October 2017 – SurfWatch Labs, Inc.

Weekly Cyber Risk Roundup: Bad Rabbit Halted, Law Firm Breach Raises Questions

The week’s top trending event was the outbreak of Bad Rabbit ransomware, which quickly spread across Russia and Eastern Europe before most of the infrastructure behind the attack was taken offline hours later.

Bad Rabbit was largely spread via watering hole attacks using compromised news media websites that prompted users to install a fake “Flash Update.” Symantec reported that the vast majority of infection attempts occurred in Russia within the first two hours of the malware’s appearance, but there were also infection attempts observed in Japan, Bulgaria, Ukraine, the U.S., and other countries.

The malware used an SMB component as well as the “Mimikatz” tool, along with some hard-coded default usernames and passwords, to attempt to spread laterally across a network after infection. It was later discovered that the malware also leveraged the leaked NSA exploit EternalRomance in a way that was “very similar to the publicly available Python implementation of the EternalRomance exploit” used by NotPetya (or Nyeta) malware.

“The BadRabbit exploit implementation is different than the one in Nyetya, although it is still largely based on the EternalRomance exploit published in the ShadowBrokers leak,” Cisco researchers wrote. “We can be fairly confident that BadRabbit includes an EternalRomance implementation used to overwrite a kernel’s session security context to enable it to launch remote services, while in Nyetya it was used to install the DoublePulsar backdoor.”

Those infected with Bad Rabbit were directed to a Tor payment page and presented with a countdown timer for when the ransom demand would increase, starting at 0.05 bitcoin (around $280). The Register reported that various researchers have found that recovering infected machines appeared difficult, but not impossible.

Other trending cybercrime events from the week include:

TheDarkOverlord targets surgery clinic: TheDarkOverlord said it has stolen terabytes of data from London Bridge Plastic Surgery, including sensitive photos and information on some high-profile clients. “We have TBs [terabytes] of this shit. Databases, names, everything,” a representative from The Dark Overlord told The Daily Beast. “There are some royal families in here.” The clinic confirmed that it was likely breached and said it has launched an investigation into the stolen data.
Cryptocurrency-related cybercrime: A phishing scam impersonating MyEtherWallet managed to trick several users into handing over the passwords to their wallets, and as a result approximately $16,000 was stolen. Coinhive, which provides websites with a JavaScript miner, said that its Cloudflare account was hijacked due to the use of an insecure password and lack of two-factor authentication, and as a result the attacker was able to steal hashes from users. Coincafe said that an unauthorized third party gained access to a system that was decommissioned in 2014 containing customers’ personal information, and the third party then contacted some of those customers and said they would erase their compromised data for a fee. The website for the new cryptocurrency Bitcoin Gold was taken offline by a DDoS attack.
Updates on previously disclosed breaches: Whole Foods said its payment card breach affected nearly 100 locations. U.S. Cellular said an investigation into automated attacks against online user accounts in June revealed that the incident also exposed bank account and routing numbers. West Music, which operates westmusic.com and percussionsource.com, is the latest company to notify customers of a payment card breach tied to third-party payment processor Aptos. Alliance College-Ready Public Schools said they are one of multiple school districts and charter networks affected by a vulnerability that exposed information from the school data platform Schoolzilla. The NSA contractor tied to the leak of confidential hacking tools allegedly disabled his antivirus and infected his computer with malware when installing a pirated version of Microsoft Office.
Other notable events: A contractor lost control of a Dell customer support website designed to help customers restore their data and computers to their factory default state, and the hijacked website may have been used to push malware while it was compromised. Researchers discovered two publicly exposed MongoDB databases belonging to Tarte Cosmetics that contained the personal information of nearly two million customers. FirstHealth of the Carolinas, which has more than 100 physical locations, said that a WannaCry variant forced the shutdown of its network to prevent the malware from spreading. Memory4Less is notifying customers that their personal information may have compromised due to an unauthorized user installing malware on its network between November 2016 and September 2017. LightHouse Management Services and the Iowa Department of Human Services announced employee email account breaches. COL Financial Group said it has experienced a “possible breach.” Two websites run by the Czech Statistical Office that reported the results of the country’s parliamentary elections were temporarily taken offline by DDoS attacks.

SurfWatch Labs collected data on many different companies tied to cybercrime over the past week. Some of those “newly seen” targets, meaning they either appeared in SurfWatch Labs’ data for the first time or else reappeared after being absent for several weeks, are shown in the chart below.

Cyber Risk Trends From the Past Week

The offshore law firm Appleby said that client data was stolen last year, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which obtained the hacked data, has contacted the firm over allegations of wrongdoing and says it plans on publishing a series of stories related to the breach.

Business Insider reported that the law firm’s super-rich clients are “bracing themselves for the exposure of their financial secrets.” The incident has echoes of the 2016 “Panama Papers” leak, which involved the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca and has led to numerous consequences around the globe — including the resignation of prime ministers in Iceland and Pakistan, and calls for the impeachment of Ukraine’s president.

It is unclear at the moment what fallout, if any, may occur due the breach at Bermuda-based Appleby, and it is important to note that the company said in a statement that it has found no evidence of wrongdoing.

“We are disappointed that the media may choose to use information which could have emanated from material obtained illegally and that this may result in exposing innocent parties to data protection breaches,” the company said. “Having researched the ICIJ’s allegations we believe they are unfounded and based on a lack of understanding of the legitimate and lawful structures used in the offshore sector.”

