Jan 19 2023

Former Uber CISO Conviction Affirmed by Trial Court

Category: CISO,vCISO — DISC @ 4:01 pm

On January 11, 2023, presiding United States District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco denied the motion of Joe Sullivan, the former CISO of Uber, for a judgment of acquittal. The conviction arose from Sullivan’s agreement to pay attackers who breached the security of the online ride-sharing service and obtained personal information about thousands of users, drivers and riders. Sullivan, a lawyer and a former federal computer crime prosecutor himself, was convicted in 2022 by a jury of concealing and not reporting the Uber attack and of obstructing a federal investigation into an earlier Uber attack by the Federal Trade Commission by concealing the new breach.

The case centered on the fact that after Sullivan became aware of the breach, he took steps to prevent the breach from being publicly disclosed—noting that “This can’t get out,” and “We need to keep this tightly controlled.” Sullivan also told the incident response team that “This may also play very badly,” based on previous assertions of lack of adequate security at Uber made by the FTC in a then-ongoing civil investigation of Uber. After the breach was known to Uber, the charges alleged that Sullivan negotiated a nondisclosure agreement with the attackers; under Uber’s then-existing bug bounty program, the company would pay $100,000 if they promised to execute a document indicating that they “Did not take or store any data during or through [their] research,” and that they “Delivered to Uber or forensically destroyed all information about and/or analysis of the vulnerabilities,” the attackers discovered. The nondisclosure agreement provided that the attackers certify that they did not take data that, in fact, they had demonstrably taken.

“Corrupt” Obstruction of an FTC Proceeding

It’s important to note the crimes Sullivan was convicted of. First, he was convicted of violating 18 USC 1505, which relates to the obstruction of some governmental proceeding. In Sullivan’s case, the act of obstruction occurred when he did not reveal to the FTC that Uber had suffered a data breach after the completion of the FTC investigation of a previous data breach and when he paid the attacker to ensure that news of the new breach would not leak.

The trial court rejected Sullivan’s claims that to successfully convict him of obstruction, the government would have to prove that there was some “nexus” or connection between the thing concealed (the new breach) and the proceeding that was obstructed (the investigation of the old breach). The court ruled that no such nexus need have been proven, as long as the jury had evidence that (1) the FTC action was an agency proceeding, (2) Sullivan was aware of the proceeding and that (3) he “intentionally endeavored corruptly to influence, obstruct or impede the pending proceeding.” The court found persuasive the fact that Sullivan knew of (and indeed had testified before) the FTC proceeding, expressed his desire that the new breach be kept secret and had the attackers execute an NDA preventing them from disclosing the breach as evidence of Sullivan’s corrupt intent to conceal the breach from the FTC.

The trial court also rejected Sullivan’s claims that, to corruptly obstruct a proceeding by not disclosing something, the government would have to establish an actual legal duty to disclose that thing. The FTC was investigating a prior breach. There was no evidence that Uber or Sullivan obstructed or impeded the FTC’s investigation of that breach or concealed evidence related to that breach. However, in the course of deciding what sanction the FTC wanted to impose on Uber for the other breach (and the adequacy of Uber’s overall security program), Sullivan and Uber knew that the FTC would want to know about the new breach (which represented a lapse of security). That’s why Sullivan wanted to conceal it.

There are a lot of problems with this theory. Imagine negotiating a plea agreement for someone who was caught shoplifting. In the course of negotiating the plea, the defense lawyer learns (through a privileged conversation) that the defendant has shoplifted other items from other stores after the incident but was never caught. Is there a duty to tell the prosecution? No. In fact, it would violate privilege to do so. What if you instructed the client to either return the items or pay for them (and some extra) in return for the merchant agreeing to “settle” the case and not report it to the prosecution? Would that be “corruptly” obstructing the plea negotiations? What if, in a civil lawsuit, a client answers truthfully that he has never been accused of some relevant wrongdoing? Days after the testimony, the deponent is then accused of that wrongdoing. The testimony was truthful at the time, but certainly, the other side would like to know about the new allegations. Are you required to disclose the new allegations? Can you settle the new charges with an NDA to keep the lawyers from learning about them, or would that constitute an obstruction of a judicial proceeding? Would it matter if the allegations in the new cases had some “nexus” to the one under litigation? Would it matter if the old case had been settled? While the use of the term “corruptly” in the jury instructions implies a requirement of proof that it was the specific intent of the defendant to do something the law prohibited (or refrain from doing something that the law required), it’s not clear what Sullivan did that was “corrupt” if there was no affirmative duty to disclose. Would he still be guilty of obstruction if he did not have the attackers execute an NDA but simply did not tell the FTC of the new breach? And what if the breach were just a vulnerability that was not exploited; certainly something the FTC would want to know. It’s not clear how far the court and DOJ would extend this concept.

Uber

Misprison of a Felony

The other crime Sullivan was convicted of was “misprison of a felony,” an archaic common law inchoate crime which punishes anyone with knowledge of the commission of a felony who conceals and does not report the same. The elements of that offense, according to the court, was proof that (1) a federal felony was committed (in this case, “intentionally accessing a computer without authorization and thereby obtaining information from a protected computer, or conspiracy to extort money through a threat to impair the confidentiality of information obtained from a protected computer without authorization”); (2) Sullivan had knowledge of the commission of that felony; (3) Sullivan had knowledge that the conduct was a federal felony; (4) Sullivan failed to notify federal authorities and (5) that he did an affirmative act to conceal the crime. For this offense, there did not have to be a legal duty to disclose the felony, just that there was a felony committed.

Unlike the obstruction statute, the misprision statute requires evidence of concealment. The court held that “[t]he $100,000 payment to the hackers and NDA support this, specifically the provision where the hackers promised that they ‘have not and will not disclose anything about the vulnerabilities’ or their conversations with Uber without written permission.”

I don’t doubt that a prime motivation for paying the very high “bounty” to the hackers and having them execute the NDA was to keep quiet the attack and the vulnerabilities that were exploited.

On the other hand, responsible disclosure principles and bug bounty programs themselves often demand secrecy. This would be particularly true for a vulnerability for which no patch existed. Microsoft’s bug bounty program notes:

CONFIDENTIALITY OF SUBMISSIONS/ RESTRICTIONS ON DISCLOSURE
Protecting customers is Microsoft’s highest priority. We endeavor to address each Vulnerability report in a timely manner. While we are doing that we require that Bounty Submissions remain confidential and cannot be disclosed to third parties or as part of paper reviews or conference submissions. You can make available high-level descriptions of your research and non-reversible demonstrations after the Vulnerability is fixed. We require that detailed proof-of-concept exploit code and details that would make attacks easier on customers be withheld for 30 days after the Vulnerability is fixed. Microsoft will notify you when the Vulnerability in your Submission is fixed. You may be paid prior to the fix being released and payment should not be taken as notification of fix completion. VIOLATIONS OF THIS SECTION COULD REQUIRE YOU TO RETURN ANY BOUNTIES PAID FOR THAT VULNERABILITY AND DISQUALIFY YOU FROM PARTICIPATING IN THE PROGRAM IN THE FUTURE.

Of course, this compares apples with oranges. The Microsoft program is not a permanent ban on disclosure—just enforcing a responsible disclosure. In addition, the MS program relates to any relevant disclosures—vulnerabilities, attacks, etc., and not just actions which would constitute a “felony.” Does “conceal and not report” mean “conceal and never report”?

But companies have many reasons for not wanting to disclose felonies that have been committed against them. An employee steals from the company and is terminated with an NDA and a non-disparagement agreement. The company does not report the theft. Did they “conceal and not report” a felony? Certainly, or take a sextortion case where attackers obtain access to someone’s sexually explicit files or pictures and threaten to release them if a cryptocurrency payment is not made. The victim pays the ransom to avoid publicizing the fact that the images exist. Did they “conceal and not report” the felony extortion scheme? You betcha. And if payment of a ransom in a ransomware situation is partially motivated by the company’s desire to avoid publicly disclosing the fact that they were hit by ransomware (and partly to get their files back and get back to work), they are subject to prosecution under the misprision statute.

An overwhelming trend since the 1990’s has been to require companies to report—either to the public, to data protection authorities, to law enforcement, to regulators or to third parties by contract—data breaches, incidents and, in some cases, material vulnerabilities. The Sullivan case rests on the principle that, even if there is no duty to report it, you may find yourself in legal trouble if you don’t.

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Tags: CISO, Joe Sullivan, Uber


Jan 19 2023

Google ads increasingly pointing to malware

Category: Malware — DISC @ 11:13 am

The FBI has recently warned the public about search engine ads pushing malware disguised as legitimate software – an old tactic that has lately resulted in too many malicious ads served to users searching for software, cracked software, drivers – anything that can be downloaded, really – via Google and Bing.

The recent explosion of search engine malvertising

Malware peddlers employ a variety of methods to deliver their wares to unsuspecting users:

The latter tactic is particularly good at hitting a wide pool of potential targets, since most internet users also use search engines.

Lately, though, they have been overdoing it – or perhaps it’s just that more people have begun noticing it and talking about it online?

