a remote computer, in a specified share or directory. While not inherently malicious, the tool has the capability to provide an avenue via which malicious applications can infect other computers. Analysis by Matt McCormack Last update 23 April 2019
The Connections Between MiniDuke, CosmicDuke and OnionDuke In September, we blogged about CosmicDuke leveraging timely, political topics to deceive the recipient into opening the malicious document. After a more detailed analysis of the files we made two major discoveries. Based on emails that we found from VirusTotal, at least one European Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been targeted. Here is a redacted version of one of the emails: It’s heartwarming to see how kind the attackers are: when you open the email attachment, the Word document helps you enable macros by instructing you to click ‘Enable Content’. Once the victim enables macros the system gets infected with CosmicDuke, which brings us to our second discovery: in addition to the usual infostealer features, the CosmicDuke executables also install MiniDuke. In our analysis released in July we mentioned that CosmicDuke seems to be connected to MiniDuke because both malware families use the same loader which has been exclusively used by the MiniDuke group. The CosmicDuke samples that infect the system with MiniDuke give us further evidence that the same actor is behind both malware families. Looking at the targets of malware campaigns often helps us understand who might be behind the operations. In this sense, CosmicDuke is quite interesting. The malware has a distinctly dual nature: it targets people involved with illegal substances but also high-profile organizations like government agencies. This same kind of duality can also be seen in a related case, OnionDuke. When we first blogged about OnionDuke in November, we mentioned that OnionDuke is connected to MiniDuke through the use of shared command and control infrastructure. We also mentioned that OnionDuke appears to be used for two distinct purposes: in targeted attacks against high-profile targets such as government agencies and interestingly also in mass infection campaigns against Tor users and downloaders of torrent files. Further research has shown that not only can the victims of OnionDuke be clearly divided into two groups, but the versions of OnionDuke used and the command and control infrastructure used are also similarly divisible. In the mass infection campaigns of OnionDuke, the attackers have used compromised web servers and free hosting providers for command and control. In these campaigns, the victim computer has been infected with a limited backdoor version of OnionDuke whose main purpose is to contact the C&C server to download and execute additional components. These downloaded components then perform tasks such as collecting system information and user credentials. On the contrary, in the attacks on high-profile targets, the C&C infrastructure used by OnionDuke has been solely owned and operated by the attackers. This infrastructure is also largely shared with known MiniDuke infrastructure. In these cases, the attackers have used a much more full-featured version of OnionDuke that doesn’t need to download any additional components to perform its tasks. Importantly, this division of tactics perfectly aligns with the division of victims. We have shown a connection between MiniDuke, OnionDuke, and CosmicDuke. We have also observed an interesting duality in the uses of OnionDuke and CosmicDuke. The question then is: what does all this mean? Like Kaspersky pointed out in their excellent blog post, one explanation is that CosmicDuke is used as a “legal spyware” tool by law enforcement agencies – and interestingly Kaspersky observed “victims” involved with illegal substances only in Russia. Our data supports this observation. Moreover, none of the high-profile targets of CosmicDuke that we’ve seen have been from Russia – but what these targets have in common is that their interests aren’t exactly aligned with Russia. Likewise, similar distinctions hold true for OnionDuke suggesting it may be part of the same “collection” of spyware tools. Considering the victims of the law enforcement use case seem to be from Russia, and none of the high-profile victims are exactly pro-Russian, we believe that a Russian government agency is behind these operations. “EU sanctions against Russia over Ukraine crisis“ .docm: 82448eb23ea9eb3939b6f24df46789bf7f2d43e3 “A Scottish ‘Yes’ to independence“ .docm: c86b13378ba2a41684e1f93b4c20e05fc5d3d5a3 32-bit dropper DLL: 241075fc1493172c47d881bcbfbf21cfa4daa42d 64-bit dropper DLL: 51ac683df63ff71a0003ca17e640bbeaaa14d0aa CosmicDuke-MiniDuke combo: 7ad1bef0ba61dbed98d76d4207676d08c893fc13 OnionDuke limited backdoor: b491c14d8cfb48636f6095b7b16555e9a575d57f OnionDuke full backdoor: d433f281cf56015941a1c2cb87066ca62ea1db37 On 07/01/15 At 02:38 PM
- Nmap phases - Scanning top ports with Nmap - Specifying a port with Nmap - Running a fast scan with Nmap - Showing IP ranges opened ports with Nmap - OS detection using Nmap - Aggressive OS detection using Nmap - Saving Nmap results Note: Remember to replace the used IPs addresses and network devices for yours. About Nmap phases: Nmap Security Port Scanner has 10 stages during the scanning process: Script pre-scanning > Target enumeration > Host discovery (ping scanning) > Reverse-DNS resolution > Port scanning > Version detection > OS detection > Traceroute > Script scanning > Output > Script post-scanning. Script pre-scanning: This phase is optional and does not take place in default scans, the “Script pre scanning” option is to call scripts from the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) for the pre scanning phase like dhcp-discover. Target enumeration: In this phase, the first one in default scan methods, nmaps only incorporates information on the targets to scan such as IP addresses, hosts, IP ranges, etc. Host discovery (ping scanning): In this phase nmap learns what targets are online or reachable. Reverse-DNS resolution: in this phase nmap will look for hostnames for the IP addresses. Port Scanning: Nmap will discover ports and their status: open, closed or filtered. Version detection: in this phase nmap will try to learn the version of the software running in open ports discovered in the previous phase, like what version of apache or ftp. OS detection: nmap will try to learn the target’s OS. Traceroute: nmap will discover the target’s route on the network or all routes in the network. Script Scanning: This phase is optional, in this phase NSE scripts are executed, NSE scripts can be executed before the scan, during the scan and after it, but are optional. Output: Nmap shows us information on the gathered data. Script post-scanning: optional phase to run scripts after the scan was finished. Note: for more information on nmap’s phases visit https://nmap.org/book/nmap-phases.html Scanning top ports with Nmap: Now let’s use the parameter –top-ports to scan the 5 top ports of the IP range 172.31.1.* including all possible addresses for the last octet. Nmap top ports are based on the most common services ports used. To scan the top 5 ports run: Nmap: calls the program –top-ports 5: limits the scan to 5 top ports, top ports are the most used ports, you can edit the number. The following example is the same but we use the wildcard () to define an IP range from 1 to 255, nmap will scan all them: Specifying a port with Nmap To specify a port the option -p is used, to carry a scan to check a ftp of all IP addresses 172.31.1. (with wildcard) execute: Nmap: calls the program -p 21: defines port 21 *: IP range from 1 to 255. Running a fast scan with Nmap: To run a Fast scan on all ports on devices belonging to an IP you need to apply the -F option: The following command with parameter –open will show all ports opened on devices within an IP range: Showing IP ranges opened ports with Nmap: OS detection using Nmap: To instruct Nmap to detect the target operating system (OS) run: Nmap detected a Linux Operating System and it’s kernel. Aggressive OS detection using Nmap: For a more aggressive OS detection you can run the following command: Saving Nmap results: To instruct Nmap to save results as txt you can use the -oN option as shown in the image below: The command above creates the file “result.txt” with the following format: If you want to export results as XML use the options -oX instead. I hope this tutorial was useful as an introduction to nmap network scanning, For more information on Nmap type “man nmap”. Keep following LinuxHint for more tips and updates on Linux.
Hackers are evading traditional detection applications with a new approach called Application program interface hooking. LUKE JENNINGS, Chief Research Officer for Countercept at MWR InfoSecurity, takes a look at what API hooking is and how it can be thwarted. Traditional malware detection and forensic investigation techniques typically focus on detecting malicious native executables on disk, and performing disk forensics to uncover evidence of historical actions on a system. In response, many threat actors have shifted their offensive techniques to avoid writing to disk, staying resident only in memory. Consequently, the ability to effectively analyse live memory for evidence of compromise and to gather additional forensic evidence has become increasingly important. Application program interface (API) hooking is one of the memory-resident techniques cyber criminals are increasingly using. The process involves intercepting function calls in order to monitor and/or change the information passing back and forth between them. There are many reasons, both legitimate and malicious, why using this might be desirable. In the case of malware, the API hooking process is commonly considered to be ‘rootkit’ functionality and is mostly used to hide evidence of its presence on the system from other processes, and to spy on sensitive data. How are the cyber criminals using API hooking? There are two common use cases for the malicious use of API hooking. Firstly, it can be used to spy on sensitive information and so they use it to intercept sensitive data, such as communications with the keyboard to log keystrokes including passwords that are typed by a user, or sensitive network communications before they are transmitted. This includes the ability to intercept data encrypted using protocols such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) prior to the point at which they are protected, in order to capture passwords and other sensitive data before it is transmitted. Secondly, they modify the results returned from certain API calls in order to hide the presence of their malware. This commonly may involve file-system or registry related API calls to remove entries used by the malware, to hide its presence from other processes. Not only can cyber criminals implement API hooking in a number of ways, the technique can also be deployed across a wide range of processes on a targeted system. Tackling malicious API hooking One way cyber security teams can detect the hidden traces of API hooking and other similar techniques is through memory analysis frameworks such as Volatility. Volatility is an open-source framework and the de facto standard toolset for performing memory analysis techniques against raw system memory images, useful in forensic investigations and malware analysis. The Volatility framework is very valuable when performing an in-depth investigation of systems on which day-to-day compromises have been detected. While memory analysis can be an incredibly powerful and useful technique, it does not come without its challenges. One hurdle to consider when deploying memory analysis is the labour intensity it requires. Memory analysis is a highly skilled and time-intensive technique typically performed on one image at a time. This can be very effective when performing a dedicated investigation of a serious compromise, where the systems involved are known and relatively small in number. However, the challenge arises when trying to use memory analysis at scale to detect compromises on a large enterprise network in the absence of any other evidence. Another obstacle to be aware of when implementing memory analysis is legitimate ‘bad’ behaviour. There are plenty of examples of hooking techniques being used by malware for malicious purposes. Nevertheless, there