Internet Romance Scams Be Warned

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released an article addressing a rise
in reports of internet romance scams. In this type of fraud, cyber criminals
gain the confidence of their victims and trick them into sending money. Use
caution when online dating, and never send money or gifts to someone you have
not met in person.

The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC),
part of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), encourages
users to review FTC’s article on
Romance
Scams
and NCCIC’s tip on Staying Safe on Social
Networking Sites
. If you think you have been a target of a romance scam,
file a report with

Ransomware Attack Via MSP Locks Customers Out of Systems

Vulnerable
plugin for a remote management tool gave attackers a way to encrypt
systems belonging to all customers of a US-based MSP.

An
attacker this week simultaneously encrypted endpoint systems and
servers belonging to all customers of a US-based managed service
provider by exploiting a vulnerable plugin for a remote monitoring and
management tool used by the MSP.

The attack resulted in some 1,500 to 2,000 systems belonging to the
MSP’s clients getting cryptolocked and the MSP itself facing a $2.6
million ransom demand.

Discussions this week on an MSP forum on Reddit over what appears to
be the same — or at least similar — incident suggest considerable
anxiety within the community over such attacks, with a few describing
them as a nightmare scenario.

To read the full article go here

Googlle Store Has Vanity Apps Opens Users Up To Attack

    Some people like to look their best and sometimes reality just isn’t enough. With the addition of an altered reality landscape we can add and modify our worlds and ourselves through the lens of our phones. There are apps that can access your phone’s camera, detect your facial position, add features, correct color imbalances, enhance traits that we find desirable, and can remove elements that aren’t so desirable. 

    Researchers at Trend Micro have found 29 beauty apps in the Google Play store that have malicious traits. These apps take a user’s desire to be more than what they are to open themselves up for attack. They are connected to remote ad configuration servers that receive data about the device the malicious app is installed upon and directs the victim to attacks tailored for that device.

    The authors of these malicious apps have included efforts to hide traces of their existence in a feeble attempt at permanence. Once downloaded, one of the packages included in these apps will provide the user a shortcut icon to impale themselves upon, but it will hide the app icon from the application list in an attempt to prevent its own deletion. 

    These apps have several methods of monetizing their targets including phishing for personal information, collecting freshly taken photos, or even just accepting payments for services not rendered. They can include false “contests” that result in a request for personal information to deliver a promised prize. One app offers beautification of an image uploaded to its server but never gets it, while the attacker compiles a data set full of images that can be used for future fraudulent social media profiles. Another app pushes an ad for a paid online pornography player which accepts payment and likely collects payment information. The researchers have found that the player does not play despite payment.

    The Google Play Store has already removed these apps from their roster. The top three (Pro Camera Beauty, Cartoon Art Photo, & Emoji Camera) have had over one million downloads each. The next eight have already had downloads in the hundreds of thousands. The large majority of these downloads occurred in Asia, particularly India. 

   The best recommendation is to read reviews in any app that you want to try out. Any reviews that are indicative of malicious behavior is sufficient warning. Anything produced by an untrusted source should be subject to scrutiny, and anything requesting information should be doubly so.
Source

https://blog.trendmicro.com/ trendlabs-security-intelligence/ various-google-play-beauty-cameraapps-sends-users-pornographiccontent-redirects-them-to-phishingwebsites-and-collects-their-pictures/

https://www.dpreview.com/ news/0890709908/google-removes29-malicious-android-camera-appsfrom-play-store

https://securityaffairs.co/ wordpress/80666/malware/ malicious-beauty-apps.html

Shortcut to Fear

     Siri sets alarms, calls your mother, and finds you that piece of trivia that’s been itching in your brain for the past week. Siri helps people manage their electronic fears and control their digital world in a human way. So when Siri Shortcuts came along with iOS 12, I’m sure many people were elated at the thought of automating their daily ritual and streamlining repeated complex tasks. 

    While it’s doubtful that most users will automate their household energy consumption or repeatedly perform multi step computations via voice command, the average user might be interested in shortcuts designed by business owners trying to make it smoother to exchange money for services and goods. Also, it just feels a bit cool to do many things with just a click. However, with automation and complexity there’s always an avenue for abuse. Security Intelligence from IBM has outlined a few methods for a pseudo ransom attack involving many of the capabilities of Siri Shortcut.