Many documented campaigns

HP threat researcher Patrick Schläpfer says that they have seen “a significant increase in malware distributed through malvertising, with multiple threat actors currently using this technique.”

Some of these campaigns have been going on since late last year, and mostly target users searching to download popular software (e.g., Audacity, Blender 3D, GIMP, Notepad++, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Microsoft OneNote, 7zip, OBS, etc.).

malicious Google ads

The malicious ads often manage to be the first link users see when searching for software on Google, and point to a (usually typosquatting) domain that resembles the original software manufacturer’s page. Clicking on the download link triggers the download of the malicious package from a file-hosting and sharing service (e.g., Dropbox), an app development platform (e.g., Google Firebase), or a code-hosting service (e.g., GitHub).

Protect yourself and your loved ones

While Google and Microsoft are trying to keep their users safe, it’s becoming obvious that they are failing to keep pace with the rapid change of tricks employed by cybercriminals to push those ads.

As some ads are removed and new ones inevitably spring up, we are forced to do what we can to protect themselves.

Just being aware of this danger and knowing about the prevalence of these malicious ads will help. Also, carefully check whether the URL to which the advertisement points is the correct one (e.g., by comparing it with the official domain listed on the software’s Wikipedia page).

If you fail to spot the malicious nature of the ad and the typosquatting site, don’t ignore warnings you might get from Microsoft Defender or another security solution you use.

malicious Google ads

But the best advice may be to completely avoid clicking on Google and Bing ads – either by recognizing them and avoiding them consciously, or by installing an ad-blocking extension that will stop those ads from being displayed. That latter option is perhaps the best one for less tech-savvy users, to completely remove the temptation of willy-nilly clicking on potentially malicious ads – wherever they might pop up.

Google and Microsoft, on the other hand, may want to ramp up their efforts to block this kind of abuse of their ad network, or risk their reputation being dented and more and more users start using ad blockers.

Learn Malware Removal Techniques: How to remove malwares from a computer

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Tags: Google ads


Jan 19 2023

HOW TO HACK BANK’S VOICE RECOGNITION SYSTEM – VOICE BIOMETRICS WITH DEEPFAKE VOICE CLONING

Category: Hacking — DISC @ 9:28 am

n recent years, speaking to voice interfaces has become a normal part of our lives. We interact with voice-enabled assistants in our cars, smartphones, smart devices and during telephonic banking. More banks around the globe are using voice biometrics. In banks voice biometrics technology is used to match personal voice patterns and verify the customer’s identity in seconds using just voice. To identify a customer, voice biometrics technology captures a customer’s voice and compares the captured voice characteristics to the characteristics of a previously created voice pattern. If the two match, then the voice biometrics software will confirm that the customer speaking is the same as the customer registered against the voice pattern. Once the customer has created their voice authentication pattern, when they dial the bank, they just type their account, customer ID or card number and repeat the phrase “My voice is my password” or “My voice is my signature.” Then customers can access their telephone banking account, where they can make transactions more securely.

According to the different bank websites, voice biometrics is very secure and like the fingerprint, the voice is unique. But threat actors can use voice biometric spoofing attacks also known as voice cloning or deep fake to break into people’s bank accounts.  Using these attacks they use presentation attacks including recorded voice, computer-altered voice and synthetic voice, or voice cloning, to fool voice biometric systems into thinking it hears the real, authorized user and grants access to sensitive information and accounts. In simple words they clone the voice of bank customers by artificially simulating a customer’s voice. 

According to Atul Narula, a cyber security expert, today’s AI systems are capable of generating synthetic speech that closely resembles a targeted human voice. In some cases, the difference between the real and fake voice is imperceptible. Threat actors not only target public figures including celebrities, politicians and business leaders, but the reality is they can target anyone who has a bank account. They can use online videos, speeches, conference calls, phone conversations and social media posts to gather the data needed to train a system to clone a voice.

Cyber Criminals are using a new breed of phishing scams that exploit the fact that a victim believes they are talking to someone they trust. Last year, a UK-based CEO was tricked into transferring more than $240,000 based on a phone call that he believed was from his boss. These cyber criminals, armed with voice clones, are using phone calls and voicemail. And the attacks aren’t just threatening businesses. In a new breed of the “grandma scam” cyber criminals are posing as family members who need emergency funds. 

Cyber criminals have started using deep fake voices to spread misinformation and fake news. Imagine if somebody publishes a fake voice call of some public figure to sway public opinion or consider how manipulated executive or public figure statements could affect the stock market. Recently some people appeared to be using deepfake technology to imitate some members of the Russian political class, mainly from opposition to Vladimir Putin’s government, to make fake video calls to some representatives of European parliaments. 

Deepfakes are also being used to create fake evidence that impacts criminal cases. Or for blackmailing people in cases where manipulated video and audio of people doing or saying things they didn’t do or say.

HOW DEEP FAKE VOICE CLONING IS DONE?

Today, artificial intelligence and deep learning are advancing the quality of synthetic speech. With as little as a few minutes of recorded sample voice, developers can use it to train an AI voice model that can read any text in the target’s voice.

According to Atul Narula, a cyber security expert from International Institute of Cyber Security, there are a variety of AI tools, which enable virtually any voice to be cloned. Some of these are 

SV2TTS Real Time Voice Cloning, Resemblyzer and WaveRNN

There are some good free tools like Real Time Voice Cloning, Resemblyzer and WaveRNN which allow voice cloning with pre-trained models. While these can be used to generate speech using arbitrary text from one of a few hundred voices, it can also be fine-tuned to generate speech in an arbitrary voice using arbitrary text.

Resemble.AI 

Allows custom AI Generated voices from a speech source. It creates realistic text to speech voices with AI with just 5 minutes of sample voice. You can try it for free.

iSpeech 

It is a high quality text to speech and speech recognition tool. You can generate anybody’s voice in 27 languages.

Vera Voice

It uses machine-learning technology to create super realistic voice clones of any person. They claim that they need just an hour of audio data to train neural networks to generate a new voice.

Google’s Tacotron – Wavenet

These systems from Google can generate speech which mimics any human voice and which sounds more natural. It needs text and sample voice data to generate a human-like voice.  

Although voice samples are difficult to obtain, cyber criminals use social media to obtain them.

It’s important to note that these tools were not created for the purpose of fraud or deception, mentions Atul Narula. But the reality is that business and consumers need to be aware of new threats associated with online AI voice cloning software.

Banks are forcing customers to activate voice biometrics. Banks use different phrases, like  “my voice is my password”, or “my voice is my signature”. To verify user identity users have to enter their account number or Customer ID or 16 digit card number and their voice authentication phrase. Account number is kind of public as it is on cheque book and threat actors can ask someone their account number to deposit some amount via social engineering and people will happily give their account number.

There are three scenarios that someone can use to hack into a voice authentication system used by many banks.

  • In the first scenario Someone calls you to sell something and forces you to use certain words during the call Like: “Yes”, “My Voice”, “Signature”, “Password”, “Username”, “No”, and the name of your bank. And later on creates the phrase using the words and plays the recording during the telephone banking call. 
  • In the second scenario someone calls you and asks you to repeat the entire phrase  “my voice is my signature” and later on plays the recording during the telephone banking call.
  • Third scenario is someone calls you and records a sample of your voice and by using Deep Fake artificial intelligence tools mentioned before generates the complete phrase or the missing words. These tools are not perfect yet but they can generate a voice similar to your voice, and with just a sample of a few minutes they can generate the phrase.

Using these three scenarios, a cyber security expert from International Institute of Cyber Security recorded a call and later on with the help of audio editing software, created the entire phrase. He then played the recorded audio during a telephonic banking call. Using this technique he was easily able to break into banks telephonic banking sessions.  He used the same technique for generating the English and Spanish phrases. It seems voice authentication systems are vulnerable to voice cloning attacks and threat actors could break into anybody’s account just by having the account number or customer ID and some social engineering to perform any of the scenarios mentioned before. See the video to see the POC.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO DETECT VOICE CLONING?

Mariano Octavio, a cyber security investigator mentions that voice cloning technology is not an evil technology. It has many positive and exciting use cases like.

Education: Cloning the voices of historical figures offers new opportunities for interactive teaching and dynamic storytelling in museums. 

Audiobooks: Celebrity voices can be used to narrate books and historical figures can tell their stories in their own voices. 

Assistive Technology: Voice cloning can be used to assist persons with disabilities or health issues that impact their speech. 

According to Jitender Narula, a cyber security expert from International Institute of Cyber Security, Voice anti-spoofing, also called voice liveness detection, is a technology capable of distinguishing between live voice and voice that is recorded, manipulated or synthetic. 

For advanced voice biometrics, interactive Liveness Detection is used – when a person is asked to say a randomly generated phrase. The current capabilities of neural networks allow bypassing interactive liveness detection. 

Experts understand the risks associated with the biometric systems, and are beginning to resort to a multimodal approach – when several types of biometrics are embedded in the identification system.  Like facial recognition and voice recognition.

But it seems banks don’t have this technology as voice authentication used by many banks can be hacked as shown in the video.