are also many cases of these techniques being used for legitimate, above-board purposes. In particular, technologies such as data loss prevention and antivirus often target the same functions for hooking as malware does. Without the techniques and experience to quickly separate legitimate injection and hooking from malicious behaviour, a great deal of time can be wasted. Successful attack detection and response As a first step in dealing with techniques like this, organisations need the capability in place to easily retrieve system memory images from suspect machines to allow rapid response and aid forensic investigation. However, this can generally only be used in a reactive manner. To perform effective attack detection and response at scale specifically with regard to these techniques, an ability to conduct memory analysis proactively at scale across an enterprise network is required, which is where toolsets continuously conducting live memory analysis and reporting on suspicious findings are required. This will enable the proactive discovery of unknown memory-resident malware without any prior knowledge or signatures. Good Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software that offers live memory analysis capabilities at scale are required to proactively detect the direct use of techniques such as live memory analysis. Additionally, when gathering results at scale, approaches such as anomaly detection can help greatly by drawing a dividing line between API hooking that is common across the network, probably due to security software in use, and anomalous API hooking that seems present only in a few isolated cases. Traditional memory forensics using a tool such as Volatility can then be used in order to investigate, in detail, systems exhibiting suspicious behaviour. Many malware families have moved to using techniques such as API hooking in a stealthy attempt to avoid traditional security solutions and achieve certain end goals, such as spying on passwords. The 2015 Verizon Data Breach Report found that “malware is part of the event chain in virtually every security incident”. It also reported that “70-90% of malware samples are unique to an organisation” and that “organisations would need access to all threat intelligence indicators in order for the information to be helpful.” Given these findings, it is obvious that having an effective technique for discovering previously unseen malware on your network is extremely important. Overall, memory analysis can be used to uncover some, not all, of the stealth techniques used by modern malware families. However, it is an important capability to have in order to detect compromises using modern memory-resident malware. Android Go puts reliable smartphones in budget pockets Nokia, Vodacom and Huawei have all launched entry-level smartphones running the Android Go edition, and all deliver a smooth experience, writes BRYAN TURNER. Three new and notable Android Go smartphones have recently hit the market, namely the Nokia 1, the Vodafone Smart Kicka 4 and the Huawei Y3 (2018). These phones run one of the most basic versions of Android while still delivering a fairly smooth user experience. Historically, consumers purchasing smartphones in the budget bracket would have a hit-and-miss experience with processing speed, smoothness of user interface, and app stability. The Google-supported Android Go edition operating system optimises the user experience by stripping out non-important visual effects to speed up the phone. Thish allows for more memory to be used by apps. Google also ensures that all smartphones running Android Go will receive feature and security updates as they are released by Google. This is a major selling point for these smartphones, as users of this smartphone will always be running the latest software, with virtually no manufacturer bloatware. Vodafone Smart Kicka 4 At the lowest entry-level, the Vodafone Smart Kicka 4 performs well as a communicator for emails and WhatsApp messages. The 4” screen represents a step up for entry-level Android phones, which were previously standardised at 3.5”. The display is bright and very responsive, while the limited screen real estate leaves the navigation keys off the screen as touch buttons. It uses 3G connectivity, which might seem like an outdated technology, but is good enough to stream SD videos and music. Vodacom has also thrown in some data gifts if the smartphone is activated before the end of September 2018. Its camera functionalities might be a slight let down for the aspirant Instagrammer, with a 2MP rear flash camera and a 0.3MP selfie snapper. Speed wise, the keyboard pops up quickly, which is a huge improvement from the Smart Kicka 3. However, this phone will not play well with graphics-intensive games. Next up is the Nokia 1, which adds a much better 5MP camera, improved battery life and a bigger 4.5” screen. It supports LTE, which allows this smartphone to download and upload at the speed of flagships. It also sports the Nokia brand name, which many consumers trust. Although the front camera is 2MP, the quality is extremely grainy, even with good lighting. This disqualifies this smartphone for the social media selfie snapper, but the 5MP rear camera will work for the landscape and portrait photographer. The screen also redeems this smartphone, providing a display which represents colours truly and has great viewing angles. Xpress-on back covers allows the use of interchangeable, multi-coloured back covers, which has proven to be a successful sales point for mid-range smartphones in the past. Huawei Y3 (2018) The most capable of the Android Go edition competitors, the Huawei Y3 (2018) packs an even bigger screen at 5”, as well as an improved 8MP rear camera and HD video recording. The screen is the brightest and most vibrant of the three smartphones, but seems to be calibrated to show colours a little more saturated than they actually are. Nevertheless, the camera outperforms the other smartphones with good colour replication and great selfie capabilities via the 2MP front camera – far superior to the Nokia 1 despite the same spec. LTE also comes standard with this smartphone and Vodacom throws in 4G/LTE data goodies until the end of September 2018. The battery, however, is not removable and may only be replaced by a warranty technician. Comparing the 3 All three smartphones have removable back covers, which provide access to the battery, SIM card and SD card slots. The smartphones have Micro USB ports on the bottom with headphone jacks on the top. The built-in speakers all performed well, with the Y3 (2018) housing an exceptionally loud built-in speaker. Although all at different price points, all three phones remain similar in performance and speed. The differentiators are apparent in the components, like camera quality and screen quality. It would be fair to rank the quality of the camera and battery life by respective market prices. The Vodafone Smart Kicka 4 performed well, for its R399 retail price. The Nokia 1, on the other hand, lags quite a bit in features when compared to the Huawei Y3 (2018), bwith oth retailing at R999. SA gets digital archive As the world entered the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth on Mandela Day, 18 July 2018, South Africa celebrated the launch of a digital living archive. The southafrica.co.za site carries content about the country’s collective heritage in South Africa’s eleven official languages. Designed as a nation building, educational and brand promotion web based tool, the free-to-view platform features award-winning photographic and written content by leading South African photographers, authors, academics and photojournalists. The emphasis is on quality, credible, factual content that celebrates a collective heritage in terms of the following: Cultural Heritage; Natural Heritage; Education; History; Agriculture; Industry; Mining; and Travel. At the same time as reflecting on the nation’s history, southafrica.co.za celebrates South Africa’s natural, cultural and economic assets so that the youth can learn about their nation in their home language. Southafrica.co.za Founder and CEO Hans Gerrizen conceptualised southafrica.co.za as a means for youth and communities from outlying areas to benefit from the digital age in terms of the web tool’s empowering educational component. “We can only stand to deepen our collective experience of democracy and become a more forward planning nation if we know facts about our nation’s past and present in everyone’s home language,” he says. Southafrica.co.za, with sister company Siyabona Africa, is the organiser and sponsor of the Mandela: 100 Moments photographic exhibition that runs until 30 September at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront-based Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island. The 3-month exhibition, which runs daily from 08h00 until 15h00, is showcasing one hundred iconic Nelson Mandela images taken by veteran South African photojournalist and self-taught lensman Peter Magubane.
MAN page from RedHat 7.X nessus-server-1.0.7a-1.i386.rpm Section: User Manuals (8) Updated: April 2000Index nessus-adduser - add a user in the nessusd userbase The Nessus Security Scannercomes with its own user base which contains the list of who canuse the services of nessusd, and what restriction (orrules) each user has. nessus-adduseris a simple program which will add a user in the proper nessusdconfiguration files, and will send a signal to nessusd if it isrunning to notify it of the changes. The program is straightforward and asks for the following items: - * Login - the login name of the nessusd user to add - * Password - the password that the user will use to connect to nessusd - * Authentification type - the authenfication method the client will use. The recommandedmethod is 'cipher'. However, if you compiled nessusd without the cipher support or if you are using a Nessus client which does notsupport the cipher layer, you'll have to use 'plaintext' - * Rules - the set of rules to apply to the user. See below. Each user has his own set of rules. Rules are here to restrictthe rights of the users. For instance, you can add user 'joe' sothat he can only test the host '192.168.1.1', whereas you can add user 'bob' so that he can test whatever IP address he wishes. Eeach rule fits on one line. A user can have an unlimited amount ofrules (and can even have no rule at all). The syntax is : Wheremaskis the CIDR netmask of the rule. Thedefaultstatement must be the last rule and defines the policy of the user. The following rule set will allow the user to test 192.168.1.0/24,192.168.3.0/24 and 172.22.0.0/16, but nothing else : The following rule set will allow the user to test whatever he wants,except the network 192.168.1.0/24 : The keywordlient_iphas been defined, and is replaced at run time by the IP addressof the nessusd user. For instance, if you want your users to be ableto only be able to scan the system they come from, then you wantthem to have the following ruleset : MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE NESSUS PROJECT The canonical places where you will find more information about the Nessus project are : http://www.nessus.org nessus-adduser was quickly written by Renaud Deraison <deraisonAATTcvs.nessus.org> nessus-adduser creates temporary files in $TMPDIR/. If this variable is notset, then it will use /var/tmp which may be a security riskdepending of your configuration. If you set your TMPDIR variable to /tmp, then you are in troubles - SEE ALSO - MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE NESSUS PROJECT This document was created byman2html,using the manual pages.
Dependency injection is a software architecture term that refers to the concept of a framework or runtime “injecting” an external dependency into another piece of software. Handling this process is a core requirement for an extensibility framework. Structural matching, also sometimes referred to as duck typing, is a style of feature discovery and typing in which a host determines the type of an object based on the properties and methods it exposes as opposed to its actual type in the object-oriented sense. Finally, naming and activation is the “last-mile” feature that puts all the pieces together and enables an application to load and run the plug-in code predictably. When all three of these mechanisms are in place, you have a ...