However, there have already been reports that leak has led to renewed scrutiny of Glencore Plc’s acquisition of Katanga Mining Ltd., which runs copper and cobalt mines in Congo, and claims that aircraft buyers may have used Isle of Man for abusive Value Added Tax (VAT) avoidance.

Appleby’s clients include FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies, and the breach serves as a reminder that law firms are often the target of malicious actors due to the combination of sensitive documents they hold along with the potentially weaker security inherent in some third parties. Additional documents and reporting related to the Appleby breach will likely be published throughout the coming months.

‘Tis the Season: How Cybercriminals Perpetuate Gift Card Fraud

Two months ago, Fan Xia, a 29-year-old research assistant from UW-Milwaukee’s engineering department, was arrested for laundering more than $300,000 via an international scheme involving gift cards. According to the criminal complaint, Xia would receive gift card information from scammers in India, use that information to buy iTunes and Google Play gift cards, and then scratch off the codes and forward the information to another set of individuals in China.

The case is hardly unusual — fraud leveraging gift cards has become more the norm than the exception — but it does highlight several ways in which criminals typically exploit gift cards:

Police were tipped off to the fraud ring after a Wisconsin man reported that a caller impersonating the IRS requested he pay via gift cards $4,987 in back taxes, which is the exact type of gift card scam the IRS has been warning about the past couple years.
The man fell for the scam and bought three Target gift cards, two worth the maximum $2,000 and one worth $987. Those cards were then used to launder the scammed money via numerous iTunes and Google Play gift cards allegedly purchased by Xia. Police said Xia had taken pictures of the scratched-off codes of approximately 6,100 such cards over an 11-month period, totalling $305,000.
The victim who was duped by the IRS impersonator grew suspicious and tried to cancel the cards after providing the scammers the information, but the active gift cards were quickly used by Xia, who was allegedly buying up to $3,000 worth gift cards a day with the data from India.

2017-10-25_CashOut — Malicious actors use gift cards for a variety of purposes, including cashing out stolen credit cards. This guide on a Dark Web market claims to walk fraudsters through 10 steps of that process.

As the holiday season grows closer, there will likely be renewed warnings for both consumers and organizations about similar scams. The gift card market has grown to become a $140 billion dollar industry, and the average consumer will purchase at least two gift cards during the holidays. However, those gift cards remain relatively insecure compared to traditional payment cards, and cybercriminals will likely continue to exploit those weaknesses as consumer activity ramps up in the coming months.

How Cybercriminals Exploit Gift Cards

To use money on a gift card, fraudsters need the card code or number and, in some instances, the associated PIN. In the case involving Xia, he is alleged to have bought and scratched off the iTunes and Google Play codes himself to help launder money originally stolen from phone scam victims. However, there are several methods in which fraudsters can gain access to gift card codes without paying for them.

2017-10-25_GiftCards — Walmart gift cards have a 16-digit card number and PIN, whereas iTunes gift cards have a 16-digit alphanumeric code.

The most straightforward method for fraudsters to get codes off of physical gift cards is by simply grabbing a stack of inactive cards, which tend to be easily accessible at most stores. If the cards use magnetic strips, the card data may be stolen and cloned with a magnetic stripe reader/writer. If the cards use redeemable codes, fraudsters can scratch off the codes, copy them, and then replace the scratch-off label. Some companies don’t even bother hiding gift card numbers behind a scratch-off since they’re not usable until purchased, which makes it even easier for fraudsters to steal the data.

The fraudsters then return the cards for legitimate consumers to purchase — without knowing that the card numbers or codes they are buying are already in the possession of malicious actors.

2017-10-25_ScratchOffLabels — Replacement scratch-off stickers, magnetic stripe readers, and other legitimate tools that can be repurposed for fraud are easily purchased on sites such as Amazon and eBay.

That method, though simple, is pretty difficult to scale. Larger fraud operations tend to leverage technology, along with weaknesses in gift card security, in order to automate the compromise of gift cards.

Professional pen-tester Will Caput recently gave a presentation on how he was able to exploit the patterns of various organizations’ gift cards in order to brute force his way to discovering active card numbers. For example, Caput noticed that the gift card numbers one Mexican restaurant used were identical except for one incrementing number and the randomized last four digits. He told Wired that he could target the website used to check gift card balances with the bruteforcing software Burp Intruder to cycle through all 10,000 possible values for the last four random digits in about 10 minutes. Rinse and repeat that process via the incrementing number and a fraudster can easily generate a large number of active cards to use or to sell via cybercriminal markets.

In fact, cybercriminals used a similar approach earlier this year with GiftGhostBot, which was detected performing automated attacks against nearly 1,000 customer websites in order to check millions of gift card numbers for active cards.

Attacks like GiftGhostBot have led some companies to disable their gift card balance-check websites — or to implement CAPTCHAs and other measures to combat automated attacks. Unfortunately, many gift cards remain vulnerable to simple attacks, and cybercriminals continue to shift their attention towards gift cards as traditional payment cards become more secure due to the adoption of EMV and other fraud-prevention tactics.

Many of those compromised gift cards are then bought, sold, and traded on dark web markets and other websites, a practice we’ll examine in the second part of this blog series.