Atul Narula mentions that there are a lot of risks associated with biometric authentication. Companies & Financial institutions need to focus attention on the development of advanced deep fake detection solutions. On the other hand we should focus on raising awareness and educating consumers of social media about the risk associated with the deepfake technology.

Tags: Deepfake, VOICE BIOMETRICS, VOICE RECOGNITION SYSTEM


Jan 18 2023

Wireless Penetration Testing Checklist – A Detailed Cheat Sheet

Category: Cheat Sheet,Pen Test,Wi-Fi Security — DISC @ 4:13 pm

Wireless Penetration testing actively examines the process of Information security Measures which is Placed in WiFi Networks and also analyses the Weakness, technical flows, and Critical wireless Vulnerabilities.

The most important countermeasures we should focus on are Threat  Assessment, Data theft Detection, security control auditing, Risk prevention and Detection, information system Management, and Upgrade infrastructure and a Detailed report should be prepared.What is Wireless Penetration Testing?

Wireless Penetration Testing is aimed to test wireless infrastructure to find vulnerabilities in the network. Testing involves both manual testing techniques and automated scans to simulate a real-world attack and identify risks.Why is wireless penetration testing important?

Usage of Wi-Fi access dramatically increased nowadays, and the quality of Wi-Fi security is in question. By using Wi-Fi access thousands of transaction processing every minute.
If the network is vulnerable it allows hackers to launch various attacks and intercept the data.

Common Wireless Network Vulnerabilities

  • Deployment of Vulnerable WEP Protocol
  • Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
  • Default SSIDs and Passwords
  • Misconfigured Firewalls
  • WPA2 Krack Vulnerability
  • NetSpectre – Remote Spectre Exploit
  • Warshipping
  • Packet Sniffing
  • Warshipping

Wireless Penetration Testing Checklist

Let’s take a detailed look at the Wireless Penetration Testing Checklist and the steps to be followed.

Framework for Wireless Penetration Testing

  1. Discover the Devices connected with  Wireless Networks.
  2. Document all the findings if Wireless Device is Found.
  3. If a wireless Device is found using Wifi Networks, then perform common wifi Attacks and check the devices using WEP Encryption.
  4. If you found WLAN using WEP Encryption then Perform WEP Encryption Pentesting.
  5. Check whether WLAN Using WPA/WPA2 Encryption. If yes then perform WPA/WPA2 pen-testing.
  6. Check Whether WLAN using LEAP Encryption. If yes then perform LEAP Pentesting.
  7. No other Encryption Method was used which I mentioned above, Then Check whether WLAN using unencrypted.
  8. If WLAN is unencrypted then perform common wifi network attacks, check the vulnerability which is placed in the unencrypted method and generate a report.
  9. Before generating a Report make sure no damage has been caused to the pentesting assets.

Wireless Pentesting with WEP Encrypted WLAN

  1. Check the SSID and analyze whether SSID is Visible or Hidden.
  2. Check for networks using WEP encryption.
  3. If you find the SSID as visible mode then try to sniff the traffic and check the packet capturing status.
  4. If the packet has been successfully captured and injected then it’s time to break the WEP  key by using a WiFi cracking tool such as Aircrack-ng, or WEPcrack.
  5. If packets are not reliably captured then sniff the traffic again and capture the Packet.
  6. If you find SSID is the Hidden mode, then do Deauthentication for the target client by using some deauthentication tools such as Commview and Airplay-ng.
  7. Once successfully Authenticated with the client and Discovered the SSID is, then again follow the Above Procedure which is already used for discovering SSID in earlier steps.
  8. Check if the Authentication method used is OPN (Open Authentication) or SKA (Shared Key Authentication). If SKA is used, then bypassing mechanism needs to be performed.
  9. Check if the STA (stations/clients) are connected to AP (Access Point) or not. This information is necessary to perform the attack accordingly.

If clients are connected to the AP, an Interactive packet replay or ARP replay attack needs to be performed to gather IV packets which can be then used to crack the WEP key.

If there’s no client connected to the AP, Fragmentation Attack or Korex Chop Chop attack needs to be performed to generate the keystream which will be further used to reply to ARP packets.

10. Once the WEP key is cracked, try to connect to the network using WPA-supplicant and check if the AP is allotting any IP address or not.”EAPOL handshake“.

Wireless Penetration Testing with WPA/WPA2 Encrypted WLAN

  1. Start and Deauthenticate with WPA/WPA2 Protected WLAN client by using WLAN tools Such as Hotspotter, Airsnarf, Karma, etc.
  2. If the Client is Deaauthenticated, then sniff the traffic and check the status of captured EAPOL Handshake.
  3. If the client is not Deauthenticate then do it again.
  4. Check whether the EAPOL handshake is captured or Not.
  5. Once you captured the EAPOL handshake, then perform a PSK Dictionary attack using coWPAtty, Aircrack-ng to gain confidential information.
  6. Add Time-memory trade-off method (Rainbow tables) also known as WPA-PSK Precomputation attack for cracking WPA/2 passphrase. Genpmk can be used to generate pre-computed hashes.
  7. If it’s Failed then Deauthenticate again and try to capture again and redo the above steps.

LEAP Encrypted WLAN

  1. Check and Confirm whether WLAN is protected by LEAP Encryption or not.
  2. De-authenticate the LEAP Protected Client using tools such as karma, hotspotter, etc.
  3. If the client is De authenticated then break the LEAP Encryption using a tool such as asleapto steal the confidential information
  4. If the process dropped then de-authenticate again

Wireless Penetration Testing with Unencrypted WLAN

  1. Check whether SSID is Visible or not
  2. Sniff for IP range if SSID is visible then check the status of MAC Filtering.
  3. If MAC filtering is enabled then spoof the MAC Address by using tools such as SMAC
  4. Try to connect to AP using IP within the discovered range.
  5. If SSID is hidden then discover the SSID using Aircrack-ng and follow the procedure of visible SSID which I Declared above.

Wireless Penetration Testing

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Jan 18 2023

FOUR SERVER-SIDE REQUEST FORGERY (SSRF) VULNERABILITIES IMPACTING DIFFERENT AZURE SERVICES

Category: Security vulnerabilities — DISC @ 10:38 am

Orca, a business that specializes in cloud security, has disclosed information on four server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities that affect several Azure services. Two of these vulnerabilities might have been exploited without the need for authentication.

They were able to attack two vulnerabilities without needing any authentication on the service (Azure Functions and Azure Digital Twins). This gave them the ability to make requests in the name of the server even though it did not own an Azure account.

The vulnerabilities in Azure SSRF that were discovered allowed an attacker to scan local ports, find new services, endpoints, and files. This provided valuable information on potentially vulnerable servers and services to exploit for initial entry, as well as the location of information that could be targeted.
SSRF vulnerabilities are particularly dangerous due to the fact that if attackers are able to access the host’s IMDS (Cloud Instance Metadata Service), this exposes detailed information on instances. This information includes the hostname, security group, MAC address, and user-data, and it could potentially allow attackers to retrieve tokens, move to another host, and execute code (RCE).

A server-side request forgery, also known as SSRF, is a web security vulnerability that enables an attacker to abuse a server-side application by making requests to read or update internal resources as well as submit data to external sources. This type of vulnerability is known as a server-side request forgery.

Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attacks often fall into one of these three categories:

Blind SSRF is a sort of SSRF attack that takes place when an attacker is able to influence a server to make requests, but the attacker does not get the answer that the server sends back to them. Because of this, determining whether or not the attack was effective is much more difficult.
Semi-Blind SSRF is a form of SSRF attack that is very similar to Blind SSRF. The only difference is that the attacker is able to view part of the answer from the server, such as the response headers or the status code. This may provide the attacker the ability to obtain some limited information about the system they are attacking.
Non-Blind SSRF, also known as Full SSRF, is a subtype of SSRF attack that takes place when an attacker has the ability to control a server in order to send requests and get the whole answer from the server. This gives the attacker the ability to learn more about the system they are targeting and gives them the opportunity to perhaps conduct other attacks.
The four SSRF vulnerabilities that we found all fall into the third category, which is known as Full SSRF (sometimes referred to as Non-blind SSRF). To give you an idea of how easily these vulnerabilities can be exploited, Non-blind SSRF flaws can be leveraged in a variety of different ways, such as SSRF via XXE, SSRF via SVG file, SSRF via Proxy, SSRF via PDF Rendering, SSRF via vulnerable query string in the URL, and many more. These are just some of the ways that these vulnerabilities can be exploited.

It is essential to keep in mind that each and every SSRF vulnerability may be exploited to get unauthorized access to sensitive information or to launch further attacks against a target. This is the case regardless of the kind of SSRF attack that is being deployed. For this reason, it is essential for businesses to take the necessary precautions to protect their servers and networks against the kinds of attacks described above.

They were not successful in gaining access to any of the IMDS endpoints because Microsoft had implemented a variety of SSRF defenses, one of which was the environment variable known as X-IDENTITY-HEADER. However, even in the event that an attacker was unable to access the IMDS services, there was still a significant amount of potential harm that they might do, as was previously discussed.


After bringing Microsoft’s attention to the security flaws, the company moved quickly to fix them.