    The app has the ability to perform many of the phone’s basic functions which can be used to confuse then scare a user into paying a ransom to the attacker. Some of Siri Shortcuts’ capabilities include text to speech, flash light control, vibration control, volume and brightness control, clipboard data collection, data storage manipulation, IP address collection, GPS location information collection, and other forms of information collection.

   The most alarming capability is message creation and deployment along with contact list access. A maliciously crafted shortcut could send a copy of itself to each person in the victim’s contact list. It has been advised time and again to never download anything from an untrusted source, but who would think your grandson would send you anything malicious? Suddenly you’re at an ATM, your phone is vibrating and flashing, it snaps a picture of your face and your bank card, and tells you that you’re being tracked repeating your location and reading your browsing history. Even the most cool-headed person would be shaken and might fall for  the ruse. And if you’re savvy enough to remain composed and ignore it, a co-worker or a cousin might not be.

   A pound of cure is worth an ounce of prevention. Never install shortcuts from untrusted sources. Never allow anything to exist on your phone that requires permissions outside your comfort zone. Take advantage of the “Show Actions” button to see what a shortcut actually does before using it. Constant vigilance when it comes to anything that can run without your direct control is the minimum in this day and age.

Sources:
 • https://securityintelligence.com/hey-siri-get-my-coffee-hold-the-malware/
 • https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/80592/hacking/siri-shortcutsabuses.html
 • https://www.securityweek.com/malicious-hackers-can-abuse-siri-shortcuts -ibm

IDenticard PremiSys vulnerabilities

ICS-CERT
Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response
Team Advisory: 

 

01/31/2019 10:00 AM EST
 
This
advisory provides mitigation recommendations for use of hard-coded
credentials,
use of hard-coded password, and inadequate encryption strength
vulnerabilities
reported in the IDenticard PremiSys access control system. 
 
   
 
 




 

    

Cybersecurity Awareness Briefings

DHS Header

 

 
 

Cybersecurity Awareness Briefings Start Next Wednesday

Webinar:
Chinese Cyber Activity Targeting Managed Service Providers

On December
20, 2018, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)

 announced that malicious actors
working on behalf of the Chinese government have

been carrying out a campaign
of cyber attacks targeting managed service providers (MSPs).

Victims of these
attacks have suffered from the loss of sensitive or proprietary information,

 as well as service disruptions, financial loss, and reputational harm.
Organizations of all

sizes, from all sectors, are still at risk for similar
attacks in the future. Previously posted

information on this threat can
be found here: http://www.us-cert.gov/China.

Join CISA
for a virtual Awareness Briefing to review the background of this threat, as
 

well as recommended steps MSPs and their customers can take to protect
themselves

from future attacks.

Register
now
for one of two upcoming Awareness Briefings.

 Content is the same
for each session.

  • Wednesday, February 6 at 1:00 p.m. ET
  • Friday, February 22 at 1:00 p.m. ET

Registration
is limited, so please register early
to guarantee your spot.

This is
the latest installment in CISA’s ongoing Awareness Briefing series.

  Recordings of previous Awareness Briefings are available at
https://www.us-cert.gov/ccubedvp/events.


 
 

Chinese APT10 intrusion activities target Government, Cloud-Computing Managed Service Providers and Customer networks worldwide

The following information is being provided by the FBI, with no guarantees or warranties, for potential use at the sole discretion of recipients in order to protect against cyber threats. This data is provided in order to help cyber security professionals and system administrators to guard against the persistent malicious actions of cyber criminals.  

This FLASH has been released TLP:WHITE. Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction.

Chinese APT10 intrusion activities target Government, Cloud-Computing Managed Service Providers and Customer networks worldwide. The following information was obtained through FBI investigations and is provided in accordance with the FBI’s mission and policies to prevent and protect against federal crimes and threats to the national security.

The FBI is providing the following information with HIGH confidence:

SUMMARY: 

The FBI obtained information regarding a group of Chinese APT cyber actors stealing high value information from commercial and governmental victims in the U.S. and abroad.  This Chinese APT group is known within private sector reporting as APT10, Cloud Hopper, menuPass, Stone Panda, Red Apollo, CVNX and POTASSIUM.  This group heavily targets managed service providers (MSP) who provide cloud computing services; commercial and governmental clients of MSPs; as well as defense contractors and governmental entities.  APT10 uses various techniques for initial compromise including spearphishing and malware.  After initial compromise, this group seeks MSP administrative credentials to pivot between MSP cloud networks and customer systems to steal data and maintain persistence.  This group has also used spearphishing to deliver malicious payloads and compromise victims.  