Weekly Cyber Risk Roundup: DDoS Attacks Hit Sweden, Researchers Warn of ROCA

The Swedish Transportation Administration and other related agencies were among the week’s top trending cybercrime targets due to a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that led to services being disrupted earlier this month.

The DDoS attacks against the Swedish Transportation Administration affected all of its web-based systems, including the IT system that manages train orders, the administration’s email system, Skype, and its website. Officials said the disruption, which led to the driving of trains manually, resulted in the stoppage and delays of some trains.

A spokesperson for the administration said (Swedish) that the DDoS attacks targeted its internet service providers, TDC and DGC; however, the attacks appeared designed to disrupt the administration’s services.

The following day saw additional DDoS attacks against the website of Sweden’s Transport Agency, as well as public transport operators Västtrafik in western Sweden, which briefly crashed the operator’s ticket booking app and online travel planner.

The incident follows warnings from various DDoS mitigation providers about DDoS attacks. CDNetworks – which surveyed organizations in the UK, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland – found that more than half of the organizations were hit by DDoS attacks in the past year. A10 Networks warned that the number of organizations experiencing an average DDoS attack over 50 Gbps has quadrupled in the past two years. In addition, Incapsula researchers recently warned of a new “pulse wave” DDoS attack that provides an “easy way” for attackers to double their attack output. A Neustar report also found that DDoS attacks are frequently accompanied by other malicious activity, such as viruses, malware, ransomware, and lost customer data.

Other trending cybercrime events from the week include:

Large data leaks: The Republican phone polling firm Victory Phones had 223 GB worth of data stolen in what appears to be an attack against an unsecured MongoDB database that occurred in January 2017. The incident exposed data on hundreds of thousands of Americans who submitted donations to political campaigns. A researcher has discovered the personal information of millions of South Africans among a large dump of other data breaches. The data includes 30 million unique South African ID numbers, about 2.2 valid email addresses, and other personal information. We Heart It announced a data breach affecting 8 million accounts created between 2008 and November 2013.
Payment card breaches: Pizza Hut is warning that customers who used the company’s website or mobile app to place an order during a 28-hour period in early October may have had their information compromised. The online e-commerce platform Spark Pay is notifying customers of a payment card breach involving merchant websites after discovering malicious code on a server. Citizens Financial Group is notifying customers of an ATM skimming incident that occurred at a Citizens Bank ATM located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Other data breaches: Microsoft’s internal database for tracking bugs was hacked in 2013 revealing descriptions of critical and unfixed vulnerabilities for widely used software such a Windows. Transamerica Retirement Solutions is notifying some customers that it discovered unauthorized access to their retirement plan online account information due to the use of compromised third-party user credentials. Officials said the cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb was targeted with phishing emails containing malware and that led to the personal and financial information of at least 30,000 users being exposed. Chase Brexton Health Care is notifying 16,000 patients of a breach due to a phishing attack that led to the compromise of four employee email accounts and the attackers rerouting the victims’ paychecks to a bank account under their control. Namaste Health Care in Missouri is notifying approximately 1,600 patients of a ransomware infection that may have led to the attacker accessing their information. Rivermend Health is notifying 1,300 patients that their personal information may have been compromised due to a breach of an employee’s email account.
Other notable events: The British TV production firm Mammoth Company was hacked by North Korean hackers after reports the company was creating a TV show about a British nuclear scientist taken prisoner in North Korea. The attack did not cause any harm, but it did cause widespread alarm, the BBC reported. Domino’s Australia said that it is investigating a potential issue with a former supplier’s system after a number of customers received unauthorized spam emails. A University of Kansas student was expelled after using a keylogger device to steal faculty credentials and change his grades.

Cyber Risk Trends From the Past Week

Researchers have discovered a vulnerability, dubbed “ROCA” (CVE-2017-15361), in the cryptographic smartcards, security tokens, and other secure hardware chips manufactured by Infineon Technologies AG, and that vulnerability could allow an attacker to calculate the private portion of an RSA key.

The vulnerability is due to the way the Infineon Trusted Platform Module firmware “mishandles RSA key generation, which makes it easier for attackers to defeat various cryptographic protection mechanisms via targeted attacks,” the CVE states.

Chips manufactured as early as 2012 are affected by the vulnerability, the researchers said.

“The currently confirmed number of vulnerable keys found is about 760,000 but possibly up to two to three magnitudes more are vulnerable,” the researchers said. “We found and analyzed vulnerable keys in various domains including electronic citizen documents, authentication tokens, trusted boot devices, software package signing, TLS/HTTPS keys and PGP.”

Researchers said that malicious actors could feasibly use what’s known as a “practical factorization attack” against key lengths of up to 2048 bits, and if the attack is improved it could be used against 4096-bit RSA keys in the future. According to the researchers, the time and complexity cost associated with selected key lengths are:

512 bit RSA keys – 2 CPU hours (the cost of $0.06);
1024 bit RSA keys – 97 CPU days (the cost of $40-$80);
2048 bit RSA keys – 140.8 CPU years (the cost of $20,000 – $40,000).

If a vulnerable key is found, organizations should contact their device vendor for further advice, the researchers said. Forbes reported that Fujitsu, Google, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft have all pushed out fixes for their relevant hardware and software. The researchers will present their full findings at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security later this month.