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Tags: Azure servics, server-side request forgery (SSRF)


Jan 17 2023

Windows PowerShell Cheat Sheet

Powershell

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Jan 17 2023

Car companies massively exposed to web vulnerabilities

Category: Security vulnerabilities,Web Security — DISC @ 11:51 am

From a detailed report – compiled by security researcher Sam Curry – the findings are an alarming indication that in its haste to roll out digital and online features, the automotive industry is doing a sloppy job of securing its online ecosystem. https://lnkd.in/gdAXGjaN

The web applications and APIs of major car manufacturers, telematics (vehicle tracking and logging technology) vendors, and fleet operators were riddled with security holes, security researchers warn.

In a detailed report, security researcher Sam Curry laid out vulnerabilities that run the gamut from information theft to account takeover, remote code execution (RCE), and even hijacking physical commands such as starting and stopping the engines of cars. The findings are an alarming indication that in its haste to roll out digital and online features, the automotive industry is doing a sloppy job of securing its online ecosystem.

From web portals to car locks

Around six months ago, Curry and a few friends stumbled on a vulnerability in the mobile app of a scouter fleet at the University of Maryland, which caused the horns and headlights on all the scooters in the campus to turn on and stay on for 15 minutes. Curry subsequently became interested in doing further investigation along with researchers Neiko Rivera, Brett Buerhaus, Maik Robert, Ian Carroll, Justin Rhinehart, and Shubham Shah.

“We thought it’d be awesome to dump a ton of time into hacking different car companies to see how many ‘horns we could honk’, but it quickly turned into hacking telematics infrastructure and things outside of the telematics APIs,” Curry told The Daily Swig.

The researchers’ findings, detailed on Curry’s blog, highlight an alarming number of critical vulnerabilities across different systems. For example, a poorly configured API endpoint for generating one-time passwords for the web portals of BMW and Rolls Royce potentially enabled attackers to take over the accounts of any employee and contractor, thereby gaining access to sensitive customer and vehicle information.

A misconfiguration in the Mercedes-Benz single sign-on (SSO) system enabled the researchers to gain access to several internal company assets, including private GitHub repositories and internal communication tools. Attackers could pose as employees, allowing them to access sensitive information, send commands to customer vehicles, perform RCE attacks, and use social engineering to escalate their privileges across the Mercedes-Benz infrastructure.

Elsewhere a vulnerability in Kia’s web portal for dealers could have allowed attackers to create a fake session, register an account, associate it with any arbitrary vehicle VIN number, and gain access to lock, unlock, and remote start/stop mechanisms, as well as vehicle locations and vehicle camera feeds.

A poorly implemented SSO functionality in Ferrari’s web applications allowed the researchers to gain unrestricted access to the JavaScript code of several internal applications. The source code contained internal API keys and usage patterns, allowing potential attackers to create and modify users or (worse yet) give themselves super-user permissions. The vulnerabilities effectively allowed attackers to take ownership of Ferrari cars.

Other vulnerabilities granted full remote control over the locks, engine, horn, headlights, and trunk of Hyundai and Genesis vehicles made after 2012. The researchers were also able to obtain full remote access to Honda, Nissan, Infiniti, and Acura vehicles.

Dangerous bug in telematics portal

Curry and his colleagues found a SQL injection vulnerability in the admin portal of Spireon, the parent company of several car telematics and fleet management vendors that collectively service 15 million vehicles. Curry described this as their “most alarming finding” because the vulnerability allowed them to gain administrator access to the company’s platform.

“Using our access, we could access all user accounts, devices (vehicles), and fleets,” he said. “Some of the fleets on the website included ambulances, police cruisers, and large trucks. Using the Spireon access, we could send fully arbitrary commands and update device configurations.”

The researchers found they were able to lock starters, unlock vehicles, track vehicles, and send rogue dispatch addresses to vehicles like police cars and ambulances. The researchers further suspect the security shortcomings made it possible to install backdoors and run arbitrary commands on Spireon devices.

Half-baked

“There were some car companies where you’d own one, then copy the exact same methodology to another car company and get in with the same vulnerability,” Curry said.

The researchers found that some flaws existed across the platforms of several companies, including tons of exposed actuators (vehicle component control), debug endpoints, and administrative functionality for managing vehicles, purchase contracts, and telematic devices.

“From what it seems, car companies really rushed to install these devices,” Curry said. “Currently, these installations mostly have limited functionality so you can only do things like track, unlock, and start the vehicle, but with companies like Tesla and Rivian building more connected vehicles which can actually be controlled remotely, I’m worried that market pressure will force these companies to build half-baked solutions which are open to attack.”

Checkout our latest posts on API security…

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Tags: Car Security


Jan 17 2023

EXPLOIT CODE TO HACK LEXMARK PRINTERS AND PHOTOCOPIERS PUBLISHED, USES ZERO DAY VULNERABILITIES

Category: Printer security,Security vulnerabilities,Zero day — DISC @ 10:27 am

The American corporation Lexmark International, Inc. is a privately owned business that specializes in the production of laser printers and other image goods.

The researcher found that the product is susceptible to two vulnerabilities, either of which can be exploited by an adversary to copy file data from a source path to a destination path or to induce the server-side application to make requests to an unintended location. Both of these vulnerabilities are possible due to the fact that the product is vulnerable to both of these vulnerabilities. According to the specialists, the printer has two vulnerabilities that enable an authorized hacker to upload arbitrary files and run code with elevated privileges. Both of these vulnerabilities may be exploited by a malicious user.

He published the code on Github that had a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for each of the four vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities make it possible for an adversary to seize control of a vulnerable device.

According to the findings of the researcher, an attack may be carried out that compromises the device by exploiting all four of its vulnerabilities simultaneously.

The proof-of-concept attack has been successfully tested against a Lexmark MC3224adwe printer using the most recent version of the firmware, CXLBL.081.225; nevertheless, it is claimed to operate successfully against other printers and photocopiers as well.

The security flaw that was discovered in Lexmark’s printer devices has not been fixed.

Tags: LEXMARK PRINTERS


Jan 16 2023

A NEW PRIVILEGE ESCALATION VULNERABILITY IN THE LINUX KERNEL, ENABLES A LOCAL ATTACKER TO EXECUTE MALWARE ON VULNERABLE SYSTEMS

Category: Linux Security — DISC @ 11:51 pm

A new privilege escalation vulnerability has been identified in the Linux kernel by researcher Davide Ornaghi. This vulnerability might enable a local attacker to execute code on vulnerable computers with elevated rights if the kernel is installed on those systems. Additionally, Davide published the proof-of-concept and the write-up. The vulnerability, which has been assigned the tracking number CVE-2023-0179, is a stack-based buffer overflow that exists in the Netfilter subsystem. An authorized attacker might exploit this issue to get elevated privileges as root if the attacker executed a program that had been carefully written for the purpose.

The Linux kernel has a framework known as netfilter that enables a variety of networking-related actions to be performed in the form of individualized handlers. This may be accomplished by filtering incoming network packets. Netfilter provides the functionality necessary for directing packets through a network and preventing packets from reaching sensitive locations within a network by offering a variety of functions and operations for packet filtering, network address translation, and port translation. [1] These features allow Netfilter to provide the functionality required for directing packets through a network.

Linux Basics: The Command Line Interface

latest Linux security Titles

Tags: PRIVILEGE ESCALATION VULNERABILITY


Jan 16 2023

Why encrypting emails isn’t as simple as it sounds

Category: Email Security — DISC @ 1:39 pm

Why organizations need encryption

Encrypting an email message ensures that unauthorized parties cannot read it. For any party without proper authorization, the message will appear indecipherable.

For organizations, message confidentiality is crucial to stop potentially sensitive information from reaching prying eyes. Also, they should be able to confirm the integrity of the message and the sender’s identity – without this, spoofed messages can be sent.

The basis of confidential communication over email is that both sender and recipient have secured their respective local systems, by hardening the host OS, employing client security, EDR, XDR and so forth.

Different options have different benefits and challenges

Best-effort opportunistic encryption methods such as Outlook Message Encryption (OME) and various third-party solutions (email encryption gateways, plugins and similar) have the benefit of being easy to use. They can also be transparently integrated into email programs (such as Outlook Message Encryption), and make it easy to contact new people, with no need for prior key exchange – if the message is sent to a user who doesn’t run the same system, a portal for opening the message is typically placed in view.

Additionally, they can often be integrated into the outgoing email server with rules to enforce encryption automatically, depending on set rules such as automated encryption for certain attachments, for example.

There is, however, the possibility of an unauthorized party decrypting the message if they gain access to it first. This poses a real threat as the email communication itself is not guaranteed to be encrypted due to the email delivery process being reliant on STARTTLS and similar opportunistic encryption schemes. This can be mitigated by adding 2FA, such as via SMS PIN code which can help improve security (of course, the recipient’s cell phone number must be known when sending). And in many situations, it is important to also identify the sender’s identity reliably: After all, if anyone can send messages, how can you differentiate a genuine sender from an imposter?

Full encryption methods such as S/MIME and PGP/GPG enable complete confidentiality where only the recipient can decrypt the email message due to the possibility of verifying the sender’s identity. However, several issues arise when using this method. There is a need for key management where keys need to be distributed, swapped, and kept up to date. There is also limited support as the recipient often needs to use the same solution as the sender.