WE NEED YOUR HELP! If you find any of these indicators on your networks, or have related information, please contact  FBI CYWATCH immediately. Email:  [email protected] Phone: 1-855-292-3937

Deploying the Azure Information Protection scanner to automatically classify and protect files

If you heard me talk I say many time we need to start classify our data so the we can protect the critical files and add additional security to those files that are at the highest risk.
We need to protect data based on the risk.  You may have heard me talk About RMS (Right Management Service) or AIP (Azure information Protection). Here is an article on an tool that will help you find and automatically classify file for you.

This article is for the current general availability version of the Azure Information Protection scanner.

If you are looking for deployment instructions for the current
preview of the scanner, which includes configuration from the Azure
portal, see Deploying the preview version of the Azure Information Protection scanner to automatically classify and protect files.

Use this information to learn about the Azure Information
Protection scanner, and then how to successfully install, configure, and
run it.

This scanner runs as a service on Windows Server and lets you
discover, classify, and protect files on the following data stores:

  • Local folders on the Windows Server computer that runs the scanner.
  • UNC paths for network shares that use the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.
  • Sites and libraries for SharePoint Server 2016 and SharePoint
    Server 2013. SharePoint 2010 is also supported for customers who have extended support for this version of SharePoint.

To scan and label files on cloud repositories, use Cloud App Security.

Overview of the Azure Information Protection scanner

When you have configured your Azure Information Protection policy
for labels that apply automatic classification, files that this scanner
discovers can then be labeled. Labels apply classification, and
optionally, apply protection or remove protection:

The scanner can inspect any files that Windows can index, by
using IFilters that are installed on the computer. Then, to determine
if the files need labeling, the scanner uses the Office 365 built-in
data loss prevention (DLP) sensitivity information types and pattern
detection, or Office 365 regex patterns. Because the scanner uses the
Azure Information Protection client, it can classify and protect the
same file types.

You can run the scanner in discovery mode only, where you use the
reports to check what would happen if the files were labeled. Or, you
can run the scanner to automatically apply the labels. You can also run
the scanner to discover files that contain sensitive information types,
without configuring labels for conditions that apply automatic
classification.

Note that the scanner does not discover and label in real time. It
systematically crawls through files on data stores that you specify, and
you can configure this cycle to run once, or repeatedly.

You can specify which file types to scan, or exclude from scanning.
To restrict which files the scanner inspects, define a file types list
by using Set-AIPScannerScannedFileTypes.

To learn more go Here

CERT/CC Reports Microsoft Exchange 2013 and Newer are Vulnerable to NTLM Relay Attacks

Original
release date: January 28, 2019

The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) has released information to address
NTLM relay attacks affecting Microsoft Exchange 2013 and newer versions. A
remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected
system.

Overview
      

Microsoft Exchange 2013 and newer fail to set signing and
sealing flags on NTLM authentication traffic, which can allow a remote
attacker to gain the privileges of the Exchange server.

Description

      

Microsoft Exchange supports a API called Exchange Web Services (EWS). One of the EWS API functions is called PushSubscription,
which can be used to cause the Exchange server to connect to an
arbitrary website. Connections made using the PushSubscription feature
will attempt to negotiate with the arbitrary web server using NTLM
authentication. Starting with Microsoft Exchange 2013, the NTLM
authentication over HTTP fails to set the NTLM Sign and Seal flags. The lack of signing makes this authentication attempt vulnerable to NTLM relay attacks.
Microsoft
Exchange is by default configured with extensive privileges with
respect to the Domain object in Active Directory. Because the Exchange
Windows Permissions group has WriteDacl access to the Domain object,
this means that the Exchange server privileges obtained using this
vulnerability can be used to gain Domain Admin privileges for the domain
that contains the vulnerable Exchange server.

Impact

An
attacker that has credentials for an Exchange mailbox and also has the
ability to communicate with both a Microsoft Exchange server and a
Windows domain controller may be able to gain domain administrator
privileges. It is also reported that an attacker without knowledge of an
Exchange user’s password may be able to perform the same attack by
using an SMB to HTTP relay attack as long as they are in the same
network segment as the Exchange server.