Payment Card Fraud and Cryptocurrency Attacks Saw Significant Increase Last Quarter

The financials sector saw an increase in incident volume in the third quarter of 2017, and much of that increase revolved around cyber-attacks targeting various cryptocurrency platforms, as well as payment card breaches in the consumer goods sector that led to increased fraud activity on cybercriminal markets.

2017-10-12_FinancialRisk — The financial sector (blue) saw above average risk scores for incident volume, effect impact, and targeted asset in Q3 when compared to all sectors (black).

Key takeaways from SurfWatch Labs’ threat intelligence findings for the period include:

Banks remained as the top trending group associated with cybercrime in the financials sector, accounting for nearly one quarter (24.4%) of the negative cyber events collected by SurfWatch Labs; however, that percentage was down from 38.1% in the first half 2017 and 35.8% across all of 2016.
That drop was largely attributed to increased activity in the specialty financials group, which saw its percentage of threat intelligence jump from 7.4% in the first half of 2017 to 19.4% in Q3 as malicious actors increasingly targeted cryptocurrency platforms.
Payment cards were the dark web target category to see the most significant increase, accounting for 14.6% of the financials sector’s dark web threat intelligence – a rise from 7.1% in the first half of 2017.

2017-10-12_FinancialIncidentVolume — The financials sector saw an increase in the amount of threat intelligence collected by SurfWatch Labs beginning in July, and that increased volume continued throughout Q3 2017.

Malicious Actors Increasingly Targeting Cryptocurrency

Cybercrime incidents related to the banking group remained the most widespread in SurfWatch Labs’ Q3 threat intelligence data. However, when excluding our dark web data, many of the most noteable cyber-attacks – including all five of the top trending incidents for the period – occurred at cryptocurrency organizations in the specialty financials group.

2017-10-12_FinancialGroupsAll — Specialty financials accounted for 19.4% of the cybercrime threat intelligence collected by SurfWatch Labs during Q3, a significant increase from the 7.4% during the first half of 2017.

Several of the top trending cyber-attacks in Q3 revolved around the hijacking of Ethereum Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) in order to steal cryptocurrency. Notable attacks include:

- In July, Coindash said that an actor gained access to its website during the company’s ICO and changed the text on the site to a fraudulent Ether wallet address – resulting in $10 million worth of Ether being stolen from investors.
- Veritaseum also reported in July that it had $8.4 million worth of tokens stolen during its ICO as a result of a “very sophisticated” attack, which may have involved at least one corporate partner dropping the ball, according to the company’s founder.
- In August, Enigma Catalyst said that investors were scammed out of approximately $500,000 of Ether when malicious actors hijacked the company’s website, mailing lists, and Slack accounts and subsequently offered a fake pre-sale to investors ahead of the company’s upcoming ICO.

In addition, there were a variety of other cryptocurrency-related attacks during the period. For example, a bug was found in the multi-signature wallet code used as part of Parity Wallet software, which led to wallets being exploited and reports of approximately $34 million worth of Ether being stolen before white hat hackers intervened to prevent an additional $85 million in theft. In addition, a malicious actor was also able to trick the hosting provider of the open source Classic Ether Wallet into hijacking the Classic Ether Wallet domain, resulting in potential theft as transactions were made on the site.

As cryptocurrencies continue to gain legitimacy and value, it is likely that malicious actors will continue to shift towards targeting them in both the near and long term. For example, one group is tracking over 150 active Ethereum scams heading into the fourth quarter of the year. Exploiting the popularity of cryptocurrencies has proven to be highly profitable for both cybercriminals and state actors, such as North Korea.

Fraud Activity Increases on the Dark Web

SurfWatch Labs also observed an increase in the amount of fraud-related activity in Q3, with fraud accounting for 43.6% of financials dark web threat intelligence – a significant jump from previous periods. In the first half of 2017, fraud accounted for 24.4% of collected dark web intelligence, and during 2016 it accounted for 24%.

2017-10-12_FinancialEffectMacrosDarkWeb — SurfWatch Labs collected a much larger percentage of fraud-related threat intelligence in Q3 2017 than during any other recent period.

Digging deeper into the data, it is clear that point-of-sale (POS) and other payment card breaches helped to drive a significant portion of fraud activity in Q3. In the first half of 2017, the target tag of “payment cards” appeared in only 8.3% of the dark web threat intelligence collected by SurfWatch Labs. In Q3 that number rose to 14.5%.

Some of the notable payment card breaches announced during Q3 include:

The fast food chain Sonic has been tied to at least a portion of five million fresh payment cards being sold on a cybercriminal market.
Whole Foods announced a POS breach involving its taprooms and restaurants.
Avanti announced a POS breach affecting an undisclosed number of the company’s self-serve snack kiosks.
Equifax’s massive breach included more than 200,000 payment cards.
B&B Theaters announced it was investigating a payment card breach that may date all the way back to 2015.
Sabre announced a breach affecting its SynXis Central Reservations system back in May, and affected hotels continued to issue breach notification letters throughout Q3.
Third-party vendor Aptos continues to be tied to payment card breaches at online retailers.

Other payment card breach notifications and investigations have continued to be announced in the days since Q3 ended, including a POS breach at Hyatt Hotels and Irish retailer Musgrave warning SuperValu, Centra, and Mace customers to be on the lookout for fraud. In addition, Flexshopper announced it exposed payment card information, and Tommie Cooper and Cricut announced they discovered malware on their website checkout pages.