Only a certain subset of contacts typically use this solution, leading to the need to use multiple solutions depending on the recipient(s). This also requires extra effort to determine which solution can be used for the specific recipient and if the solution is secure enough for the material being sent. This can lead to a complicated user interface with different, confusing options like “sign only” or “sign and encrypt”. It becomes quite easy to end up choosing the wrong option, or worse, forgetting to use the encryption at all (since it usually must be selected specifically).

Recently Google started offering option to use S/MIME with Gmail as “E2EE” or “client-side encryption”. This option is currently in beta testing and only available for limited audiences. This however is a significant development as it might result in wider adoption of S/MIME encryption, especially if made available for free Gmail tiers.

The threat model decides

What is the best solution? S/MIME or PGP/GPG may seem like attractive solutions, but challenges in key management and difficulty in training people to use them could lead to poor adoption. Some less secure solutions could be used for most communication, while the more secure solutions, such as S/MIME or GPG/PGP, could be used for other recipients.

The users that need to use the more secure solutions must be instructed on identifying when the more secure method is needed and how to use the solution properly (such as key management and practice sending and receiving encrypted email). Ultimately the demands of the specific organization and use cases determine the solutions that might be needed.

Checkout our previous posts on Email Security…

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Tags: Email Security, encrypting email, ProtonMail


Jan 16 2023

Most Important Network Penetration Testing Checklist

Category: Cheat Sheet,Network security,Pen Test — DISC @ 11:05 am

Network Penetration Testing determines vulnerabilities in the network posture by discovering Open ports, Troubleshooting live systems, services and grabbing system banners.

The pen-testing helps administrator to close unused ports, additional services, Hide or Customize banners, Troubleshooting services and to calibrate firewall rules.You should test in all ways to guarantee there is no security loophole.

Let’s see how we conduct a step by step Network penetration testing by using some famous network scanners.

Network Penetration Testing

1.HOST DISCOVERY

Footprinting is the first and important phase were one gather information about their target system.

DNS footprinting helps to enumerate DNS records like (A, MX, NS, SRV, PTR, SOA, CNAME) resolving to the target domain.

  • A – A record is used to point the domain name such as gbhackers.com to the IP address of it’s hosting server.
  •  MX – Records responsible for Email exchange.
  • NS – NS records are to identify DNS servers responsible for the domain.
  • SRV – Records to distinguish the service hosted on specific servers.
  • PTR – Reverse DNS lookup, with the help of IP you can get domain’s associated with it.
  • SOA – Start of record, it is nothing but the information in the DNS system about DNS Zone and other DNS records.
  • CNAME – Cname record maps a domain name to another domain name.

We can detect live hosts, accessible hosts in the target network by using network scanning tools such as Advanced IP scanner, NMAP, HPING3, NESSUS.

Ping&Ping Sweep:

root@kali:~# nmap -sn 192.168.169.128root@kali:~# nmap -sn 192.168.169.128-20 To ScanRange of IProot@kali:~# nmap -sn 192.168.169.* Wildcardroot@kali:~# nmap -sn 192.168.169.128/24 Entire Subnet

Whois Information 

To obtain Whois information and name server of a webisteroot@kali:~# whois testdomain.com

  1. http://whois.domaintools.com/
  2. https://whois.icann.org/en

Traceroute

Network Diagonastic tool that displays route path and transit delay in packetsroot@kali:~# traceroute google.com

Online Tools

  1. http://www.monitis.com/traceroute/
  2. http://ping.eu/traceroute/

2.PORT SCANNING

Perform port scanning using tools such as Nmap, Hping3, Netscan tools, Network monitor. These tools help us to probe a server or host on the target network for open ports.

Open ports are the gateway for attackers to enter in and to install malicious backdoor applications.root@kali:~# nmap –open gbhackers.com             To find all open portsroot@kali:~# nmap -p 80 192.168.169.128           Specific Portroot@kali:~# nmap -p 80-200 192.168.169.128   Range of portsroot@kali:~# nmap -p “*” 192.168.169.128          To scan all ports

Online Tools

  1. http://www.yougetsignal.com/
  2. https://pentest-tools.com/information-gathering/find-subdomains-of-domain

3.Banner Grabbing/OS Fingerprinting

Perform banner Grabbing/OS fingerprinting such as Telnet, IDServe, NMAP determines the operating system of the target host and the operating system.

Once you know the version and operating system of the target, we need to find the vulnerabilities and exploit.Try to gain control over the system.root@kali:~# nmap -A 192.168.169.128root@kali:~# nmap -v -A 192.168.169.128 with high verbosity level

IDserve another good tool for Banner Grabbing.

Networkpentesting Flowchart

Online Tools

  1. https://www.netcraft.com/
  2. https://w3dt.net/tools/httprecon
  3. https://www.shodan.io/

4.Scan for Vulnerabilities

Scan the network using Vulnerabilities using GIFLanguard, Nessus, Ratina CS, SAINT.

These tools help us in finding vulnerabilities with the target system and operating systems.With this steps, you can find loopholes in the target network system.

GFILanguard

It acts as a security consultant and offers patch Management, Vulnerability assessment, and network auditing services.

Nessus

Nessus a vulnerability scanner tool that searches bug in the software and finds a specific way to violate the security of a software product.

  • Data gathering.
  • Host identification.
  • Port scan.
  • Plug-in selection.
  • Reporting of data.

5.Draw Network Diagrams

Draw a network diagram about the organization that helps you to understand logical connection path to the target host in the network.

The network diagram can be drawn by LANmanager, LANstate, Friendly pinger, Network view.

6.Prepare Proxies

Proxies act as an intermediary between two networking devices. A proxy can protect the local network from outside access.

With proxy servers, we can anonymize web browsing and filter unwanted contents such as ads and many other.

Proxies such as Proxifier, SSL Proxy, Proxy Finder..etc, to hide yourself from being caught.

6.Document all Findings

The last and the very important step is to document all the Findings from Penetration testing.

This document will help you in finding potential vulnerabilities in your network. Once you determine the Vulnerabilities you can plan counteractions accordingly.

You can download rules and scope Worksheet here – Rules and Scope sheet 

Thus, penetration testing helps in assessing your network before it gets into real trouble that may cause severe loss in terms of value and finance.

Important Tools used for Network Pentesting

Frameworks

Kali Linux, Backtrack5 R3, Security Onion

Reconnaisance

Smartwhois, MxToolbox, CentralOps, dnsstuff, nslookup, DIG, netcraft

Discovery

Angry IP scanner, Colasoft ping tool, nmap, Maltego, NetResident,LanSurveyor, OpManager

Port Scanning

Nmap, Megaping, Hping3, Netscan tools pro, Advanced port scannerService Fingerprinting Xprobe, nmap, zenmap

Enumeration

Superscan, Netbios enumerator, Snmpcheck, onesixtyone, Jxplorer, Hyena,DumpSec, WinFingerprint, Ps Tools, NsAuditor, Enum4Linux, nslookup, Netscan

Scanning

Nessus, GFI Languard, Retina,SAINT, Nexpose

Password Cracking

Ncrack, Cain & Abel, LC5, Ophcrack, pwdump7, fgdump, John The Ripper,Rainbow Crack

Sniffing

Wireshark, Ettercap, Capsa Network Analyzer

MiTM Attacks

Cain & Abel, Ettercap

Exploitation

 Metasploit, Core ImpactThese are the Most important checklist you should concentrate with Network penetration Testing .

You can follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook for daily Cybersecurity updates also you can take the Best Cybersecurity courses online to keep your self-updated.

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Tags: Penetration Testing Checklist


Jan 13 2023

Popular JWT cloud security library patches “remote” code execution hole

Category: API security,Cloud computing,Remote code — DISC @ 11:36 am

by Paul Ducklin

JWT is short for JSON Web Token, where JSON itself is short for JavaScript Object Notation.

JSON is a modernish way of representing structured data; its format is a bit like XML, and can often be used instead, but without all the opening-and-closing angle brackets to get in the way of legibility.

For example, data that might be recorded like this in XML…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data>
   <name>Duck</name>
   <job>
      <employer>Sophos</employer>
      <role>NakSec</role>
   </job>
</data>

…might come out like this in JSON:

{"name":"Duck","job":{"employer":"Sophos","role":"NakSec"}}

Whether the JSON really is easier to read than the XML is an open question, but the big idea of JSON is that because the data is encoded as legal JavaScript source, albeit without any directly or indirectly executable code in it, you can parse and process it using your existing JavaScript engine, like this:

The output string undefined above merely reflects the fact that console.log() is a procedure – a function that does some work but doesn’t return a value. The word Sophos is printed out as a side-effect of calling the function, while undefined denotes what the function calculated and sent back: nothing.

The popularity of JavaScript for both in-browser and server-side programming, plus the visual familiarity of JSON to JavaScript coders, means that JSON is widely used these days, especially when exchanging structured data between web clients and servers.