Footprinting is the ability to obtain essential information about an organization. Commonly called network reconnaissance. Result Gather information includes: –The technologies that are being used such as, Internet, Intranet, Remote Access and the –To explored the security policies and procedures –take an unknown quality and reduce it –Take a specific range of domain names, network blocks and individual IP addresses of a system that is directly connected to the Internet This is done by employing various computer security techniques, as: • DNS queries nslookup, dig, Zone Transfer • Network enumeration • Network queries • Operating system identification • Organizational queries When used in the computer security lexicon, "footprinting" generally refers to one of the pre-attack phases; tasks performed prior to doing the actual attack. Some of the tools used for footprinting areSam Spade, nslookup, traceroute, Nmap and neotrace. • Ping sweeps • Point of contact queries • Port Scanning • Registrar queries (WHOIS queries) • SNMP queries • World Wide Web spidering Information to Gather Attacker’s point of view Identify potential target systems Identify which types of attacks may be useful on target systems Defender’s point of view Know available tools May be able to tell if system is being footprinted, be more prepared for Vulnerability analysis: know what information you’re giving away, what weaknesses you have Tools - Linux Some basic Linux tools - lower level utilities arp, netstat (also local system) Tools – Linux (2) wireshark (packet sniffing) nmap (port scanning) - more later Go to System / Administration / Network Tools – get interface to collection of tools: ping, netstat, traceroute, port scan, nslookup, finger, whois Tools - Windows Sam Spade (collected network tools) Wireshark (packet sniffer) Command line tools # traceroute ns1.target-company.com traceroute to ns1.target-company.com (xxx.xx.xx.xx), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 fw-gw (184.108.40.206) 0.978 ms 0.886 ms 0.875 ms 2 s1-0-1-access (220.127.116.11) 4.816 ms 5.275 ms 3.969 ms 3 dallas.tx.core1.fastlane.net (18.104.22.168) 4.622 ms 9.439 ms 3.977 ms 4 atm8-0-024.CR-1.usdlls.savvis.net (22.214.171.124) 6.564 ms 5.639 ms 6.681 ms 5 Serial1-0-1.GW1.DFW1.ALTER.NET (126.96.36.199) 7.148 ms 6.595 ms 7.371 ms 6 103.ATM3-0.XR2.DFW4.ALTER.NET (188.8.131.52) 11.861 ms 11.669 ms 6.732 ms 7 184.108.40.206 (220.127.116.11) 10.565 ms 25.423 ms 25.369 ms 8 dfw2-core2-pt4-1-0.atlas.digex.net (18.104.22.168) 13.289 ms 10.585 ms 9 dfw2-core1-fa8-1-0.atlas.digex.net (22.214.171.124) 44.951 ms 241.358 ms 10 swbell-net.demarc.swbell.net (126.96.36.199) 12.242 ms 13.821 ms 27.618 ms 11 ded2-fa1-0-0.rcsntx.swbell.net (188.8.131.52) 25.299 ms 11.295 ms 23.958 ms 12 target-company-818777.cust-rtr.swbell.net (151.164.x.xxx) 52.104 ms 24.306 ms 17.248 ms 13 ns1.target-company.com (xxx.xx.xx.xx) 23.812 ms 24.383 ms 27.489 ms Traceroute - Network Mapping Hosts Inside DMZ Domain Name: UWEC.EDU University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire 105 Garfield Avenue Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004 Computing and Networking Services 105 Garfield Ave Eau Claire, WI 54701 Scanning can be compared to a thief checking all the doors and windows of a house he wants to break into. Scanning- The art of detecting which systems are alive and reachable via the internet and what services they offer, using techniques such as ping sweeps, port scans and operating system identification, is called scanning. The kind of information collected here has to do with the 1) TCP/UDP services running on each system identified. 2) System architecture (Sparc, Alpha, x86) 3) Specific IP address of systems reachable via the internet. 4) Operating System type. ping sweep is a method that can establish a range of IP addresses which map to live hosts. ICMP Sweeps (ICMP ECHO requests) Non Echo ICMP ICMP ECHO request ICMP ECHO reply ICMP ECHO reply ICMP ECHO reply Can Distinguish between UNIX and WINDOWS machine UNIX machine answers to requests directed to the network WINDOWS machine will ignore it. NON – ECHO ICMP Example ICMP Type 13 – (Time Stamp) Originate Time Stamp - The time the sender last touched the message before sending Receive Time Stamp - The echoer first touched it on receipt. Transmit Time Stamp - The echoer last touched on sending it. Depends on ICMP PORT UNREACHABLE message. UDP data gram ICMP PORT UNREACHABLE • Routers can drop UDP packets •UDP services may not respond when correctly probed •Firewalls are configured to drop UDP •Relies on fact that non-active UDP port will respond Port Scanning Types TCP Connect() Scan RST/ACK (port not listening) A connection is terminated after the full length connection establishment process has been completed Port Scanning Type TCP SYN Scan (half open scanning) RST/ACK (port not listening) We immediately tear down the connection by sending a RESET Port Scanning Type A scanning technique family doing the following Pass through filtering rules. Not to be logged by the targeted system logging mechanism Try to hide themselves at the usual site / network traffic. The frequently used stealth mapping techniques are. “Random” Port Scan Randomizing the sequence of ports probed may prevent detection. Some hackers are very patient and can use network scanners that spread out the scan over a long period of time. The scan rate can be, for example, as low as 2 packets per day per target site. In case of TCP the 8 octets of data (minimum fragment size) are enough to contain the source and destination port numbers. This will force the TCP flags field into the second fragment. Some network scanners include options for Decoys or spoofed address in their If multiple IPs probe a target network, each one probes a certain service on a certain machine in a different time period, and therefore it would be nearly impossible to detect these scans. Operating System Detection DNS HINFO Record The host information record is a pair of strings identifying the host’s hardware type and the operating system www IN HINFO “Sparc Ultra 5” “Solaris 2.6” One of the oldest technique Operating System Detection TCP/IP Finger Printing The ideas to send specific TCP packets to the target IP and observe the response which will be unique to certain group or individual operations. Types of probes used to determine the OS type The FIN Probe, The Bogus Flag Probe, TCP initial sequence number sampling, Don’t Fragment bit, TCP initial window, ACK value, ICMP error Message Quenching, ICMP message quoting, ICMP error message Echoing Integrity, Type of service, fragmentation handling, TCP options Gather information about a remote network protected by a firewall Mapping open ports on a firewall Mapping a network behind a firewall If the firewall’s policy is to drop ICMP ECHO Request/Reply this technique is very effective. How does Firewalking work? It uses a traceroute-like packet filtering to determine whether or not a particular packet can pass through a packet-filtering device. Traceroute is dependent on IP layer(TTL field), any transport protocol can be used the same way(TCP, UDP, and ICMP). What Firewalking needs? The IP address of the last known gateway before the firewall takes place. Serves as WAYPOINT The IP address of a host located behind the Used as a destination to direct packet flow Getting the Waypoint If we try to traceroute the machine behind a firewall and get blocked by an ACL filter that prohibits the probe, the last gateway which responded(the firewall itself can be determined) Firewall becomes the waypoint. Getting the Destination Traceroute the same machine with a different traceroute-probe using a different transport protocol. If we get a response That particular traffic is allowed by the firewall We know a host behind the firewall. If we are continuously blocked, then this kind of traffic Sending packets to every host behind the packet- filtering device can generate an accurate map of a How to identify/avoid threats? Long-standing rule for Unix System administrators to turn off any services that aren’t in use For personal workstations! Hackers have access to utilities to scan the servers but so do you!. Hackers look in for open ports. So we can our servers first and know what the hackers will see and close any ports that shouldn’t be open. Some tools to help us It is a utility that scans a particular server and informs us which ports are open. It is a utility that will scan the network and help us decode what is going on. We can watch the network traffice and find out if hackers can see anything that will help them break into our systems. Introduction to Enumeration Enumeration extracts information about: –Resources or shares on the network –User names or groups assigned on the network –Last time user logged on Before enumeration, you use Port scanning and –To Determine OS being used NBT (NetBIOS over TCP/IP) –is the Windows networking protocol –used for shared folders and printers –Tool for enumerating Microsoft OSs Null Session Information Using these NULL connections allows you to gather the following information from the host: –List of users and groups –List of machines –List of shares –Users and host SIDs (Security Identifiers) •From brown.edu (link Ch 6b) Demonstration of Null Sessions Start Win 2000 Pro Share a folder From a Win XP command prompt –NET VIEW ip-address Fails –NET USE ip-addressIPC$ "" /u:"" •Creates the null session –NET VIEW ip-address Works now Produces a graphical view of NetBIOS running on a network Enumerates any shares running on the computer Verifies whether access is available for shared resource using its Universal Naming Convention (UNC) name Costs about $250 per machine (link Ch 6i) Enumeration tool for Microsoft systems Produced by Foundstone, Inc. Allows user to connect to a server and “dump” the –Permissions for shares –Permissions for printers –Permissions for the Registry –Users in column or table format –Policies and rights Excellent GUI product for managing and securing Shows shares and user logon names for Windows servers and domain controllers Displays graphical representation of: –Microsoft Terminal Services –Microsoft Windows Network –Web Client Network This is the client part of Nessus Allows enumeration of different OSs on a large network –Be sure Nessus server is up and running –Open the NessusWX client application –To connect your client with the Nessus server •Click Communications, Connect from the menu on the session •Enter server’s name •Log on the Nessus server –NetBIOS names in use –Vulnerabilities with shared resources •Also offers solutions to those vulnerabilities Enumerating the NIX Operating System –Most popular tool for security testers –Finds out who is logged in to a NIX system –Determine owner of any process –Another important *NIX enumeration tool
The following techniques serve to illustrate methods for obtaining C2 communication in a particular Cylance protected environment. The configuration of the centralized infrastructure and the endpoint agents were not inspected prior to testing. The environment may exhibit configuration errors and may not conform with best practice for deployment of Cylance infrastructure. However, in our experience, misconfiguration is not uncommon and more times than not tends to have catastrophic results with regard to the overall security posture of an environment. This is the reason that we test deployments before accepting their stated protection levels at face value. In addition, these posts serve to illustrate the necessity for defense-in-depth. In each instance where C2 establishment was successful, a secondary or tertiary control could have (and should have) compensated for the failure of the initial control. Layered defense is a critical element of protection in any environment and organizations must face the fact that there is no silver bullet for information security. See part one, bypassing with SVAgent here and part two about bypassing with DNSCat2 here. The third C2 method that went undetected by Cylance was raw netcat. In this case, the listener was a raw netcat shell shoveled outbound. The netcat executable was downloaded to the target host and executed as seen below. On the C2 server, netcat was configured to listen on this port for inbound communication. Upon connection from the end host, a Windows shell was returned. A smart attacker might upload the Nmap port of netcat, named Ncat, which support TLS encryption. This would make the C2 channel all the more difficult to detect. Unlike the previous C2 channels, raw netcat C2 does not conform with a specific protocol. In addition to the prior recommendations of filtering downloads and application whitelisting, this communication can be defeated through protocol inspection. If the boundary firewall supports application-level proxies that check for protocol conformance this traffic will be dropped. Nishang ICMP C2 Channel The final non-traditional method of C2 that went undetected by Cylance was communication using ICMP payloads. In this case, the PowerShell script Invoke-PowerShellIcmp.ps1 from the Nishang framework was used. Investigating the deployed configuration of Cylance revealed that it was configured to prevent execution of any content through the native PowerShell.exe interpreter. However, the PowerShell ISE was available on this host. As a result, the script could be loaded into the ISE and its functions exposed by either clicking the play button or using the familiar import-module syntax. In this instance, the play button was used. Once the PowerShell script was loaded, it was invoked as seen below. The waiting C2 server caught the callback from the client granting shoveled shell access to the target computer. In this case, the organization can make a decision regarding ICMP in general. If users don’t need to ping hosts on the internet, the organization can simply drop all outbound ICMP messages from internal hosts. While PowerShell ISE worked fine for this script, it should be noted that any script that includes embedded calls to the native PowerShell interpreter should be avoided. In addition, multi-threaded scripts may exhibit this same issue if the native interpreter is referenced. The following PowerShell scripts were found to work when launched through the PowerShell ISE. The CylancePROTECT script control module only blocked calls to the native interpreter. Access to both cmd.exe and PowerShell_ise.exe should be restricted in the same fashion seen for PowerShell.exe. Both of these tools provide enormous capability to an attacker for pivoting within an environment. Ready to learn more? Level up your skills with affordable classes from Antisyphon! Available live/virtual and on-demand
What Is Process Hollowing? \| How It Is Used By Attacker What Is Process Hollowing Process hollowing is a sophisticated security exploit used by attackers to replace legitimate code in an executable file with malicious code. This technique allows the attacker to make a seemingly legitimate process execute their malicious code. Process hollowing attacks are often initiated through phishing emails or other means of social engineering to trick users into executing a command that downloads and installs the attacker’s malware. How It works During a process hollowing attack, the attacker typically uses malware to manipulate a software program, making it appear to perform a legitimate action, such as adding a pause during the launch process. While the program is paused, the attacker removes the original code from the executable file and replaces it with their malicious code. This process is known as hollowing. When the program resumes, it executes the attacker’s code before continuing with its normal operations. By hollowing out a legitimate executable file, the attacker can evade detection by security software, as the modified file still appears trustworthy. Prevention And Detection Preventing and detecting process hollowing attacks can be challenging due to their ability to exploit required system processes and evade detection. However, there are several strategies that can help mitigate the risk: 1. Implement Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions EDR tools provide real-time monitoring and response capabilities to detect and investigate suspicious activities, including process hollowing. These tools can help identify and mitigate attacks before they cause significant damage. 2. Keep software and operating systems updated Regularly patching and updating software and operating systems is crucial in preventing process hollowing attacks. By addressing known vulnerabilities, organizations can reduce the risk of exploitation. 3. Use reputable security software Deploying robust antivirus and antimalware solutions that are regularly updated can help detect and block malicious code, including process hollowing techniques. 4. Educate employees about phishing attacks Training employees to be vigilant about suspicious emails, links, and attachments can help prevent process hollowing attacks. By raising awareness and promoting good email hygiene, organizations can reduce the likelihood of successful social engineering attempts. 5. Post-Breach Strategies Given the difficulty in preventing and detecting process hollowing attacks, many security vendors recommend adopting post-breach strategies to deal with such attacks. One emerging market segment addressing this is Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). EDR focuses on creating tools that detect and investigate suspicious actions and other problems on hosts and endpoints. These tools provide organizations with the ability to respond quickly and effectively to process hollowing attacks, minimizing the impact and preventing further compromise. In addition to the aforementioned strategies, implementing the following best practices can further enhance defense against process hollowing attacks: 1. Enable strong access controls: Limit user privileges and restrict access to critical systems and sensitive data. By minimizing the attacker’s ability to execute malicious code, organizations can mitigate the impact of process hollowing attacks. 2. Monitor system behavior: Regularly monitor system processes and behavior for any anomalies or suspicious activities. This can help detect process hollowing attacks in their early stages, allowing for prompt response and mitigation. 3. Enable system logging and auditing: Enabling logging and auditing features on systems provides valuable information for detecting and investigating process hollowing attacks. Analyzing event logs can help identify signs of compromise and aid in incident response. 4. Conduct regular security assessments: Performing vulnerability assessments and penetration testing helps identify and address weaknesses or vulnerabilities that could be exploited for process hollowing. By proactively identifying and mitigating risks, organizations can strengthen their overall security posture. By adopting these preventive measures, detection strategies, and best practices, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of falling victim to process hollowing attacks and minimize the potential impact on their systems and data.