Numerous organizations also warned of payment cards phishing scams during the period – including Netflix, Uber, E-ZPass, Newcastle University, and more. A number of other data breaches and leaks involved partial payment card information.

Conclusion

The financials sector continues to be the target of a wide range of attacks due to the nature of the data organizations hold and the services they provide. As we noted in our Fraud and the Dark Web whitepaper, the number of avenues through which malicious actors can carry out fraud has increased along with the number of digital accounts tied to financial information. However, Q3 saw an increase in more traditional payment card fraud activity on the dark web – likely resulting from several large one-off POS breaches, as well as issues at vendors that have spread through the supply chain to affect both in-person and online purchases.

On the flip side, the number of cryptocurrency related breaches, particularly those tied to Ethereum, have highlighted a shift that may have legs – particularly since there is less regulation and, in some cases, less security to circumvent in order to pull off multi-million dollar heists. For example, it was reported that at least one Slack account with administrative privileges at Enigma used a previously leaked password and didn’t require two-factor authentication. Likewise, the incident involving Classic Ether Wallet began by simply socially engineering a third party over the phone by impersonating the site’s owner. Malicious actors are quick to copy the successful techniques of their peers, and we will likely see similar attempts against cryptocurrency organizations in the future.

Weekly Cyber Risk Roundup: Kaspersky’s Alleged Espionage and SmartVista Bug Unpatched

The National Security Agency and Kaspersky Lab were once again among the week’s top trending targets due to continued reporting around Kaspersky’s alleged involvement in the 2015 theft of classified materials from the home computer of an NSA employee.

As we noted last week, sources told the The Wall Street Journal that a contractor took the sensitive data home without the NSA’s knowledge, and the Russian government was able to then steal that information by leveraging the contractor’s use of antivirus software created by Kaspersky. However, the Washington Post subsequently reported that the individual in question was actually an employee in the NSA’s elite Tailored Access Operations division.

In addition, officials told the WSJ this week that Kaspersky’s antivirus software was modified to search for terms such as “top secret,” as well as the classified code names of U.S. government programs, in an operation that is broader and more pervasive than just the one hacked employee. That modification could not have been done without Kaspersky’s knowledge, an official told the paper. However, Kaspersky has continued to state that it “was not involved in, and does not possess any knowledge of, the situation in question.”

The New York Times reported that the U.S. was first made aware of the espionage campaign leveraging Kaspersky by Israeli intelligence officers who hacked into Kaspersky Labs in 2014. Those hackers, later dubbed Duqu 2.0, exploited up to three zero-days in order to spy on Kaspersky Lab technologies, ongoing research, and internal processes, Kaspersky wrote in 2015 after discovering the intrusion.

Officials told the WSJ that it remains unclear exactly how many other government computers or employees may have been targeted via Kaspersky software – or if any additional sensitive data was stolen.

Other trending cybercrime events from the week include:

Defense-related breaches: The Australian Signals Directorate said that a defense contractor had 30 gigabytes of data stolen, including data related to F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, the C-130 military transport aircraft, the new spy plane P-8 Poseidon, the smart bomb JDAM, and some Australian naval vessels. A breach of South Korea’s military network last year allowed North Korean hackers to access vast amounts of data, including classified wartime contingency plans jointly created by the U.S. and South Korea.
Payment card breaches: Irish retailer Musgrave is asking customers of SuperValu, Centra, and Mace to be on the lookout for fraudulent charges due to concerns that their payment card numbers and expiration dates may have been stolen. Hyatt Hotels is notifying customers that payment card information swiped and manually entered at the front desks of some locations may have been compromised. Hue.com and nononsense.com, and their parent company Kayser-Roth, are notifying customers of a payment card breach tied to third-party website order processor Aptos. Droege Computing Services said that a StampAuctionNetwork server was hacked and payment card information was compromised due to a breach that occurred through Droege’s main offices. Tommie Cooper and Cricut are notifying customers that payment information may have been stolen due to malware on the checkout portions of their websites.
Other data breaches: Accenture confirmed it exposed massive amounts of data across four unsecured cloud servers, including passwords and secret decryption keys. Disqus said that 17.55 million users had their information compromised due to a security breach affecting a database from 2012 that included information dating back to 2007. A security researcher discovered a vulnerability in T-Mobile’s website that allowed malicious actors to gain access to customers’ personal data as long as they had a correct phone number. The previously reported breach at Deloitte compromised a server that contained the emails of at least 350 clients, The Guardian reported. Catholic United Financial is notifying members of breach due to SQL injection attacks. Palo Alto High School officials warned that students’ personal information was breached and posted to a “rogue” website. SyncHR is notifying employees that it accidentally exposed their benefit information to other HR administrators and customers.
Other notable events: Nearly $60 million was stolen from Far Eastern International Bank in Taiwan using malware designed to generate fraudulent SWIFT messages. The bank said it has recovered the vast majority of the stolen funds, with only $500,000 still outstanding. A security bug in the music platform PledgeMusic allowed anyone to log into some users’ accounts using a correct email address along with an incorrect password or no password at all. The bug could have been exploited to make unauthorized payments and pledges to artists. David Kent, the founder of the networking website oilpro.com, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for hacking into the database of competitor Rigzone, stealing information on over 700,000 customers, using that information to grow Oilpro, and then attempting to sell Oilpro with its inflated growth and stolen data to Rigzone.