And one popular use of JSON is the JWT system, which isn’t (officially, at any rate) read aloud as juh-witt, as it is written, but peculiarly pronounced jot, an English word that is sometimes used to refer the little dot we write above above an i or j, and that refers to a tiny but potentially important detail.

Authenticate strongly, then get a temporary token

Loosely speaking, a JWT is a blob of encoded data that is used by many cloud servers as a service access token.

The idea is that you start by proving your identity to the service, for example by providing a username, password and 2FA code, and you get back a JWT.

The JWT sent back to you is a blob of base64-encoded (actually, URL64-encoded) data that includes three fields:

  • Which crytographic algorithm was used in constructing the JWT.
  • What sort of access the JWT grants, and for how long.
  • A keyed cryptographic hash of the first two fields, using a secret key known only to your service provider.

Once you’ve authenticated up front, you can make subsequent requests to the online service, for example to check a product price or to look up an email address in a database, simply by including the JWT in each request, using it as a sort-of temporary access card.

Clearly, if someone steals your JWT after it’s been issued, they can play it back to the relevant server, which will typically give them access instead of you…

…but JWTs don’t need to be saved to disk, usually have a limited lifetime, and are sent and received over HTTPS connections, so that they can’t (in theory at least) easily be sniffed out or stolen.

When JWTs expire, or if they are cancelled for security reasons by the server, you need to go through the full-blown authentication process again in order to re-establish your right to access the service.

But for as long they’re valid, JWTs improve performance because they avoid the need to reauthenticate fully for every online request you want to make – rather like session cookies that are set in your browser while you’re logged into a social network or a news site.

Security validation as infiltration

Well, cybersecurity news today is full of a revelation by researchers at Palo Alto that we’ve variously seen described as a “high-severity flaw” or a “critical security flaw” in a popular JWT implementation.

In theory, at least, this bug could be exploited by cybercriminals for attacks ranging from implanting unauthorised files onto a JWT server, thus maliciously modifying its configuration or modifying the code it might later use, to direct and immediate code execution inside a victim’s network.

Simply put, the act of presenting a JWT to a back-end server for validation – something that typically happens at every API call (jargon for making a service request) – could lead malware being implanted.

But here’s the good news:

  • The flaw isn’t intrinsic to the JWT protocol. It applies to a specific implementation of JWT called jsonwebtoken from a group called Auth0.
  • The bug was patched three weeks ago. If you’ve updated your version of jsonwebtoken from 8.5.1 or earlier to version 9.0.0, which came out on 2022-12-21, you’re now protected from this particular vulnerability.
  • Cybercriminals can’t directly exploit the bug simply by logging in and making API calls. As far as we can see, although an attacker could subsequently trigger the vulnerability by making remote API requests, the bug needs to be “primed” first by deliberately writing a booby-trapped secret key into your authentication server’s key-store.

According to the researchers, the bug existed in the part of Auth0’s code that validated incoming JWTs against the secret key stored centrally for that user.

As mentioned above, the JWT itself consists of two fields of data denoting your access privileges, and a third field consisting of the first two fields hashed using a secret key known only to the service you’re calling.

To validate the token, the server needs to recalculate the keyed hash of those first two JWT fields, and to confirm the hash that you presented matches the hash it just calculated.

Given that you don’t know the secret key, but you can present a hash that was computed recently using that key…

…the server can infer that you must have acquired the hash from the authentication server in the first place, by proving your identity up front in some suitable way.

Data type confusion

It turns out that the hash validation code in jsonwebtoken assumes (or, until recently, assumed) that the secret key for your account in the server’s own authentication key-store really was a cryptographic secret key, encoded in a standard text-based format such as PEM (short for privacy enhanced mail, but mainly used for non-email purposes these days).

If you could somehow corrupt a user’s secret key by replacing it with data that wasn’t in PEM format, but that was, in fact, some other more complex sort of JavaScript data object…

…then you could booby-trap the secret-key-based hash validation calculation by tricking the authentication server into running some JavaScript code of your choice from that infiltrated “fake key”.

Simply put, the server would try to decode a secret key that it assumed was in a format it could handle safely, even if the key wasn’t in a safe format and the server couldn’t deal with it securely.

Note, however, that you’d pretty much need to hack into the secret key-store database first, before any sort of truly remote code execution trigger would be possible.

And if attackers are already able to wander around your network to the point that they can not only poke their noses into but also modify your JWT secret-key database, you’ve probably got bigger problems than CVE-2022-23539, as this bug has been designated.

What to do?

If you’re using an affected version of jsonwebtoken, update to version 9.0.0 to leave this bug behind.

However, if you’ve now patched but you think crooks might realistically have been able to pull off this sort of JWT attack on your network, patching alone isn’t enough.

In other words, if you think you might have been at risk here, don’t just patch and move on.

Use threat detection and response techniques to look for holes by which cybercriminals could get far enough to attack your network more generally…

…and make sure you don’t have crooks in your network anyway, even after applying the patch.

Breaking down JSON Web Tokens: From pros and cons to building and revoking

Contact DISC InfoSec if you need guidance on RESTful API security specs

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Tags: JWT cloud security library


Jan 13 2023

Credential Stealing Flaw in Google Chrome Impacted 2.5 Billion Users

Category: Web Security — DISC @ 10:01 am

The vulnerability (CVE-2022-3656), allowed remote attackers to steal sensitive user data like cloud service provider credentials and crypto wallet details.

The cyber security researchers at Imperva Red Team have shared details of a recently discovered and patched vulnerability that impacted over 2.5 billion Google Chrome users and all Chromium-based browsers, including Opera and Edge.

Vulnerability Details

The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-3656, allowing remote attackers to steal sensitive user data like cloud service provider credentials and crypto wallet details. Further probe revealed that the issue emerged due to how the Chrome browser interacted with symlinks while processing directories and files.

As per Imperva’s researcher Ron Masas, the browser didn’t check whether the symlink pointed to a location that wasn’t accessible, encouraging the stealing of sensitive files. Google characterized it as a medium-severity vulnerability caused due to inadequate data validation in File System. The company released a fix in the Chromium versions 107 and 108 released in Oct and Nov 2022, respectively.

What is SymStealer?

In their report, Imperva researchers named the flaw SymStealer. The issue occurs when the attacker exploits the File System to evade program restrictions and access unauthorized files. Imperva’s analysis revealed that when a user drags and drops a folder directly onto a file input element, the browser recursively resolves all symlinks without displaying a warning.

For your information, a symlink is also called a symbolic link. It is a file that points to a directory or file and lets the OS treat it as if it was stored at the symlink’s location. Usually, this feature helps users in creating shortcuts, file organisation, and redirect file paths.

But Imperva’s research revealed that this feature could be exploited to introduce vulnerabilities such as this one that emerged due to how browsers interacted with symlinks for file/directories processing. This issue is also called symbolic link following.

Attack Scenario

Through this weakness, the attacker can trick a victim into accessing a compromised website and download a ZIP archive file that contains the symlink to a valuable folder or file present on the device e.g. wallet keys. When this file is uploaded back to this site as an infection chain component like a crypto wallet service, the user is prompted to upload their recovery keys.

The attacker can now traverse the symbolic link and access the original file storing the key phrase. Imperva researchers devised a proof-of-concept using CSS trickery to modify the file input element’s size so that the file uploads regardless of where the folder drops on the page and information is stolen successfully.

It is important to always keep your software up to date in order to protect against the latest vulnerabilities and ensure that your personal and financial information remains secure.

Imperva

Information Assurance Directorate: Deploying and Securitign Google Chrome in a Windows Enterprise

Tags: Credential Stealing Flaw, Google Chrome


Jan 12 2023

vCISO Services – value added benefits of vCISO

Category: CISO,vCISO — DISC @ 3:37 pm

Most small-to medium-sized business (SMBs) hiring a CISO may be challenging business decision to find a suitable and affordablee candidate and the impacts of cyber breach to the SMBs can be devastating since many of those businesses are unable to sustain the costs of breach. A vCISO can provide the expertise needed to ensure your information security, privacy programs are succeeding and your company is prepared to assess and analyze an incident, all at cost-effective price.

DISC’s Virtual CISO (vCISO) service assists organizations to design, develop and implement information security programs based on various standards and regulations. We provide professional security services which includes but not limited to leadership team (strategic) but also a support team of security analysts (tactical) to solve distinct cybersecurity challenges to every organization.

Reasons to Consider a Virtual CISO (vCISO)

Expertise covering Industries:
vCISOs work with various clients across industries, opening them to events not attainable to CISOs experience in an isolated industry. The security knowledge gained by a vCISO from each client environment is different which ensures an improved expertise to assess the next organization, which positively impacts on the next client project.

Flexibility in Unique Business Environments:
vCISOs first gain a thorough understanding of each organization’s business model, company culture, risk tolerance, and objectives. From there, they gain an understanding of security risks faced by the organization. With a full view of the security landscape, the vCISO will communicate the findings to help clients make the appropriate security decisions for their environment.

Efficiency with Core Competencies:
A virtual CISO fills will prioritize security findings where organizations need it most. By focusing on cybersecurity strategy and implementation, vCISOs helps internal security team with control understanding and implementation responsibility. This enables both staff and cybersecurity leadership to remain dedicated to their respective core competencies.