Solution

The CERT/CC is currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem. Please consider the following workarounds:

Disable EWS push/pull subscriptions

If
you have an exchange server that does not leverage EWS push/pull
subscriptions, you can block the PushSubscription API call that triggers
this attack. In an Exchange Management Shell window, execute the
following commands:

    New-ThrottlingPolicy -Name NoEWSSubscription -ThrottlingPolicyScope Organization -EwsMaxSubscriptions 0
    Restart-WebAppPool -Name MSExchangeServicesAppPool

Remove privileges that Exchange has on the domain object

Please
note that the following workaround was not developed by CERT and is not
supported by Microsoft. Please test any workarounds in your environment
to ensure that they work properly.

https://github.com/gdedrouas/Exchange-AD-Privesc/blob/master/DomainObject/Fix-DomainObjectDACL.ps1
is a PowerShell script that can be executed on either the Exchange
Server or Domain Controller system. By default this script will check
for vulnerable access control entries in the current active directory.
When executed with Domain Admin privileges and the -Fix flag, this script will remove the ability for Exchange to write to the domain object.

Note
that if you encounter an error about Get-ADDomainController not being
recognized, you will need to install and import the ActiveDirectory
PowerShell module, and then finally run Fix-DomainObjectDACL.ps1 :

    Import-Module ServerManager
    Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-AD-PowerShell
    Import-Module ActiveDirectory
    .Fix-DomainObjectDACL.ps1

If the script reports that faulty ACE were found, run:

    .Fix-DomainObjectDACL.ps1 -Fix

PowerShell may be configured to block the execution of user-provided .ps1 files. If this is the case, first find your current PowerShell execution policy:

    Get-ExecutionPolicy

Temporarily allow the execution of the Fix-DomainObjectDACL.ps1 script by running:

    Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted

Once you are finished running the Fix-DomainObjectDACL.ps1script, set the policy back to the original value as reported by Get-ExecutionPolicy:

    Set-ExecutionPolicy [POLICY]
    The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), part of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), encourages users and administrators to review CERT/CC’s Vulnerability Note VU#465632 and consider the listed workarounds until patches are made available.

Important Alert DNS Flag Day February 1, 2019 – Ensure Your Institution is Prepared

    On Friday, February 1, major DNS (Domain Name System) software and public DNS providers will remove support for workarounds accommodating authoritative DNS servers that don’t follow published operational standards1. Most EDU sites will not be affected; however, institutions using authoritative servers that don’t meet standards may find their IT-based resources unreachable by large portions of the Internet.

    How to Determine if You’re Affected  • Make a list of all the domains your institution owns. • Test the domains using tools at DNS Flag Day site2 or ISC EDNS Compliance Tester3. Note that all domains hosted at a given server will either pass or fail.
How to Fix an Apparent Non-Compliant Server
  • For domain names served by a third-party, contact the responsible party immediately.
  • Make sure the failure isn’t a false report due to your authoritative server rate limiting the test tool.
  • Make sure firewalls are not blocking EDNS traffic. Allow UDP packets greater than 512 bytes and see the firewall discussion on the DNS Flag Day site2.
  • Update your authoritative DNS server software. 
 

Background:

    The “resolver”, or client side of DNS, initiates a sequence of queries ultimately leading to an “authoritative DNS server” that can answer a requested mapping (e.g. happy.edu = 10.0.0.1). The client resolver on your device is supported in the sequence-of-queries by a “recursive resolver”, usually provided by the institution or Internet Service Provider. Most recursive resolvers now support EDNS (Extension Mechanisms for DNS). Absence of EDNS support in authoritative DNS servers requires workarounds by the recursive resolver. DNS Flag Day removes support for these workarounds.
 
     Even if an institution doesn’t upgrade its own recursive resolvers to a version that removes support for the workarounds, because others in the world will be upgrading their recursive resolvers, access to the institution’s IT-based resources will be affected by the institution’s non-compliant authoritative DNS server.
 
     This post was provided by The Research and Education Networking Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC). 
 
    To see how this might affect our members, REN-ISAC quickly inspected 53 institutions residing within one U.S. state, we found that 30 showed no problem, 15 showed minor problems, and six showed serious problems. Two tested schools returned with a result of “Fatal Error Detected”.
 
The following sites provide more information on how your organization can prepare:
                                                           
2 DNS Flag Day; https://dnsflagday.net/
3 ISC EDNS Compliance Tester; https://ednscomp.isc.org/ednscomp
 
Additional information can be found here https://dnsflagday.net/