Cyber Risk Trends From the Past Week

Researchers have published the details of a yet-to-be patched SQL injection vulnerability affecting BPC Banking Technologies’ SmartVista product suite after numerous reports of the bug went unanswered.

Exploiting the vulnerability requires authenticated access to the transactions portion of SmartVista front-end, the researchers said, and it can lead to the compromise of various sensitive data depending on the level of access the BPC SmartVista user was granted. Researchers said the company has yet to respond to multiple vulnerability reports from Rapid7, CERT/CC in the U.S., and SwissCERT that date as far back as May 10.

BPC’s website states that the company has 188 customers across 66 countries, including “huge tier 1 banks, and both midsize and smaller companies.” The website also states that all of its solutions are delivered via the SmartVista product suite, which “handles all aspects of ATM management, billing, mobile and contactless payments, settlement, point of sale, card issuing and acquiring, microfinance and electronic payments processing.”

Rapid7 researchers said that an attacker could craft a series of true/false statements to brute-force query the database, allowing information from accessible tables to be exposed, such as usernames and passwords. Rapid7 program manager Samuel Huckins told Threatpost the company was hesitant to publish its findings due to the potential for financial and data loss, but it has not received any response from BPC or evidence of the vulnerability being patched across many months.

“After a certain point, we needed to move forward and make it public in the hope they see it and take action,” Huckins said. “This could impact a lot of their customers who may not be aware of this at all.”

The researchers advised users to contact BPC support for more details, to limit access to the management interface of SmartVista, and to regularly perform audits of successful and failed logins.

Weekly Cyber Risk Roundup: Yahoo Breach Expands, Equifax Grilled, Another NSA Insider

Yahoo and Equifax were both back in the news this week due to new details emerging around their respective data breaches, including Yahoo revising the number of affected accounts to three billion and Equifax’s former CEO being grilled before Congress.

Yahoo had previously stated that its 2013 data breach affected one billion user accounts, which made it the most widespread data breach in history. On Tuesday Verizon Communications, which acquired Yahoo for $4.48 billion in June, tripled the number of impacted accounts to include all three billion of Yahoo’s users accounts. The breach was particularly egregious not only because of its size, but because it involved sensitive information such as the security questions and answers and backup email addresses used to recover accounts. Yahoo’s massive 2013 breach is in addition to a separate, previously disclosed breach that affected 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014.

This week also saw the congressional testimony of Equifax’s former CEO Richard Smith. Smith said the breach was due to a combination of “both human error and technology failures” around implementing an Apache Struts patch made available on March 6, which was not patched for months despite a policy stating patches occur within a 48-hour time period. The testimony was met with harsh criticism from some lawmakers. For example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) questioned the entire business model of Equifax, claiming that the company has no incentive to protect consumer data and highlighting various avenues through which the company is making “millions of dollars off its own screwup.” Warren said that Equifax may “actually come out ahead” financially in regards to its breach, which affects 145 million people.

Despite the ongoing fallout, the IRS renewed a $7.25 million contract with Equifax to use its services to verify taxpayer identities. The contract drew major criticism; however, IRS Deputy Commissioner Jeffrey Tribiano said it was a necessary “stop gap” so millions of taxpayers did not lose access to their transcripts.

Other trending cybercrime events from the week include:

Newly announced data breaches: Auburn Eye Care Associates of California was hacked by TheDarkOverlord and thousands of patients records were stolen from its electronic health record system. Cabrillo Community College District said that it discovered unauthorized access to a server containing a database with student orientation information. The Online Traffic School said that customer information was compromised due to an individual gaining unauthorized access to part of its network. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company said that customer information was compromised due to a financial advisor falling for a scam that led to a malicious actor gaining remote access to a desktop computer multiple times. The law firm Clark Hill had its systems accessed by Chinese hackers and sensitive documents related to Chinese dissident Guo Wengui were subsequently released on Twitter. Phoenix Inn Suites is the latest hotel to issue a breach notification tied to the Sabre Hospitality Solutions SynXis Central Reservations system.

Organizations expose data: A misconfigured database that collected data on activity on a number of NFL-related domains such as the National Football League Players Association’s website exposed the data of 1,133 NFL players and agents. The database also included a ransom message from February 2017 similar to the ones targeting other Elasticsearch servers earlier this year — indicating that the data was accessed by cybercriminals. FlexShopper said a database containing payment and other customer information may have been exposed on the internet for several days. National Bank of Canada said that 400 customers had their personal information exposed due to a website glitch. Graton Resort and Casino, Kenco, and North Carolina A&T State University all announced breaches related to inadvertently disclosing sensitive customer, employee, and student data via email attachments.

Other notable incidents: U.S. government officials believe that the personal cellphone of chief of staff John Kelly was compromised, and the compromise may date back to December 2016. The R6DB gaming service, which provides statistics for Rainbow Six Siege gamers, said that an automated bot breached its PostgreSQL installation and wiped the database then demanded a ransom payment. Etherparty said it had to shut down its website for 90 minutes after discovering a fraudulent contribution address on the site just an hour after the ICO for its FUEL token went live. The City of Englewood said that it was hit with a ransomware infection. The UK National Lottery and Kazakhstan banks reported service disruptions due to DDoS attacks.