Objective Independence:
vCISOs are an independent third party with an objective viewpoint and goals of helping clients make the best security decisions for their business.

Economical:
DISC’s vCISO programs generally cost a fraction of a full-time CISO and supporting security team. According to salary.com report, the average salary for a CISO is $260,000 per year in California. On average, DISC’s vCISO clients pay a fraction of what it would cost to hire an in-house CISO.

Most important skills of vCISO: is to translate between business and IT as a facilitator

vCISO risk remediation solution:

  1. What is risk to business
  2. Likelihood of occurrence and what will be the risk to business
  3. Impact of occurring and what will be the risk to business
  4. Cost of fixing, implementing or remediating and what will be the residual risk

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Tags: vCISO, Virtual CISOs


Jan 12 2023

Microsoft Exchange Vulnerabilities Most Exploited by Hackers Targeting Financial Sector

During the month of November, researchers at the cybersecurity firm LookingGlass examined the most significant vulnerabilities in the financial services industry in the United States.

The company looked at assets with public internet-facing assets from more than 7 million IP addresses in the industry and discovered that a seven-year-old Remote Code Execution vulnerability affecting Microsoft Windows was at the top of the list.

According to CISA, the “Financial Services Sector includes thousands of depository institutions, providers of investment products, insurance companies, other credit and financing organizations, and the providers of the critical financial utilities and services that support these functions.”

Reports stated that the industry employs about 8 million Americans and contributes $1.5 trillion, or 7.4% of the nation’s overall GDP.

Microsoft Exchange Vulnerabilities

Over 900 times in the financial sector have been affected by a critical remote code execution vulnerability identified as (CVE-2015-1635), affecting Microsoft Windows and it has been around for seven years.

If this vulnerability is exploited successfully, a remote attacker may execute arbitrary code with system privileges and result in a buffer overflow.

The next most often exploited vulnerability was (CVE-2021-31206), which affects Microsoft Exchange Servers. Reports say in the month of November, this vulnerability was exploited 700 times in the financial services industry in the United States.

Top list of vulnerabilities in the financial services sector

“Our data holdings attribute roughly 7 million of these to the U.S. financial services sector, which includes insurance companies, rental & leasing companies, and creditors, among other subsectors”, explains LookingGlass researchers.

According to recent reports from the U.S. Department of Treasury, ransomware attacks alone cost U.S. financial institutions close to $1.2 billion in 2021, a nearly 200% increase from the year before. 

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FCEN) of the Treasury identified Russia as the main source of numerous ransomware variants hitting the industry in its study.

Joint Cybersecurity Advisory: Compromise of Microsoft Exchange Server

Tags: Microsoft Exchange Vulnerabilities


Jan 11 2023

How virtual CISOs can efficiently extend their services into compliance readiness

Category: CISO,vCISO — DISC @ 1:47 pm

Compliance services are emerging as one of the hottest areas of cybersecurity. While compliance used to be mainly the province of large enterprises, times have changed, and it is now a day-to-day concern for a growing number of small and medium businesses.

guide virtual CISOs

Even when these organizations are not regulated, SMEs often aim to follow compliance and/or security frameworks either for their own risk mitigation or in order to comply with the standards required by their customers. The driver is often their customers’ supply chain concerns and requirements. As large businesses adopt cybersecurity and compliance frameworks and agree to certain standards, they impose similar demands on their suppliers.

This is a major opportunity for virtual CISO (vCISO) providers assuming they can broaden their offerings to encompass compliance. vCISO service providers perform a vital role in building a comprehensive cybersecurity program for their SME customers. They ensure that organizations put basic security measures in place to reduce the risk of a cyberattack and adequate safeguards to protect sensitive information. As such, those delivering vCISO services are well-positioned to expand their services into compliance. Some have already extended their service portfolio by adding compliance-related services, adding value to their customers.

While this should be a natural and easy transition, many vCISO service providers struggle to make this move. Adding compliance and audit readiness services may be overwhelming – it requires a specific skill set and may be time-consuming.

Fortunately, vCISO platforms are emerging that integrate the compliance function and automate much of the work allowing vCISO service providers to easily add compliance services to their offering with no extra burden or cost.

In this guide we explain:

  • What compliance services are and why they are in demand
  • How vCISO providers can add value to the compliance sector
  • What the different compliance frameworks are and how they fit in with the CISO role
  • The upsell potential of compliance services
  • How compliance services tie into audit preparedness
  • How vCISOs in possession of detailed security assessments are well-positioned to provide compliance services
  • The platforms that can help vCISO providers automate security and compliance

Download the guide here.

Cybersecurity: The CISO’s View

Cybersecurity: The CISO's View

Cybersecurity Leadership

Download a Virtual CISO (#vCISO) and Security Advisory Fact Sheet | Cybersecurity Cheat Sheet

Tags: vCISO


Jan 11 2023

Microsoft Details Techniques Used by Hackers to Deliver Ransomware to macOS Devices

Category: Hacking,Ransomware — DISC @ 11:02 am

One of the most dominating threats in the current cyberspace era is ransomware which is constantly affecting organizations of all sizes. In order to cast a wider net of potential targets, attackers are constantly changing their tactics and expanding their tradecraft to make sure that they are successful.

As a result of ransomware attacks, a wide range of industries, systems, and platforms are being affected. When it comes to protecting hybrid devices and working environments at work today, it is vital to understand how ransomware works across these systems and platforms.

In contrast to other platforms, Mac ransomware tends to rely substantially on user assistance such as downloading and running fake applications or trojanized programs to infect computers.

macOS Devices Ransomware

Unveiling the TTPs of Ransomware

During ransomware campaigns, the attackers typically gain access to a target device, execute the malware, encrypt the files belonging to the target, and inform the target of a ransom demand and request for payment.

The following steps are taken by malware creators in order to accomplish these objectives:-

  • Abuses legitimate functionalities
  • Devise various techniques to exploit vulnerabilities
  • Evade defenses
  • Force users to infect their devices

Microsoft analyzed the following four Mac ransomware families:-

  • KeRanger
  • FileCoder
  • MacRansom
  • EvilQuest

Technical Analysis 

It is important for ransomware to target which files to encrypt in order to gain the greatest amount of success. Based on Microsoft’s observations, ransomware families enumerate files and directories in several different ways on Mac as follows:-

  • Using the Find binary
  • Using library functions opendir, readdir, and closedir
  • Using the NSFileManager class through Objective-C

The primary goal of malware creators is to prevent or evade the analysis of files by either the human analyst or an automated analysis system.

Among the ransomware families discussed above, either hardware-based checks are employed to ensure that the ransomware is not detected, or special code is made to prevent analysis of the ransomware.

As far as hardware-based checks are concerned, they are the following:-

  • Checking a device’s hardware model
  • Checking the logical and physical processors of a device
  • Checking the MAC OUI of the device
  • Checking the device’s CPU count and memory size

Among the checks related to the code are the following:-

  • Delayed execution
  • PT_DENY_ATTACH (PTRACE)
  • P_TRACED flag
  • Time-based check

It is quite common for malware to use persistence to make sure it continues to run even after the system has been restarted.

The EvilQuest and MacRansom ransomware families, among the Mac ransomware families that have been analyzed, have both utilized persistence techniques.

As a result, these malware families use a variety of persistence techniques to maintain their presence in the system. And here below we have mentioned the persistence techniques:-

  • Creating launch agents or launch daemons
  • Using kernel queues

There are often similarities in the anti-analysis and persistence techniques of the ransomware families that we have analyzed. There is, however, a difference in the encryption logic between these ransomware families. 

The encryption of files is often done using AES-RSA algorithms, while other techniques are used, such as system utilities, XOR routines, or custom algorithms.

The methods for encrypting data vary from adding a patch in place to deleting the original file and creating a new one in its place. As part of its implementation of in-memory execution, EvilQuest uses the following APIs:-

  • NSCreateObjectFileImageFromMemory – used for creating an object file image from the data present in memory
  • NSLinkModule – used to link the object file image
  • NSLookupSymbolInModule – used for looking for a specific symbol
  • NSAddressOfSymbol – used to get the address of the symbol.

Recommendation

It is possible for defenses to mitigate the impact of ransomware attacks by taking the following mitigation steps:-

  • Do not install apps from sources other than the official app store of the software platform.
  • Protect privileged resources by restricting access to them.
  • Use a web browser that supports Microsoft Defender SmartScreen, such as Microsoft Edge.
  • Keep your operating system and applications up-to-date by installing the latest versions of them.
  • On your Mac, make sure you are using Microsoft Defender for Endpoints.

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Tags: macOS Devices


Jan 10 2023

Automotive Industry Exposed to Have Major API Vulnerabilities

Category: cyber security — DISC @ 4:42 pm

The impacted automotive giants include BMW, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and many more…

These API vulnerabilities exposed vehicles to information theft, account takeover, remote code execution (RCE), and even hijacking of physical commands such as starting and stopping engines.

Millions of vehicles belonging to 16 different manufacturers had completely exposed API vulnerabilities which could be abused to unlock, start, and track cars while also impacting the privacy of the vehicle owners.