Data Beaches and other possible things that can happen to digital data are the most common cybercrimes on a large scale. It was last year that made everyone realize that digital data is very vulnerable to attackers. The number of cybercriminals has also increased over time while the number of such events is at large as well. Some of the biggest companies have become a victim of data breaches for different reasons. Sometimes it is a bug other times it is lead by a mistake by getting into the main system. This time it was Istio Service mesh software that left users vulnerable to attackers. It was an authentication vulnerability that was discovered by Aspen Mesh and this could have been serious. The wide range of service provider Istio has a huge database and it was all vulnerable. This vulnerability was discovered while the authentication features that were getting worked on. This was then reported to and fixed by Espen engineer while it was a huge vulnerability. The vulnerability found in the Authentication Policy of Istio CVE-2020-8595 could allow unauthorized access to HTTP paths. To access these HTTP paths you need to have a valid JSON Web Token but not while you exploit this vulnerability. Authentication is for safety and to restrict unwanted access and such vulnerabilities sure make it accessible to unauthorized people. To access the secured paths the attacker needs to just use ‘?’ and ‘#’ to exploit the vulnerability. All the data and resources secured through these paths get accessible to attackers once vulnerability gets exploited. This needed urgency to get patched before someone could exploit it to a bigger level. Once patched everyone was urged to update as soon as they can to ensure safety and less chance of possible attacks.
bossplayersctf 1: VulnHub CTF walkthrough In this article, we will solve a Capture the Flag (CTF) challenge which was posted on VulnHub. As you may know from previous articles, VulnHub is a platform which provides vulnerable applications/machines for users to gain practical hands-on experience in the field of information security. You can check my previous articles for more CTF challenges. I have also provided a downloadable URL for this CTF; you can download the machine and run it on VirtualBox. The torrent downloadable URL is also available for this VM and has been added in the reference section of this article. As per the information given on VulnHub, this is a recent CTF which was posted by the author Coung Nguyen. As mentioned by the author, the challenge is aimed at beginners. The aim of the CTF is to get the root. Prerequisites include having some knowledge of Linux commands and ability to run some basic penetration testing tools. For those who are not aware of the site, VulnHub is a well-known website for security researchers. It provides users with a way to learn and practice their hacking skills through a series of challenges in a safe and legal environment. You can download vulnerable machines from this website and try to exploit them. I highly suggest attempting them, as it is a good way to sharpen your skills and also learn new techniques in a safe environment. Please note: For all of these machines, I have used Oracle Virtual Box to run the downloaded machine. I am using Kali Linux as an attacker machine for solving this CTF. The techniques used are solely for educational purposes, and I am not responsible if the listed techniques are used against any other targets. Summary of the steps The summary of steps required for solving this CTF is given below: - Getting the victim machine’s IP address by running the netdiscover command - Scanning open port by using the Nmap scanner - Enumerating HTTP service with Dirb - More enumeration with Burp Suite and identifying vulnerabilities - Exploiting the command injection vulnerability to take the reverse shell - Getting the root access and reading the flag After downloading and running this machine on VirtualBox, the first step is to explore the VM by running the netdiscover command to get the IP address of the victim machine. The command output can be seen in the screenshot given below. Command used: netdiscover As we can see in the above screenshot, we have got the virtual machine IP address: 192.168.1.24 (the target machine IP address). We will be using 192.168.1.23 as the attacker machine IP address. Please note: The target and attacker machine IP addresses may be different, as per your network configuration. After getting the target machine IP address, the first step is to find out the available open ports and services on the system. I ran an nmap full-port scan on the target machine. The results can be seen in the following screenshot. Command used: nmap 192.168.1.24 -p- -sV We can see that port 80 and port 22 are open on the target machine. These ports are being used for the HTTP and SSH services, respectively. The above scan also provides some further information about the target system configuration that may be useful for us in later stages. Let’s start by exploring the open port and services on the target machine. I decided to start with the HTTP port. After opening the IP address in the browser, we found that there was an application running on it, which we can see below: As we can see, it is just a default web page which does not have anything further to do. To get more idea about the target machine, I decided to run a file and folder enumeration tool. I used the dirb utility for this purpose. The results of the scan can be seen in the following screenshot: Command used: dirb http://192.168.1.24 The scan provided us with a few files to explore on the target machine. As we can see above, the index.html and robots.txt files are available on the target machine web application. So, I first opened the robots.txt file. The result was quite interesting, as you can see below: From the robots.txt file, we got a password string. But when we observe closely, the password string is Base64-encoded. The password string is written thus: super secret password – bG9sIHRyeSBoYXJkZXIgYnJvCg== In the next step, we will use Burp Suite for more enumeration. As we saw from the previous step, we got the password in the robots.txt file and it seems to be Base64-encoded. Let’s try to decode the password. I have used the Burp decoder for this purpose, but you can use any Base64-decoder that is convenient for you. The decoded password can be seen below. As can be seen in the highlighted area of the above screenshot, the password is “lol try harder bro”. This means that we have to look further on the target machine to get the password. I started looking into the source code of the target machine and found something useful, as you can see below. We found another string in the source code of the target machine web application. The string is given below: We can see that the above string also needs to be decoded. I used the Burp decoder again to resolve the encoded string into plain text form. After spending some time with that, I was finally able to fully decode the string. This can be seen in the following screenshot. As we can see, the decoded string “workinprogress.php” seems to be a file on the target machine web application. Let’s open the file on the browser and see if it works. As we can see, the file was showing some information about the web application. If the information is true, it might be possible that there is command execution on the target machine. I started testing the file for further vulnerabilities. After spending some time looking for various vulnerabilities on the file, I found that it can be vulnerable to command injection. To confirm the vulnerability, I passed a “cmd” parameter and added the “ls” command as the parameter value. If the page is vulnerable for command injection, we should be able to view the contents of the current directory. The result can be seen in the following screenshot. As we can see in the highlighted area of the above screenshot, the results confirm that the page is vulnerable to command injection. In the next step, we will use the command injection vulnerability for taking the shell access. To utilize this vulnerability to gain access to the target machine, I first checked whether “python” is available on the target system. I used the python –help command for this purpose. As can be seen in the above screenshot, the target machine application responded with the Python help menu. This confirms that Python is available on the target machine. Let’s write a payload to get a reverse connection from the target machine. I prepared a shell payload in Python and passed it in the “cmd” parameter on the web application. I also set up my attacker machine to receive connections through port 1234. The following screenshot confirms that the payload was successful, as I was able to get access to the target machine. - nc -lvp 4444 The URL with the crafted payload used in the above screenshot is given below. We now have shell access to the target machine. However, it is the limited shell; I ran the id command and the command output shows that we have www-data user access on the machine. So, in the next step we will do some privilege escalation. In the previous step, we got the user access. Now, we need to explore the target machine further to escalate privileges to root. I started by gaining information about the target machine OS and kernel versions. I used the uname –a command for this purpose. It provided me with a lot of information about the installed versions on the target system. The results can be seen in the following screenshot: - uname -a - cat /etc/issue I started to look for an available exploit for the above configuration but there was no vulnerable version installed. After that, I again got back to the target machine and started exploring further. Command used: find / -perm -4000 -type f 2>/dev/null As we can see, I enumerated the target machine for the list of commands that the user was allowed to execute without root permissions. There I found that the find command could be executed as root user. I executed the above command on the target machine, which finally escalated user privileges to root. This can be seen in the following screenshot. - /usr/bin/find -exec bash -p ; - cat /root/root.txt We have now gained access to the root of the target machine. After that, it was not difficult to find the flag file which was in the root directory of the target machine. The flag file was again encoded into Base64. So, I used the Burp decoder to decode it into plain text. The final flag file was “congratulations.” This completed the CTF, as we have now gained access to the root and read the flag file. Hope you had fun working on this with me! We've encountered a new and totally unexpected error. Get instant boot camp pricing A new tab for your requested boot camp pricing will open in 5 seconds. If it doesn't open, click here.
Billions of Internet of Things and Local Area Network devices that rely on the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol for discovery of and interaction with other devices are vulnerable to "CallStranger," a bug that can be exploited to exfiltrate data, launch a denial of service attack or scan ports. The Windows 10 operating system, the Xbox One gaming console, and various models of printers, modems, televisions and routers are among the many products affected. Officially designated CVE-2020-12695, the bug is specifically located within UPnP's SUBSCRIBE capability and is caused by a callback header value that can be controlled by attackers, allowing them to send large quantities of traffic to arbitrary destinations, reported the CERT/CC in a security advisory. In that sense, the vulnerability is similar in nature to a server-side request forgery (SSRF) flaw, according to a web page created by the researcher who discovered the flaw, Yunus Çadirci, cyber security senior manager at EY Turkey. (A detailed technical report can be found here.) Adversaries can take advantage of CallStranger in order to bypass data loss prevention protections and network security devices and ultimately exfiltrate sensitive data. They can also leverage internet-facing devices to perform reflect Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) DDoS attacks as well as to scan ports. "We see data exfiltration as the biggest risk of CallStranger. Checking logs is critical if any threat actor used this in the past," Çadirci wrote. "Because it also can be used for DDoS, we expect botnets will start implementing this new technique by consuming end-user devices. Because of the latest UPnP vulnerabilities, enterprises blocked Internet exposed UPnP devices so we don't expect to see port scanning from Internet to Intranet but Intranet2Intranet may be an issue." "This UPnP SUBSCRIBE attack looks to be a pretty effective method for DDoSing a target -- not as effective as the memcached attack, but more effective than a regular old SYN flood, but it is predicated on one key misconfiguration, and that's having UPnP exposed to the internet in the first place," said Tod Beardsley, director of research at Rapid7. "ISPs really should be doing a better job at limiting this traffic -- it has a well-known port associated, and is easy to spot and filter. Similarly, would-be targets can trivially defend against this traffic just by virtue of it being UPnP -- an edge IPS or next-gen firewall can trivially identify and drop offending traffic." "As for the exfiltration aspect, that's similarly easy to defend against -- just don't expose UPnP," Beardsley continued. "Of course, if you're already exposing UPnP, you're probably doing it by accident and are more than likely unaware that you're exposing it, which means that you're unlikely to be reading security news articles like this one." The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), which was alerted to the flaw last Dec. 20, patched the issue by updating the UPnP specification back on April 17. Public disclosure of the vulnerability was withheld until Monday, however, at the request of various vendors and ISPs. Indeed, it may take some time for all affected manufacturers to patch their UPnP stack. In addition to downloading the new UPnP specification, users are strongly advised to disable the protocol on internet-accessible interfaces if there is no business purpose for it, as employing UPnP over the internet is not advised. Meanwhile, device manufacturers "are urged to disable the UPnP SUBSCRIBE capability in their default configuration and to require users to explicitly enable SUBSCRIBE with any appropriate network restrictions to limit its usage to a trusted local area network," the CERT/CC wrote. Çadirci's write-up also has additional recommendations for home users, ISPs, vendors and enterprises. Other products confirmed to be affected include the ADB TNR-5720SX Box, Asus ASUS Media Streamer, Asus Rt-N11, Belkin WeMo, Broadcom ADSL Modems, Canon Canon SELPHY CP1200 Printer, Cisco X1000, Cisco X3500, D-Link DVG-N5412SP WPS Router, EPSON EP/EW/XP Series, HP Deskjet/Photosmart/ Officejet ENVY Series, Huawei HG255s Router, NEC AccessTechnica WR8165N Router, Philips 2k14MTK TV, Samsung UE55MU7000 TV, Samsung MU8000 TV, TP-Link TL-WA801ND, Trendnet TV-IP551W and Zyxel VMG8324-B10A.