Arrests and legal actions: A federal indictment alleges that a former Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Corp. employee intentionally caused damage to Oregon’s Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) after being laid off, resulting in an eight-hour loss of functionality for the system. The former principal of Seven Peaks School in Oregon is being sued for allegedly downloading thousands of private documents related to the students and staff, including psychological evaluations of students.

Cyber Risk Trends From the Past Week

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Russian government was able to steal highly classified NSA material from an NSA contractor who removed the classified material and put it on his home computer without the NSA’s knowledge.

The sources said that the breach, which occurred in 2015, was first discovered in the spring of 2016 and included details about how the NSA penetrates foreign computer networks, code it used for such spying, and details on how the NSA defends networks inside the U.S.

Sources told the WSJ that the hackers appear to have used the antivirus software created by Russia-based Kaspersky Lab in order to identify the files on the contractor’s computer. The paper also reported that it is the first known incident of the popular antivirus software being exploited by Russian hackers to conduct espionage against the U.S. government.

Kaspersky Lab said it “has not been provided any information or evidence substantiating this alleged incident, and as a result, we must assume that this is another example of a false accusation.”

The alleged NSA breach provides some insight into reports that the FBI has been urging private companies throughout the year to discontinue using Kaspersky products due to intelligence that indicated the company is an unacceptable threat to national security. In addition, the Department of Homeland security issued a directive in September ordering federal agencies to take actions to ultimately remove Kaspersky-related products from government computers.

The breach also appears to be separate from the incidents involving NSA contractor Harold T. Martin III, who hoarded large quantities of sensitive NSA data and hacking tools in his home, and TheShadowBrokers, a group that is best known for the April 2017 release of stolen NSA exploits such as EternalBlue, among others. As we noted in our August blog, officials have not linked TheShadowBrokers to Martin’s insider theft, and it appears the same can be said of the newly reported NSA breach. However, this new incident now makes two recent insiders who have successfully taken highly confidential NSA data home — and at least one case of that data then being successfully targeted by foreign hackers once it was in a less secure environment.

How to Organize and Classify Different Aspects of Cyber Threat Intelligence

Over the past few years, cyber threat intelligence has matured to cover many different aspects of business. What threat intelligence is and how people view and define it can vary quite a bit depending on the vendor providing the intelligence, the business unit consuming that intelligence, the deliverables expected of the intelligence, and the ultimate cyber risk management goals of the organization.

The evolution of threat intelligence has generally been a good thing for organizations, but it has also made it more difficult to wrap one’s head around the concept — particularly for those new to the subject. SurfWatch Labs chief security strategist Adam Meyer recently created a threat intelligence mind map to help show the different areas of threat intelligence and how they all tie together for organizations.

“It’s meant to give the individual looking at it kind of an overview of what cyber threat intelligence is,” said Meyer, who came on the latest Cyber Chat podcast to discuss the mind map and associated whitepaper. “If I was to start a cyber threat intelligence program, these are the components of what that program would be — at the high level.”

Adam Meyer’s threat intelligence mind map.

Meyer said he was looking to standardize some of the resources that have already been published in the intelligence community and other thought leadership, as well as bring together some important parts of threat intelligence that weren’t always discussed, such as the people and process behind intelligence.

For example, early adopters of threat intelligence often begin with the mindset of collect, collect, collect, Meyer said, but all that raw data doesn’t necessarily translate into better security.

“Their eyes glaze over and they start realizing, ‘While how am I supposed to process all this information now, and not only process it in general, but how do I process it in a timely fashion; how do I put context around it’ — all those people-and-process-centric type of things,” Meyer said.

As SurfWatch Labs noted in its recent whitepaper on the mind map, the starting point for most organizations should be strategic threat intelligence.

Download the free whitepaper, “How Cyber Threat Intelligence Fits Into Your Security Program”

“Strategic cyber threat intelligence can help to answer many of the big-picture cyber risk questions facing organizations,” the paper noted. “Those answers can help to inform every other aspect of an organization’s threat intelligence operation and help ensure that cybersecurity efforts and investments and aligning with business priorities.”

Meyer echoed that sentiment.

“Basically, it’s looking at who is the decision maker and why do they care,” Meyer said. “Your intelligence should be driving the answer to that question.”

With those high-level questions answered, organizations can dive more deeply into other interconnected areas of the mind map, and those risk areas — whether it’s technology or fraud or supply chains or other risk concerns — will likely continue to blend together in the future, Meyer said.

“There seems to be an increase in awareness of needing to bring things together, which is what drove me to create the mind map.”

For more on the using the Threat Intelligence Mind Map, download the whitepaper or listen to our Cyber Chat Podcast with Adam Meyer below:

Weekly Cyber Risk Roundup: Deloitte Breached and More Possible Supply Chain Attacks

Deloitte, one the world’s “big four” accounting firms, was the week’s top trending new cybercrime target after it was reported that the firm experienced a breach that compromised some of its clients’ information.

The Guardian reported that Deloitte clients’ information was compromised after a malicious actor gained access to the firm’s global email server through an administrator account that did not have two-step verification enabled.