These vulnerabilities were found by security researcher Sam Curry who conducted in-depth research into the security loopholes of the automotive industry along with researchers Neiko Rivera, Brett Buerhaus, Maik Robert, Ian Carroll, Justin Rhinehart, and Shubham Shah. 

Automotive Industry Exposed to Have Major Vulnerabilities

In a detailed report, Curry laid out vulnerabilities found in the automotive APIs powering several automotive giants including the following:

  • Kia
  • BMW
  • Ford
  • Honda
  • Acura
  • Jaguar
  • Nissan
  • Porsche
  • Toyota
  • Ferrari
  • Spireon
  • Reviver
  • Genesis
  • Hyundai
  • Infiniti
  • SiriusXM
  • Land Rover
  • Rolls Royce
  • Mercedes-Benz

According to researchers, information theft to account takeover, remote code execution (RCE), and even hijacking physical commands such as starting and stopping engines of cars were all real possibilities that hackers could access before the security vulnerabilities were fixed by respective manufacturers following responsible disclosure. 

Spireon’s telematics solution faced the most serious of issues which could have been exploited to gain full administrator access to the company’s platform, enabling a threat actor to issue arbitrary commands to about 15.5 million vehicles as well as update device firmware. 

“Using our access, we could access all user accounts, devices (vehicles), and fleets,” Curry said. “Some of the fleets on the website included ambulances, police cruisers, and large trucks. Using the Spireon access, we could send fully arbitrary commands and update device configurations.”

Another vulnerability reported in the researchers’ findings showed that a poorly configured API endpoint for generating one-time passwords for the web portals of BMW and Rolls Royce could allow attackers to take over the accounts of any employee and contractor, thereby gaining access to sensitive customer and vehicle information. 

A poorly implemented SSO functionality in Ferrari’s web applications allowed the researchers to gain unrestricted access to the JavaScript code of several internal applications. The source code contained internal API keys and usage patterns, allowing potential attackers to create and modify users’ or (worse yet) give themselves superuser permissions. The vulnerabilities effectively allowed attackers to take ownership of Ferrari cars.

A misconfiguration in the Mercedes-Benz single sign-on (SSO) system enabled the researchers to gain access to several internal company assets, including private GitHub repositories and internal communication tools.

Attackers could pose as employees, allowing them to access sensitive information, send commands to customer vehicles, perform RCE attacks, and use social engineering to escalate their privileges across the Mercedes-Benz infrastructure.

“There were some car companies where you’d own one, then copy the exact same methodology to another car company and get in with the same vulnerability,” Curry wrote in a blog post.

The researchers found that some flaws existed across the platforms of several companies, including tons of exposed actuators (vehicle component control), debug endpoints, and administrative functions for managing vehicles, purchase contracts, and telematic devices.

This only goes to show that as much of a hurry as these car companies were to install these devices, they completely overlooked the task of securing their online ecosystem. 

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Tags: Car Hacker, Car Security, Connected cars


Jan 10 2023

Remote code execution bug discovered in the popular JsonWebToken library

Category: Information Security,Remote code — DISC @ 11:11 am

The open-source jsonwebtoken (JWT) library is affected by a high-severity security flaw that could lead to remote code execution.

The open-source JsonWebToken (JWT) library is affected by a high-severity security flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-23529 (CVSS score: 7.6), that could lead to remote code execution.

The package is maintained by Auth0, it had over 9 million weekly downloads as of January 2022 and it is used by more than 22.000 projects.

The flaw was discovered by Unit 42 researchers, it can be exploited by threat actors by tricking a server into verifying a maliciously crafted JSON web token (JWT) request.

“By exploiting this vulnerability, attackers could achieve remote code execution (RCE) on a server verifying a maliciously crafted JSON web token (JWT) request.” reads the advisory published by Palo Alto Networks. “With that being said, in order to exploit the vulnerability described in this post and control the secretOrPublicKey value, an attacker will need to exploit a flaw within the secret management process.”

JsonWebToken is an open-source JavaScript package that allows users to verify/sign JSON web tokens (JWT).

The flaw impacts JsonWebToken package version 8.5.1 or an earlier version, the JsonWebToken package version 9.0.0 addressed the issue.

“For versions <=8.5.1 of jsonwebtoken library, if a malicious actor has the ability to modify the key retrieval parameter (referring to the secretOrPublicKey argument from the readme link) of the jwt.verify() function, they can gain remote code execution (RCE).” reads the advisory published on GitHub. “You are affected only if you allow untrusted entities to modify the key retrieval parameter of the jwt.verify() on a host that you control.”

JsonWebToken RCE

Vulnerabilities in open-source projects are very dangerous, threat actors could exploit them as part of supply chain attacks that can impact any projects relying on them.

“Open source projects are commonly used as the backbone of many services and platforms today. This is also true for the implementation of sensitive security mechanisms such as JWTs, which play a huge role in authentication and authorization processes.” concludes Palo Alto. “Security awareness is crucial when using open source software. Reviewing commonly used security open source implementations is necessary for maintaining their dependability, and it’s something the open source community can take part in.”

Below is the timeline for this vulnerability:

  • July 13, 2022 – Unit 42 researchers sent a disclosure to the Auth0 team under responsible disclosure procedures
  • July 27, 2022 – Auth0 team updated that the issue was under review
  • Aug. 23, 2022 – Unit 42 researchers sent an update request
  • Aug. 24, 2022 – Auth0 team updated that the engineering team was working on the resolution
  • Dec. 21, 2022 – A patch was provided by the Auth0 engineering team

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Tags: JsonWebToken library


Jan 09 2023

Top 10 Best Penetration Testing Companies & Services – 2023

Category: Pen Test — DISC @ 12:08 pm

enetration Testing Companies are pillars when it comes to information security, nothing is more important than ensuring your systems and data are safe from unauthorized access, Many organizations have a flawed security culture, with employees motivated to protect their own information rather than the organization.

This sets up an opportunity for attackers seeking ways into a company to exploit it and get access to critical data and secrets.

In this article, we will see the 10 best penetration testing companies and understand what penetration testing is. We will also discuss its importance, different types of tests, and how they are conducted. 

What Is Penetration Testing?

The term “penetration testing” refers to the process of checking an application’s or network’s security by exploiting any known vulnerabilities.

These security flaws might be found in a variety of places, such as system configuration settings, authentication methods, and even end-user risky behaviors.

Apart from assessing security, pentesting is also used to assess the effectiveness of defensive systems and security tactics.

The cyber security condition is shifting at a breakneck speed. New vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited all of the time, some of them are publicly recognized, and others are not.

Being aware is the greatest defence you can have. A penetration test uncovers security flaws in your system that might lead to data theft and denial of service.

Top 10 Best Penetration Testing Companies – 2023

Best Penetration Testing Companies: Key Features and Services

Top Pentesting CompaniesKey FeaturesServices
Astra SecurityAutomated Vulnerability Scans, Continuous Scanning, CI/CD Integration, Zero false positives, Pentest Report, Customer Support, and Theories on How to Report to Regulators.Penetration Testing, Vulnerability Assessment, Security Audits, IT Risk Assessments, Security Consulting Website Protection, Compliance Reporting.
DetectifySimple and intuitive interface, Prioritized remediation advice can your web applications and APIs in the cloudPenetration Testing, Scanning for Vulnerabilities
IntruderProvides results from automated analysis and prioritization, Examination of configurations for flaws missing patches application weaknessesManagement of Vulnerabilities, Penetration Testing, Perimeter server scanning, Cloud Security, Network Security
InvictiBuilt-in reporting tools automatically find SQL Injection, Scan 1,000 web applications in just 24 hoursPenetration Testing, Website SecurityScanning, Web VulnerabilityScanning
Rapid7Easy-to-use interface-click phishing campaignsPenetration Testing, Vulnerability Management
AcunetixAccess Controls/Permissions, Activity Dashboard, Activity MonitoringImmediate actionable results best web security services seamless integration with customer’s current system
CobaltProof-Based Scanning, Full HTML5 Support, Web Services Scanning, Built-in Tools, SDLC IntegrationIntegration with JIRA and Github, OWASP Top 10, PCI, HIPAA, and other compliance report templates customer Reports API for building personalized security reports test vulnerabilities functionality
SecureWorksmore than 4,400 customers in 61 countries across the world perform more or less 250 billion cyber eventsPen Testing Services, Application Security Testing, Advance Threat/Malware detection, and preventing Retention and Compliance Reporting
SciencesoftCertified ethical hackers on the team33 years of overall experience in ITIBM Business Partner in Security Operations & Response, Recognized with 8 Gold Microsoft CompetenciesVulnerability Assessment, Penetration Testing, Compliance Testing, Security Code Review, Infrastructure Security Audit
CyberhunterBest for Penetration Testing, Network Threat Assessments, Security Audits, Cyber Threat Hunting, Network reconnaissance, vulnerability mapping, exploitation attempts, cyber threat analysisPenetration Testing, Network Threat Assessments, Network Security Audits, Cyber Threat Hunting, Network Log Monitoring

Table covering 10 Penetration Testing Companies & Key Features

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Tags: Penetration Testing


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