The Pakistan government's official Web site last week apparently became the victim of a politically motivated attack launched by the latest version of an Internet worm, according to a report at SecurityFocus. The report quoted virus experts as saying that the Yaha.E worm, which was first identified on June 15, had a payload designed in part to conduct a basic denial of service attack on the Pakistan government's site. The intensity of the attack would depend on the number of computers infected. An analysis of the worm by F-Secure Corporation said a computer infected with the worm would make repeated connection attempts to the Pakistan government's Web site. Yaha is carried in an infected email attachment. It arrives with a message containing widely varying subject lines and body contents. It is designed to send itself to all email addresses in the victim's Microsoft Windows Address Book, MSN Messenger List, Yahoo Pager list, and ICQ list. An analysis by Trend Micro says Yaha.E contains code that attempts to terminate anti-virus and firewall software. The Security Focus report quoted Roger Thompson, malicious code expert for ICSA Labs, as saying the worm created a text file on a victim's computer that said it was the work of "sNAkeeYes,c0Bra." Indian hackers and virus writers were exhorted to "c0me & w0Rk wITh uS" against "tHE GFORCE-pAK shites" - a reference to the Pakistani hacker group G-Force Pakistan. The last high-profile worm to include a denial-of-service component was Code Red. It was designed to flood the White House site using infected servers running Microsoft's IIS software. The MessageLabs virus information service currently rates Yaha.E the second most prevalent virus after Klez.H.
Even for such a simple example as this, where we just have two buttons -- one that loads to read stories, and one that clears them. It would still be nice to have some visibility into the Redux store. To see what actions are being fired, what their payload was, if any, and what changes it made to the state. To install this Redux Dev Tools extension, just search for it, click here, and add it to your browser. Close and reopen Dev Tools, and you'll see it's available as a tab. Once you see this, you're ready to configure in the code. Here, you can see we already have this API middleware, which we are applying to the Redux store. Let's break this down into multiple lines. Just before it, we can choose the compose function. When the Redux Dev Tool panel is open, it will attach this function to the window. We use that if available, and if not, you can use the regular compose from Redux. We can import that now. To make it work with our existing middleware, we just need to call this function, pass in our middleware. If we save that and go back to the browser, now you can see the Dev Tools are working, we see this initial unit action. We can inspect the state of our store, and when we interact with our app, we can see the actions being fired here. We can look at what state changes they made, the payload, and utilize all of the features of the Redux Dev Tools.
Table of Contents Earlier this year, the DFIR Report published two separate articles outlining ransomware attacks by Conti and REvil, both of which leveraged the IcedID trojan in their intrusions. Using the PCAP (Packet Capture) from these reports, IronNet replayed the intrusions in our proprietary testing environment to test how IronDefense and our behavioral analytics detect malicious activity by these groups. To start, we'll dive into REvil ransomware, how it traversed the network in this intrusion, and how our analytics detected this activity. First observed in April 2019, REvil (aka Sodinokibi) is an infamous Russia-based cybercrime syndicate responsible for several notable attack campaigns, including the ransomware attacks against Kaseya and JBS Foods. Operating under a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, REvil was ranked first among the most common ransomware variants in the first half of 2021 with 14.2% of the total market share. In October 2021, REvil reportedly shut down its operations following the arrest of several of its members and the hijacking of its infrastructure by law enforcement. Figure 1: REvil malicious traffic and IronNet behavioral analytics The threat actors begin with a malspam campaign to deliver a malicious XLSM file. Upon opening the macro, it initiates a WMIC (Windows Management Interface Command) command that executes IcedID from a remote executable posing as a GIF. The initial compromised host (172.31.5.31) downloads the malicious file hosting IcedID, which is flagged by our knowledge-based rules. IronNet’s knowledge-based detection uses Suricata rules to analyze netflow and detect common malicious behavior. Knowledge-based detection is an integral part of defense-in-depth and allows us to flag known indicators. However, it’s important to note that signature-based detection should not be used alone when defending against ransomware, because cybercriminals take incredible care to avoid reusing IOCs (e.g. domains, IPs, file hashes, etc.) in an effort to evade signature detection. As IcedID is downloaded to the host and executed using rundll32.exe, our Consistent Beaconing TLS analytic fires on the nomovee[.]website domain. Our Domain Analysis analytic is also alerted on the nomovee[.]website domain. The Consistent Beaconing analytic analyzes beacon activity to detect ongoing patterns of both periodic and randomized beaconing, identifying when there is activity consistent with repetitive attempts by malware to establish communications with a C2 server. Figure 2: Consistent Beaconing TLS analytic firing on nomovee[.]website It is from here that IcedID pulls down Cobalt Strike Beacons from two different command-and-control (C2) servers: cloudmetric[.]online (188.8.131.52) and smalleststores[.]com (184.108.40.206). On both of these, our TLS Invalid Certificate Chain analytic fires detecting suspicious TLS certificate usage. A wide variety of malware may exhibit invalid TLS certificate chain behavior as part of C2 or even data exfiltration activities. IronNet’s TLS Invalid Certificate Chain analytic assesses the TLS certificate to identify self-signed or falsified TLS certificates, validating all available server certificate chains in a flow and generating events for chains that fail the validation process – such as it did in this case. Figure 3: TLS Invalid Cert Chain analytic firing on smalleststores[.]com Additionally, we have a Domain Analysis alert to support the finding for cloudmetric[.]online. IronNet’s Domain Analysis analytic evaluates outgoing communications from an internal host to a new or unusual domain, which could be the result of malware calling back to a domain for instructions. Given the nature of modern networks and their reliance on domains for communication, our Domain Analysis analytics provides value through the entire attack chain. Figure 4: Domain Analysis HTTP analytic firing on cloudmetric[.]online After establishing C2, the host begins to beacon consistently to the malicious domains. C2 communications are an integral part of a ransomware attack, especially given recent trends where ransomware operators look to fully enumerate networks, ultimately trying to achieve full domain compromise. Our beaconing analytics were designed to catch these types communications, which they did for cloudmetric[.]online and smalleststores[.]com. Figure 5: Consistent Beaconing TLS analytic firing on cloudmetric[.]online Figure 6: Consistent Beaconing TLS analytic firing on smalleststores[.]com Using Cobalt Strike, lateral movement begins first to an Exchange server. After compromising the Exchange server, the threat actors move to domain controllers (DCs) and other servers within the environment using Server Message Block (SMB) and Cobalt Strike Beacons that are executed via a remote service. From the DCs, the attackers carry out additional discovery by using ADFind and the Ping utility to examine connections between the DCs and other domain-joined systems. It was here that our knowledge-based rules detected the primary DC (10.1.10.5) and the internal Windows host (10.1.10.200) communicating with the Cobalt Strike C2 (220.127.116.11). Figure 7: Knowledge-based detection of C2 communications between 10.1.10.200 & 18.104.22.168 Figure 8: Event summary of knowledge-based detection of C2 communications between 10.1.10.5 & 22.214.171.124 Following this, the attackers used a Cobalt Strike beacon to dump credentials on the server and DC. The threat actors began to establish RDP (remote desktop protocol) connections between various systems. From here, the attackers used Rclone to exfiltrate files they will leverage in a double-extortion demand. As this occurs, our Extreme Rates analytic fired on 126.96.36.199 and cloudmetric[.]online. IronNet’s Extreme Rates analytic monitors traffic characteristics – such as the number of bytes, packets, and flows in network peer groups – to detect when a larger-than-normal amount of data is being extracted from the network. This presents an opportunity for detection before encryption can kick off. Some damage may still occur if an attacker is able to reach this point, but detecting and eradicating a threat at this stage is still immeasurably better than after encryption occurs. Figure 9: Extreme Rates TLS analytic firing on cloudmetric[.]online The attackers then start to move onto final objectives, staging the executable on a DC and then using BITSAdmin to distribute it to each system in the domain. The ransomware is executed over an RDP connection, leading all domain-joined systems to be encrypted. Let's now dive go into Conti, how it traversed the network in this intrusion, and how our analytics detect this activity. Conti is a prolific ransomware family that first emerged in May of 2020. The group garnered particular attention in 2021 for several cyberattacks on healthcare institutions, including the Ireland Health Service Executive (HSE). Overall, Conti has been connected by the FBI to more than 400 cyberattacks worldwide – 75% of which targeted organizations in the U.S. Figure 10: Conti malicious traffic and IronNet behavioral analytics IronNet’s Phishing HTTPS analytic analyzes all SSL/TLS encrypted communications from internal devices to external domains, the SNI (Server Name Indication), and the certificate of the destination to identify communications with phishing domains employing targeted brand imitation via HTTPS. Our analytics are not isolated to just email-based phishing, but also identify any time a user appears to be interacting with a phishing link or submitting sensitive information to a suspicious external entity. Figure 11: Phishing HTTPs analytic firing on expertulthima[.]club The file eventually downloads and executes the IcedID trojan via rundll32.exe. In the initial IcedID execution, our Domain Analysis analytic fires on vaclicinni[.]xyz, dictorecovery[.]cyou, oxythuler[.]cyou, Thulleultinn[.]club, and Expertulthima[.]club. IronNet’s Domain Analysis analytic monitors outgoing communications, and it provides unique value as it does not rely on the existence of any additional behaviors, just the usage of a suspicious domain. Figure 12: Domain Analysis HTTP analytic firing on vaclicinni[.]xyz In addition to Domain Analysis, our Consistent Beaconing analytic fired for oxythuler[.]cyou, Thulleultinn[.]club, and Expertulthima[.]club, and our TLS Invalid Certificate Chain analytic fired for oxythuler[.]cyou and thulleultinn[.]club. Figure 13: Consistent Beaconing TLS analytic firing on oxythuler[.]cyou Figure 14: Consistent Beaconing TLS analytic firing on thulleultinn[.]club Figure 15: Consistent Beaconing TLS analytic firing on expertulthima[.]club The TLS Invalid GCertificate Chain analytic validates all available server certificate chains in a flow and generates events for chains that fail the validation process. The events include the reason why validation failed, the root certificate issuer, and the number of internal devices that are communicating with the device issuing the root certificate. Figure 16: TLS Invalid Cert Chain analytic firing on oxythuler[.]cyou Once the attackers successfully infect the system with IcedID, they drop and execute a Cobalt Strike beacon. At this point, our knowledge-based rules fire to detect Cobalt Strike C2 (188.8.131.52). Figure 17: Knowledge-based detection of Cobalt Strike C2 (184.108.40.206) Figure 18: Knowledge-based detection of Cobalt Strike C2 (220.127.116.11) The attackers then perform domain enumeration using native Windows tools such as nltest.exe, whoami.exe, and net.exe. They escalate to SYSTEM privileges via Cobalt Strike’s built-in “named pipe impersonation” functionality. Moving laterally to the DCs, the threat actors utilize SMB to transfer and execute a Cobalt Strike Beacon. During this, one of the DCs conducts port scanning activity to identify open ports. Afterward, the threat actors transfer a Cobalt Strike DLL (Dynamic Link Library) to Admin shares and distribute it throughout the environment using PsExec. Our Consistent Beaconing and Domain Analysis analytics fire for the Cobalt Strike C2 domain dimentos[.]com. Figure 19: Consistent Beaconing HTTP analytic firing on dimentos[.]com Later on, the attackers establish RDP connections to the DC and other systems throughout the environment. To do this, they use a redirector (18.104.22.168) to proxy the RDP traffic passing through the IcedID process. This activity was caught by our Extreme Rates analytic. Figure 20: Extreme Rates analytic firing on 22.214.171.124 For defense evasion, the threat actors modified the Group Policy to disable Windows Defender and force updated it to all clients using Cobalt Strike. Around two and a half hours after initial intrusion, the Cobalt Strike Beacon processes inject the Conti DLL into memory, and all active systems are encrypted. In this article, we explained how IronNet advanced analytics detect ransomware attacks by two of the most prolific ransomware groups: REvil and Conti. Despite the evasive strategies employed by both of these two threat groups, it is clearly apparent that through behavioral analytics, their behaviors are detectable across all stages of the kill chain and before a ransomware payload is ever executed.