Six Deloitte clients have been informed of the breach, which was first discovered in March 2017 and may have dated back to October 2016. The Guardian was told that an estimated five million emails could have been accessed by the hackers since emails to and from Deloitte’s 244,000 staff were stored in the Azure cloud service; however, Deloitte said the number of emails that were at risk is “very small fraction of the amount that has been suggested.”

Shortly after The Guardian story broke, Brian Krebs reported that a source close to the Deloitte investigation said the company’s breach involves the compromise of all administrator accounts at the company, that it’s “unfortunate how we have handled this and swept it under the rug,” and that “it wasn’t a small amount of emails like reported.” The source also said that investigators identified several gigabytes of data being exfiltrated and that Deloitte is not sure exactly how much data was taken.

Additionally, The Register reported that what appeared to be a collection of Deloitte’s corporate VPN passwords, user names, and operational details were found within a public-facing GitHub-hosted repository; that a Deloitte employee uploaded company proxy login credentials to his public Google+ page; and that Deloitte has “loads” of internal and potentially critical systems unnecessarily facing the public internet with remote-desktop access enabled.

Other trending cybercrime events from the week include:

Ransomware continues: Montgomery County, Alabama officials said the county paid 9 bitcoins ($37,000) in ransom to regain access to its files after a SamSam ransomware infection disrupted services at the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office. Officials said they had backups in place, but that the off-site backup servers were nearing capacity, along with some other issues. San Ysidro School District said it was infected with ransomware that affected emails and some shared files and demanded $18,000 in ransom. However, the school did not pay the ransom as it had a backup in place. The Arkansas Oral & Facial Surgery Center is notifying patients of a July 26 ransomware infection that made inaccessible imaging files such as x-rays, document attachments, and all electronic patient data related to visits within three weeks prior to the infection.
Other extortion attacks: Malicious actors are using compromised iCloud credentials along with Find My iPhone to lock users computers with a passcode and then demand a ransom to unlock the device. Mac Rumors reported that the attack can bypass two-factor authentication since Apple allows users to access Find My iPhone without requiring two-factor authentication in the event that the user’s only trusted device is missing. A group using the name Phantom Squad is believed to have sent extortion emails to thousands of companies threatening DDoS attacks on September 30 unless a 0.2 bitcoin ($720) ransom is paid. SMART (“Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Therapy”) Physical Therapy in Massachusetts said that TheDarkOverlord accessed data stored in Patterson PTOS software, and TheDarkOverlord shared the stolen database of 16,428 patient records with databreaches.net, which confirmed the breach. TheDarkOverlord went public with the breach after a failed ransom attempt.
New point-of-sale breaches: The fast-food chain Sonic said it is investigating a possible payment card breach at its stores, and security blogger Brian Krebs reported that the incident may be tied to a batch of five million fresh payment cards being offered for sale on the stolen credit card shop known as Joker’s Stash. Whole Foods said that some of the taprooms and full table-service restaurants in its grocery stores experienced a point-of-sale breach. The breach did not affect credit cards used at the store’s main checkout systems as those use a different point-of-sale system.
Other notable incidents: The Toms River police department said that 3,7000 individuals had their information compromised due to a data breach. Fresno Unified School District said that the personal information of 53 employees, retirees, and their dependents was found in the possession of multiple individuals arrested by the Gilroy and Clovis police departments. Signator Investors is notifying customers that an unknown third party gained unauthorized access to some client records. The Brown Armstrong financial consultancy firm is warning that fraudulent tax returns were filed under some of its client’s names. A lawyer at the law firm Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr inadvertently leaked PepsiCo privileged information by email to a Wall Street Journal reporter. The federal government notified 21 states that they were the target of hacking related to the 2016 presidential election.

Cyber Risk Trends From the Past Week

Last week we noted the malicious version of CCleaner that was downloaded approximately 2.27 million times appeared to have been an espionage campaign designed to gain access to the networks of at least 18 tech firms.

This week Morphisec, the firm that discovered the backdoored version of CCleaner, said that there may be other similar attacks leveraging common applications that have been compromised in an attempt to gain access to even more corporate networks.

The company’s chief technology officer Michael Gorelik said that it is currently investigating historical “false positive” reports in an attempt to discover evidence if other applications have been backdoored. Gorelik said that he believes there were other supply chain attacks like the CCleaner one, and that the initial findings of the investigation were “very interesting.”

As SurfWatch Labs has previously noted, supply chains have proven to be one of the more difficult aspects for organizations to defend against, and malicious actors have shifted their attacks towards weak points in the supply chain to exploit the interconnected nature of organizations. For example, the June spread of WannaCry, perhaps the year’s most widely reported cyber incident, was tied to infections from the updater process for tax accounting software created by the Ukrainian company MEDoc.

The issues around CCleaner and MEDoc have been widely reported, but there are numerous other example of smaller-scale incidents that regularly occur. For example, last month npm, which describes itself as “the world’s largest software registry,” said that it removed more than 40 malicious packages after discovering an actor going by the name “hacktask” had published them with similar names to popular npm packages in an attempt to trick users into downloading them. In addition, popular Android apps, WordPress plugins, and other widely used products are frequently compromised to deliver various types of malware.

The researchers looking into supply chain attacks similar to CCleaner have not yet announced any other potential compromises, but organizations should keep an eye on the story to see if any discoveries occur in the coming weeks regarding applications being compromised to gain access to corporate networks.