A buffer overflow vulnerability in the TCP/IP stack of Juniper Networks Junos OS allows an attacker to send specific sequences of packets to the device thereby causing a Denial of Service (DoS). By repeatedly sending these sequences of packets to the device, an attacker can sustain the Denial of Service (DoS) condition. The device will abnormally shut down as a result of these sent packets. A potential indicator of compromise will be the following message in the log files: "eventd: SYSTEM_ABNORMAL_SHUTDOWN: System abnormally shut down" These issue are only triggered by traffic destined to the device. Transit traffic will not trigger these issues. This issue affects: Juniper Networks Junos OS 12.3 versions prior to 12.3R12-S19; 15.1 versions prior to 15.1R7-S10; 16.1 version 16.1R1 and later versions; 16.2 version 16.2R1 and later versions; 17.1 version 17.1R1 and later versions; 17.2 version 17.2R1 and later versions; 17.3 version 17.3R1 and later versions; 18.1 versions prior to 18.1R3-S13; 18.2 version 18.2R1 and later versions; 18.3 versions prior to 18.3R3-S5; 18.4 versions prior ot 18.4R3-S9; 19.1 versions prior to 19.1R3-S6; 19.2 versions prior to 19.2R3-S3; 19.3 versions prior to 19.3R3-S3; 19.4 versions prior to 19.4R1-S4, 19.4R3-S5; 20.1 versions prior to 20.1R2-S2, 20.1R3-S1; 20.2 versions prior to 20.2R3-S2; 20.3 versions prior to 20.3R3; 20.4 versions prior to 20.4R2-S1, 20.4R3; 21.1 versions prior to 21.1R1-S1, 21.1R2; 21.2 versions prior to 21.2R2.
Browser extensions or plugins are small programs that can add functionality and customize aspects of internet browsers. They can be installed directly or through a browser's app store. Extensions generally have access and permissions to everything that the browser can access. Malicious extensions can be installed into a browser through malicious app store downloads masquerading as legitimate extensions, through social engineering, or by an adversary that has already compromised a system. Security can be limited on browser app stores so may not be difficult for malicious extensions to defeat automated scanners and be uploaded. Once the extension is installed, it can browse to websites in the background, steal all information that a user enters into a browser, to include credentials, and be used as an installer for a RAT for persistence. There have been instances of botnets using a persistent backdoor through malicious Chrome extensions. There have also been similar examples of extensions being used for command & control . Only install browser extensions from trusted sources that can be verified. Ensure extensions that are installed are the intended ones as many malicious extensions will masquerade as legitimate ones. Browser extensions for some browsers can be controlled through Group Policy. Set a browser extension white or black list as appropriate for your security policy. Change settings to prevent the browser from installing extensions without sufficient permissions. Close out all browser sessions when finished using them. Inventory and monitor browser extension installations that deviate from normal, expected, and benign extensions. Process and network monitoring can be used to detect browsers communicating with a C2 server. However, this may prove to be a difficult way of initially detecting a malicious extension depending on the nature and volume of the traffic it generates. Monitor for any new items written to the Registry or PE files written to disk. That may correlate with browser extension installation. - Wikipedia. (2017, October 8). Browser Extension. Retrieved January 11, 2018. - Chrome. (n.d.). What are Extensions?. Retrieved November 16, 2017. - Jagpal, N., et al. (2015, August). Trends and Lessons from Three Years Fighting Malicious Extensions. Retrieved November 17, 2017. - De Tore, M., Warner, J. (2018, January 15). MALICIOUS CHROME EXTENSIONS ENABLE CRIMINALS TO IMPACT OVER HALF A MILLION USERS AND GLOBAL BUSINESSES. Retrieved January 17, 2018. - Marinho, R. (n.d.). (Banker(GoogleChromeExtension)).targeting. Retrieved November 18, 2017. - Marinho, R. (n.d.). "Catch-All" Google Chrome Malicious Extension Steals All Posted Data. Retrieved November 16, 2017. - Vachon, F., Faou, M. (2017, July 20). Stantinko: A massive adware campaign operating covertly since 2012. Retrieved November 16, 2017. - Kjaer, M. (2016, July 18). Malware in the browser: how you might get hacked by a Chrome extension. Retrieved November 22, 2017. - Mohta, A. (n.d.). Block Chrome Extensions using Google Chrome Group Policy Settings. Retrieved January 10, 2018.
- Keywords: Slimmable neural networks, mobile deep learning, accuracy-efficiency trade-offs - TL;DR: We present a simple and general method to train a single neural network executable at different widths (number of channels in a layer), permitting instant and adaptive accuracy-efficiency trade-offs at runtime. - Abstract: We present a simple and general method to train a single neural network executable at different widths (number of channels in a layer), permitting instant and adaptive accuracy-efficiency trade-offs at runtime. Instead of training individual networks with different width configurations, we train a shared network with switchable batch normalization. At runtime, the network can adjust its width on the fly according to on-device benchmarks and resource constraints, rather than downloading and offloading different models. Our trained networks, named slimmable neural networks, achieve similar (and in many cases better) ImageNet classification accuracy than individually trained models of MobileNet v1, MobileNet v2, ShuffleNet and ResNet-50 at different widths respectively. We also demonstrate better performance of slimmable models compared with individual ones across a wide range of applications including COCO bounding-box object detection, instance segmentation and person keypoint detection without tuning hyper-parameters. Lastly we visualize and discuss the learned features of slimmable networks. Code and models are available at: https://github.com/JiahuiYu/slimmable_networks - Code: [![github](/images/github_icon.svg) JiahuiYu/slimmable_networks](https://github.com/JiahuiYu/slimmable_networks) + [![Papers with Code](/images/pwc_icon.svg) 2 community implementations](https://paperswithcode.com/paper/?openreview=H1gMCsAqY7) - Data: [ImageNet](https://paperswithcode.com/dataset/imagenet)
The underlying bug was discovered and fixed as early as November Patch Tuesday, but after installing the patches, many customers experienced serious disruptions: enterprise domain controllers were experiencing problems with Kerberos authentication. As a result, in December Microsoft was forced to release additional fixes that eliminated the difficulties encountered. Kerberos Exploit for CVE-2020-17049 Let me remind you that Kerberos long ago replaced NTLM and became the default authentication protocol for domain-joined devices in all versions of Windows above Windows 2000. In November, it was known that the CVE-2020-17049 vulnerability could be exploited remotely and is related to Kerberos Constrained Delegation (KCD). Now, Karnes writes that the Bronze Bit attack he created is a variation of the older and well-known Golden Ticket and Silver Ticket attacks against Kerberos. Interestingly, the attack was not named Bronze Ticket and was named Bronze Bit because it is based on flipping just one bit. It is emphasized that all the above methods of post-compromise can be used only after the attacker has penetrated the company’s internal network. But if an attacker has infected at least one system on the company’s network and recovered the password hashes, they can use them to bypass and forge credentials from other systems on the same network if the network relies on Kerberos authentication protocol. The difference between Golden Ticket, Silver Ticket, and Bronze Bit is which parts of the Kerberos protocol the attacker exploits. In the case of Bronze Bit, the attacker targets the S4U2self and S4U2proxy protocols, which Microsoft added to Kerberos as extensions. The Karnes exploit bypasses two security mechanisms for Kerberos delegation at once and provides hackers with the ability to lateral move around the network, escalate privileges, and allow them to impersonate another.
Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') Butor Portal before 1.0.26 is affected by a Path Traversal vulnerability leading to a pre-authentication arbitrary file download. Effectively, a remote anonymous user can download any file on servers running Butor Portal. WhiteLabelingServlet is responsible for this vulnerability. It does not properly sanitize user input on the theme t parameter before reusing it in a path. This path is then used without validation to fetch a file and return its raw content to the user via the /wl?t=../../...&h= substring followed by a filename. CWE-22 - Path Traversal Path traversal (or directory traversal), is a vulnerability that allows malicious users to traverse the server's root directory, gaining access to arbitrary files and folders such as application code & data, back-end credentials, and sensitive operating system files. In the worst-case scenario, an attacker could potentially execute arbitrary files on the server, resulting in a denial of service attack. Such an exploit may severely impact the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of an application.
A threat group believed to be from North Korea is deploying malicious browser extensions for Chrome and Edge. The aim is to steal email content from open Gmail and AOL sessions and replace browser preference files. The attack by Kimsuky Researchers from Volexity identified the malicious extension, named SHARPEXT, that has been in use for nearly a year by Kimsuky (aka SharpTongue). It is using the extension as a post-exploitation tool for maintaining persistence. In contrast with other malicious browser extensions, SHARPEXT is not created to steal credentials. Instead, the extension steals data from victims’ email inboxes. The attackers install the extension manually using a VBS script after the initial compromise of the targeted system. Complex browser installation process For installing SHARPEXT, the attackers are replacing the Preferences and Secure Preferences files for the targeted Chromium-based browser, which is usually perceived to be a difficult process to perform. To replace the Secure Preferences file, the attackers collect certain details from the browser and generate a new file that runs browser start-up. Subsequently, the attackers use a second script to mask or hide some of the extension’s actions and any other windows that may appear, and warn the victims about the unusual activity. Consequently, the extension runs a pair of listeners looking for certain types of activity in browser tabs. Installation is customized for every individual victim. More about SHARPEXT The main goal of this extension is to steal emails and attachments from a user's mailbox. The first discovered versions of the malicious extension only supported Gmail accounts, while the latest version supports Gmail and AOL. The extension causes web requests to download additional emails from the web page. Researchers believe that the SHARPEXT extension is still under active development. The use of malicious browser extensions by North Korean attackers is nothing new. However, for the first time, malicious browser extensions have been observed being used as part of the post-exploitation stage of an attack. This indicates that the group members are actively trying to upgrade their tools and tactics, which makes them a worrisome threat.
BendyBear: A shellcode attack used for cyberespionage BendyBear is a sophisticated and stealthy cyberespionage tool. This malware was developed by BlackTech, a cyberespionage group linked by threat researchers to the Chinese government. According to Unit 42 researchers, there is no information about the infection vector used to deploy the shellcode on target systems and the payload is well-engineered and difficult to detect. BendyBear malware has blocks of code similar to the WaterBear malware family (active since 2009), and often deployed against East Asian governments such as Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Because of this, the BendyBear shellcode seems to come from the same source of WaterBear and is potentially linked to the BackTech APT group. Hands-on threat intel training Hands-on threat intel training Figure 1 below compares these pieces of malware and highlights the most important details and their similarities. Figure 1: BendyBear vs WaterBear. BendyBear key points BendyBear is a sophisticated shellcode that implements a group of features to make its detection and analysis difficult and keep it off the radar. A summary of the most important details of this shellcode is described below. Obfuscation layer and anti-analysis Once executed, the shellcode checks the target environment for signs of debuffing to prevent observation of important details or behaviors during run-time. The shellcode begins by locating the target’s process environment block (PEB) to check if it’s currently being debugged. After that, the Kernel32.dll base address is loaded to internally resolve any dependency files required by the shellcode to run. The modules loaded by the shellcode are the following: BendyBear uses polymorphic code and its footprint changes during the code execution to avoid forensics and memory analysis and thus evading signature. Figure 2 below shows an example of the shellcode main entry point before and during runtime execution. Figure 2: Modified shellcode runtime example. Windows registry and malware config BendyBear leverages the existing Windows registry key QuickEdit, which is enabled by default in Windows 10, to store configuration data used during the infection chain. After storing and reading some details from the registry, it then decrypts its internal configuration structure, which is 1,152 bytes (see Figure 3). Figure 3: BendyBear shellcode configuration structure. Command and control communication Before communicating with the C2 server, the shellcode clears the host’s DNS cache every time it tries to connect. With this tactic in place, the C2 IP address is resolved each connection, allowing the C2 IP address to be changed whenever operators find it necessary. To accomplish this task, the shellcode uses the following module and call: After that, the communication starts. The stager (shellcode) sends a challenge request (1) to the C2 server and waits for a response. When the connection from C2 is received and decrypted, the shellcode checks for magic values of signature bytes at specific offsets to validate if the traffic and post-payloads are legitimate. If the check fails, the connection is immediately aborted. Figure 4: BendyBear communication diagram. The shellcode generates unique session keys for each connection with the C2 server and obfuscates the connection protocol by connecting the C2 using the 443 TCP port to make detection difficult. In this sense, malicious traffic is blended with normal SSL network traffic. The payloads are transmitted using modified RC4-encrypted chunks. With this technique in place, the shellcode turns the traffic decryption as a single RC4 key will not decrypt the entire payload. Figure 5 shows an example of one payload chunk that is sent from C2 to the stager (shellcode running). Figure 5: Encrypted payload header and data. Being aware of BendyBear BendyBear is a specially crafted payload with similarities to the WaterBear malware family. The group behind this piece of malware developed advanced features that are not found in common shellcode, using anti-analysis techniques and signature block verification (a clear signal that criminals are focused on making it a stealthy and detection-evasion malware). The shellcode uses custom and crafted cryptographic routines and byte manipulations that suggest a high level of knowledge on the part of the authors behind this piece of malware. Waterbear malware, ZDNet
Scapy is a powerful interactive packet manipulation tool, packet generator, network scanner, network discovery tool, and packet sniffer. It provides classes to interactively create packets or sets of packets, manipulate them, send them over the wire, sniff other packets from the wire, match answers and replies, and more. Interaction is provided by the Python interpreter, so Python programming structures can be used (such as variables, loops, and functions). Report modules are possible and easy to make. It is intended to do about the same things as ttlscan, nmap, hping, queso, p0f, xprobe, arping, arp-sk, arpspoof, firewalk, irpas, tethereal, tcpdump, etc. dnspython is a DNS toolkit for Python. It supports almost all of the record types. It can be used for queries, zone transfers, and dynamic updates. It supports TSIG authenticated messages and EDNS0. dnspython provides both high and low level access to DNS. The high level classes perform queries for data of a given name, type, and class, and return an answer set. The low level classes allow direct manipulation of DNS zones, messages, names, and records. pywrat (Python Wrappers for Remote Access Tools) is a set of wrappers that can be used for accessing remote hosts. They use ssh and scp for remote shell and file system access and can be used as a generalized access method with a single configuration file for all host, user, and key setups. The wrappers are intended to simplify remote access in shell scripts, but it is also possible to use the wrapper modules directly from Python programs.
Trustwave specialists discovered a number of vulnerabilities in D-Link and Comba Telecom routers. Bugs allow extracting data from Internet providers and access passwords from devices without authentication.After examining the D-Link DSL-2875AL router, the researchers found out that it is affected by the same problem that other devices of the manufacturer are vulnerable to: they give access to all router settings by requesting the romfile.cfg file. Authentication is not required for this, and the Wi-Fi password is stored in text format. “After a valid login of the administrator the web panel does not distinguish valid HTTP requests from the admin and the ones that come from other users. This way, an attacker can script an automatic routine that perform unwanted actions such as arbitrary modifications to router and SSIDs passwords and configurations”, — reported Trustwave researchers. Additionally, the D-Link DSL-2875AL and DSL-2877AL models were vulnerable to the problem of data disclosure. The fact is that just by studying the HTML code of the login page, you can find two lines that correspond to the credentials of the Internet provider. D-Link was informed about these bugs back in January of this year, and this month the manufacturer prepared patches for the DSL-2875AL and DSL-2877AL models. However, problems with remote access and password disclosure were also found in the products of the manufacturer Comba Telecom: vulnerabilities were found in Wi-Fi controllers AC2400, as well as access points AP2600-I-A02 and AP2600. It is important to note that these products are not intended for home users, but for cases when it is necessary to expand the Wi-Fi coverage area and serve a large number of users. The disclosure of confidential data in these cases is also possible without authentication: by sending a special request and downloading the configuration file, as well as viewing the source HTML code of the administration console. Depending on the vulnerability used, attackers may need to crack passwords in MD5, but not it does not present significant problem. Unlike D-Link, Comba Telecom representatives did not respond to requests from Trustwave experts, although researchers tried to contact the company since February 2019. Currently, there are still no patches for problematic devices.
What is a bootkit I hear you ask? Simply a bootkit is a rootkit that infects the boot process of a computer to load malicious drivers before any security software can load, and which therefore will bypass any of the operating system security controls. The term rootkit originally referred to a set of tools used to administer a UNIX machine (root was the name of the UNIX user with administrative access), today this term refers to malicious software designed to hide “stuff” (processes, files, data etc) from the operating system. To facilitate troubleshooting the boot process inside Microsoft support, we divided the boot process into the following four phases: Initial, Boot Loader, Kernel and Logon. For the purposes of this discussion, we are really only interested in the first phase and specifically what happens after a successful power-on self test (POST). This phase involves the loading of the most important data structure on the disk, namely the Master Boot Record (MBR) which is created when the disk is partitioned, and always located at Cylinder 0, Head 0, Sector 1 of each physical disk. The master boot code in the MBR loads the volume boot record (VBR) of the active partition which in turn loads NTLDR and the defined operating system. More information on this can be found here. Essentially then, bootkit malware replaces the normal boot sector code (either MBR or VBR) with code of its own choosing. How do you fix it? Well, if such a malware is indicated you may want to consider the use of bootrec.exe /fixmbr or /fixboot here. Bear in mind, fixing the issue without closing the vector by which the attacker was able to compromise the boot sequence may just result in re-infection. So to what do we attribute the increase in bootkits? I’d point to the fact that the Windows operating system security is getting tighter and tighter. Take a look at the graphic below to see all the enhancements made in Windows 7, resulting from security work done in Windows Vista timeframe. The reaction of the attackers? “Let’s load our malcode first then we’ll be able to bypass all of these great security features!” Bad news for us determined defenders of the Windows security ecosystem. Fortunately writing a 64-bit driver takes some skill; if not done properly the machine will bugcheck (bluescreen), we get involved, and the game is up. But look – see those nifty new features in Windows 8? Secure Boot, Trusted boot, ELAM (early load anti-malware), Measured boot and Remote Attestation are all designed to combat that trend in bootkit development by protecting the boot sequence of the operating system. The only problem is, you need to be using Windows 8 (8.1 now) to benefit from the built-in protection mechanisms and most of our customers simply aren’t. Obviously there are complexities involved and it may not be easy for an organisation to upgrade, but where the business is considering such a project, my recommendation would be to go straight to the latest and greatest to ensure you are one step ahead of the attackers. Historically there was the maxim of “wait for the next release” but building a trustworthy cyberspace has led the software development industry to adopt other approaches, such as agile and rapid application development; similarly contemporary defence strategies should look to include a more agile approach, aligned to increasing the detection capability of the organisation. For the Microsoft future view on what cyberspace will look like and the role cybersecurity will play, read\watch the report here. Finally and whilst we’re on the topic of detecting the attacker quickly, I’d like to remind you of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Repost (SIR) here. To quote: “The Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR) analyzes the threat landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities, and malware using data from Internet services and over 600 million computers worldwide. Threat awareness can help you protect your organization, software, and people.” Good luck, keep up the good work and stay safe out there!
As artificial intelligence (AI) advances, organizations and governments are scrambling to find its best applications. While ChatGPT and other large language models (LLM) have captivated the media's attention, the potential uses for AI are far broader than text generation. One such area is security: especially the repetitive, large-scale task of identifying software vulnerabilities. But whether AI leads to better or worse security depends on who or what is doing the vulnerability identification — and for what purpose. Some flaws in software are essentially benign. But some flaws, known as vulnerabilities, can give someone who exploits the flaws a foothold within the system, leading to compromise. A significant chunk of cyber security practice is devoted to identifying and patching these vulnerabilities. The number of exploited vulnerabilities leading to compromise are too high to list, some examples of high-profile incidents include: The 2017 Equifax breach, which started with an unpatched vulnerability The 2022 LastPass breach was partially caused by a vulnerability in third-party software The Norwegian government's IT systems were hacked in 2023 via a zero-day vulnerability The consequences of vulnerability exploits can be disastrous, from data leaks to ransomware infections that freeze up an organization's systems. Organizations need to identify and patch vulnerabilities as rapidly as possible to avoid such occurrences. Analyzing complex software programs in search of mistakes is a repetitive task that would seem to be a good fit for automation. Noted technologist Bruce Schneier has observed that: "Going through code line by line is just the sort of tedious problem that computers excel at, if we can only teach them what a vulnerability looks like." And indeed, machine learning (a subset of AI capabilities) has long been used for finding potential vulnerabilities in code. GitHub, for example, includes machine learning in their code scanning feature, which identifies security vulnerabilities in code. Naturally, this approach sometimes results in false positives, but when paired with manual analysis, a well-trained machine learning model can accelerate vulnerability identification. As artificial intelligence advances by leaps and bounds, the possibility arises of training this technology to find vulnerabilities even more effectively. In fact, in 2023 the US agency DARPA announced a program called Intelligent Generation of Tools for Security — INGOTS. (DARPA, notably, was the agency that created ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.) The program "aims to identify and fix high-severity, chainable vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them" by using "new techniques driven by program analysis and artificial intelligence to measure vulnerabilities." INGOTS looks for vulnerabilities in "modern, complex systems, such as web browsers and mobile operating systems." But is AI actually good at finding vulnerabilities? DARPA aims to find out, but their program is still somewhat exploratory. Back in 2016, DARPA hosted the "Cyber Grand Challenge," in which seven teams of engineers created autonomous AI hacking programs, then faced off against each other in a digital game of "Capture the Flag." The idea was to see how well an automated program could hack a secure system. After several hours, the program "Mayhem," designed by a team from Carnegie Mellon, won the competition. The DEF CON 2016 conference was being hosted nearby, and "Mayhem" was invited to participate in DEF CON's own Capture the Flag game against human hackers. Mayhem came in last place, and it wasn't close. AI has advanced a great deal since then, and researchers continue to release machine learning models for vulnerability discovery. But software investigated by even the latest machine learning models still requires human review to avoid false positives — or false negatives. There is no denying that AI can find vulnerabilities. But human penetration testing still appears to have its place. This may change in the future, as AI becomes more robust. Patching a vulnerability involves writing code that corrects the flaw. AI tools can certainly generate code. But to do so, they require specific prompts generated by their human users. Even INGOTS does not plan to rely fully on automated processes for remediating vulnerabilities, instead aiming to "create a computer-human pipeline that seamlessly allows human intervention in order to fix high-severity vulnerabilities." But the same caveat applies: As AI becomes more advanced, it may be able to rapidly and efficiently generate patches in the future. It is inevitable that, if a tool or technology is widely available, one side will use it to defend systems from attacks, and one side will use it to generate attacks. If AI can effectively find and patch vulnerabilities in software, then attackers will certainly use it to find those vulnerabilities before they are patched and write exploits. Not all cyber attackers have access to such resources. But those who do will likely have no qualms about selling the vulnerabilities their AIs find, or the exploits they write, to the highest bidder on the dark web. Malware authors are already incorporating AI into their tools, and they will surely continue to do so as AI improves. The possibility looms of an escalating, AI-driven arms race between legitimate software developers and malicious attackers, in which vulnerabilities are identified and exploited almost instantaneously, or (hopefully) patched just as quickly. Of course, attackers are already combing through code looking for undiscovered vulnerabilities — such "zero-day" vulnerabilities are extremely valuable and can either be used by the discoverer for purposes of hacking the system, or sold on underground markets for a high price. Malicious use of AI may become a game-changer, but it's the same old game. As with patching, this is possible, but the process still requires human guidance. Therefore it may not actually save attackers any labor — and many of them buy exploit kits anyway, rather than writing their own code. The answer may change 10 or even five years from now, and security folks should be preparing for a wave of fully automated vulnerability exploits targeting their systems. All networks are vulnerable to compromise — indeed, given enough time and a determined attacker, compromise is inevitable. Even if AI brings a new world of vulnerability discovery for the side looking to secure their systems, attackers will be using the same methods to try and find vulnerabilities first, or at least before they can be patched. AI is becoming another tool in the toolbox for attackers, just as it is for the good side. Forward-thinking organizations start with the assumption that compromise has occurred: that their security may fail, their data is at risk, and that attackers may already be inside the network. They assume that their external-facing security may not always work perfectly and therefore, microsegment their networks so that malicious parties cannot extend their reach beyond the one segment they have already accessed. Think of how a ship can be sealed off into separate watertight compartments to prevent a leak from spreading: ideally, security teams can use this same approach for containing attacks. This approach is called "Zero Trust," and there are strong reasons for this philosophy's growing adoption. As AI tools enable escalating exploits, Zero Trust can help ensure that those exploits remain restricted to a small corner of the network, and that attackers never gain a big enough foothold to cause real damage. Vulnerability exploit discovery may accelerate, but Zero Trust offers the most hopeful path forward. And Cloudflare is the only vendor that consolidates Zero Trust technologies such as secure web gateways, DNS filtering, and data loss prevention (DLP) into a single platform with a unified dashboard — a platform with points of presence all over the world. The distributed nature of the Cloudflare network makes it possible to enforce granular, default-deny access controls across cloud and on-premises applications with no latency added to the user experience. In fact, Cloudflare has taken a Zero Trust approach to securing its own network and employees against attacks. Learn more about how Cloudflare equips organizations to do the same. This article is part of a series on the latest trends and topics impacting today’s technology decision-makers. Learn more about Zero Trust in the A Roadmap to Zero Trust Architecture whitepaper. After reading this article you will be able to understand: Why AI is well-suited for finding vulnerabilities, with some caveats How both sides of the security fight can use automation to either exploit or patch vulnerabilities Why assuming compromise is the safest approach
Setting up Metaexplitable OS for penetration testing is easy. This article explains step-by-step configuration you can follow to setup Metaexplitable & Kali Linux on Oracle Virtual Machine. Metasploit Framework (MSF) Vs. Metasploitable OS The Metasploit Framework (MSF) is a collection of exploitation and vulnerability validation tools freely available for security professionals. The Metasploitable is a virtual machine based on Linux which contains intentional vulnerabilities. Penetration testers can use the configured Metasploitable environment to test known vulnerabilities either using Metasploit Framework (MSF) or other exploitation tool. 1. Download Kali Linux: We will be using Kali Linux Virtual Image distribution from Offensive Security [https://www.offensive-security.com/] as our testing environment which has Metasploit Framework (MSF) pre-installed. 2. Download Metaexploitable: The Metaexploited is an open-source project and we can dowloand it from Source-Forge. The current distribution of Metaexplitebloe is available as a VMware virtual machine (VMX). Download link : https://sourceforge.net/projects/metasploitable/ 3. Download Oracle VirtualBox: The Oracle VM VirtualBox is a free and open-source hosted hypervisor developed by Oracle Corporation. Download link: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads Kali Image Configuration: For detail steps on how to configure Kali Linux on Virtual Box please read our article on Running Kali Linux on VirtualBox Once you spin up the Kali Linux instance, open a Terminal window and type : Result should something similar to the below image. (Note the marked IP address) Configure Metasploitable Virtual Image: 1. Create a Virtual Machine instance for Metasploitable: 2. Allocate memory size to be utilised by Metasploitable: 3. Select the extracted Metasploitable.vmdk file to load as a Hard Disk: 4. Update the network settings : To allow our Metasploitable virtual machine to be accessed using Kali Linux we need to change the below network settings. Attached to: -> Bridge Adopter 5. Metasploitable Welcome screen: Spin up your Virtual Device and you should see the below Metasploitable Welcome screen: The Metasploitable login is “msfadmin”; the password is also “msfadmin”. 6. Check the Metasploitable IP address: You can use the below command to view the IP address. Access Metasploitable from Kali Linux: Remember, we only need access to Metasploitable instance which has a local IP address assigned (192.168.1.109). To confirm we can access Metasploitable from Kali Linux, use the below command: You should see an output similar to the below scree: Now you can use the Metasploit Framework (MSF) to start testing! - Offensive Security guide to Metaexploit : https://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed/introduction/ - Get Started with Metasploit Tool suite: https://www.metasploit.com/get-started
Origin Validation Error An incorrect implementation of "XEP-0280: Message Carbons" in multiple XMPP clients allows a remote attacker to impersonate any user, including contacts, in the vulnerable application's display. This allows for various kinds of social engineering attacks. This CVE is for SleekXMPP up to 1.3.1 and Slixmpp all versions up to 1.2.3, as bundled in poezio (0.8 - 0.10) and other products. CWE-346 - Origin Validation Error The software does not properly verify that the source of data or communication is valid.
Kali Linux is one of the best-operating systems to work on and Especially for Hackers and Programmers. Installing Linux on an Android device unlocks a variety of features which include running web-based applications on your Android device, install and use Linux applications, rather you can run a graphical desktop environment on it. Linux has the capability to turn an Android device into a portable network troubleshooting or pen-testing device. While installing Kali Linux on your Android device using the methods listed below, you need to root your device. Linux cannot be installed on your Android device if it is not rooted. If you do not wish to root your device, do not follow the methods listed below. Another precaution is to have enough free space in your memory. If you don’t have enough free memory, the installation if Linux will fail. Method #1: Install Kali Linux Using Linux deploy and VNC Viewer. #1 Go to Google Play Store and Install Linux Deploy and VNC Viewer on your Android device. Download VNC Viewer: [appbox googleplay com.realvnc.viewer.android] #2 Once downloaded, launch the Linux deploy an app. You will find an option looking like a download symbol at the bottom of the screen. Hit that option, and you will find a list of other options. Here, in ‘Distribution’ select Kali Linux. #3 In the same list, go to GUI settings and enter the width and the height of your device’s screen. #4 Then, go to the option ‘Install’ and hit it. You will notice that the process of installation has been initiated. This installation process might take approximately 10 to 15 minutes. So please maintain your patience till the process gets completed. #5 When this process is completed, tap on the option ‘Configure‘. #6 Post configuration, hit the ‘Start‘ option. #7 Then, open the VNC viewer and enter the details required such as address, name, and password, etc. #8 Once the data entry is completed, you will have successfully installed Kali Linux on your Android device which is ready to be used now. #1 Download Kali Linux i386 ISO file and limbo PC emulator apk from their websites (links provided by us to ease your task). They can download either by directly downloading them on your Android device or a PC and then copy them to your Android device. #2 First of all, install Limbo PC Emulator on your Android device. #3 Then, launch the app. Here, in the ‘Load VM‘ option select “New” and enter your name. And in the ‘User Interface’ option select “SDL.” #4 Then, select your CPU model, CPU cores, RAM memory from the drop-down choices. #5 In the option ‘CDROM (*iso)’ select the “Kali Linux i386 iso file” which you had downloaded or copied from your PC. You will have to search for it which will be easy if you remember where you had copied it or the location of download. #6 After the above steps, hit the ‘Start’ option which will open the page of Kali Linux. #7 Select the ‘Install‘ option to initiate the installation of Kali Linux on your Android device. Once the installation is over, you will have successfully installed Kali Linux on your Android device. Wrap Up: Now you can easily Install Kali Linux on any Android with these methods. With Kali you can easily gain some Geek Hacking Knowledge and make your mind extraordinary. So try out this today. Hope you like our work, do share with others too. Leave a comment below if you facing any problem at any step discussed above.
Level 5 Username : leviathan5 Password : Tith4cokei SSH leviathan.labs.overthewire.org:2223 To solve this level, we first ssh into the leviathan5 server using the credentials provided above. As we can see, there is an executable named ” leviathan5 ” which checks for the existence of ” /tmp/file.log ” file. Let’s see how the executable works by using the ltrace command and putting some content in the file ” /tmp/file.log “. As we can see, the executable opens the file ” /tmp/file.log “, get’s a character, prints it on the screen until end of file has been reached. It then gets the real uid of the user, sets the uid of the file to the real uid and unlinks the file. To read more about unlink(), click here. As the executable prints the content of the file, let’s create a symbolic link between the file and the password file and see if the executable prints it. As we can see above, the executable prints the password due to the symbolic link existing between the file without checking proper access permission. Level 6 Username : leviathan6 Password : UgaoFee4li SSH : leviathan.labs.overthewire.org:2223

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