Avaya, a communications company for SMBs, was left in the dark for years as insiders stole and sold its license keys.
The post Insider Threat: Employees indicted for stealing $88 million of license keys appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Two insiders and an accomplice were indicted on Tuesday for multiple counts of fraud. According to documents unsealed by the Wester District of Oaklahoma, a grand jury charged Raymond Bradley Pearce (aka Brad Pearce), a former employee of Avaya; Dusti O. Pearce, his wife; and Jason M. Hines (aka Joe Brown, aka Chad Johnson, aka Justin Albaum), a former Avaya authorized reseller, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 13 counts of wire fraud. The court also charged the Pearces with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and money laundering.

Avaya is a business-to-business (B2B) communications company catering to small- and medium-sized businesses. It sold a product called IP Office, a kind of telephone system, that depended on software licenses to fully use its features, such as voicemail or more telephones.

These licenses were generated within Avaya and sold via authorized distributors and resellers. Avaya required each software license to be linked to a physical flash memory card with a unique serial number. This card had to be plugged into a computer to activate the license.

Avaya introduced Avaya Cloud Office in 2020 and replaced IP Office. However, many businesses worldwide continue to use the latter through license renewals.

Per the indictment, Brad Pearce, a former Avaya customer service employee, abused his administrator privileges to create software license keys and sell them to Jason Hines, a de-authorized reseller, and other customers. They then sold the keys to other resellers and end-users globally.

Pearce also hijacked accounts of former Avaya employees to generate more license keys and draw suspicion away from him. He also used his privileges to conceal evidence that such accounts were generating keys, leaving Avaya in the dark for years.

Dani Pearce allegedly took the accountant and financial manager role in their illegal business operation.

Hines, who operated Direct Business Services International (DBSI), presumably sold the licenses at a much lower price than Avaya’s standard wholesale price. This caused an estimated $88 million in financial damage to Avaya.

All money the Pearces received went to multiple PayPal accounts, bounced to different bank accounts, and then routed to investment accounts. The document further revealed the couple invested in valuable items and large quantities of gold bullion.

According to the fourth installment of the annual insider threats report released by Proofpoint and the Ponemon Institute, insider threat incidents have increased in frequency and cost. Of the more than 6,000 incidents they looked into, 26 percent of them are criminal insiders, the category Pearce and Hines might belong to.

The report, if anything, paints a harrowing picture of the increased risk of insider threats. And non-enterprise organizations aren’t immune to it. More than ever, it is essential for companies of all sizes to take action to reduce this risk.

**Combatting insider threats**

Every organization should acquaint itself with the differet types of insider threats they might have to deal with. Controlling insider threats includes (but is not limited to):

*   Identifying risks that may be unique to your industry.
*   Assigning access rights according to the principle of least privilege.
*   Propper logging and auditing of user activity.

Lastly, organizations should also refer to the common sense guide to mitigating insider threats. A thorough but non-exhaustive list of insider threat references on the same site.

Stay safe!

Insider Threat: Employees indicted for stealing $88 million of license keys

To celebrate Independence Day we're drawing attention to five technologies that could improve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on the Internet. 
The post 5 pro-freedom technologies that could change the Internet appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

In the digital era, freedom is inextricably linked to privacy. After a good start, the Internet-enabled, technological revolution we are living through has hit some bumps in the road. We have already lost a lot of control over who and what has access to our data, and there are further threats to our freedom on the horizon.

It doesn’t have to be that way though, and it is not inevitable that the trend will continue. To celebrate Independence Day we want to draw your attention to five technologies that could improve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on the Internet.

The technologies are listed in a rough order of simplest, soonest, and most likely to happen, to most complex, furthest out, and least likely to happen.

**DNS encryption**

DNS encryption plugs a gap that makes it easy to track the websites you visit.

The domain name system (DNS) is a distributed address book that lists domain names and their corresponding IP addresses. When you visit a website, your browser sends a request to a DNS resolver, which responds with the IP address of the domain you’re visiting. The request is sent in plain text, which is the computer networking equivalent of yelling the names of all the websites you’re visiting out loud.

Anyone, or anything, on the same local network as you can see your DNS lookups, as can your ISP, which will happily sell your browsing history to the highest bidder. And any machine-in-the-middle (MitM) attackers between you and the DNS resolver—such as rogue Wi-Fi access points—can also silently change your plain text DNS requests and use them to direct you to malicious websites.

DNS encryption restores your privacy by making it impossible for anything other than the DNS resolver to read and respond to your queries. You still have to trust the resolver you send your requests to, but the eavesdroppers are out in the cold.

DNS encryption is new, and still relatively rare, but it is supported natively by modern versions of Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, as well as a number of different DNS clients, proxies and applications, including the DNS Filtering module for the Malwarebytes Nebula platform. It’s ascendancy seems assured.

**Passwordless authentication**

Passwordless authentication could usher in a world where we no longer rely on passwords, and that could be an enormous, unabashed win for security and peace of mind. The trouble is, that has been true for a _very long time indeed_, and it hasn’t happened yet.

There is reason to hope that things are finally about change though.

Passwords are a great idea in theory that fail horribly in practice. Humans are poorly equipped to create and remember them, and demonstrably poor at building systems that handle them securely. And yet almost every Internet account requires one. The inevitable result is an epidemic of poor passwords and an entire criminal industry preying on them with relentless automated attacks.

For a long time, the successor to the password was widely presumed to be some form of biometric authentication—such as face or fingerprint recognition—but nobody could agree which one. With multiple novel, competing, costly, and incompatible alternatives, passwords remained the clear winner.

The solution to that gridlock was FIDO2.

FIDO2 is a specification that uses public key encryption for authentication. This allows users to log in to websites without sharing a secret that needs to be secured like a password. There is nothing for a programmer to secure, nothing for an attacker to guess, and nothing that can be stolen in a data breach.

The sensitive encrpytion work all happens on a device owned by the user, which can be a specialist hardware key, a phone, a laptop, or any other compatible device. FIDO2 doesn’t specify what the device is, or how it should be secured, only that a user must make a “gesture” to approve the authentication. This leaves device manufacturers free to use whatever “gesture” works best for them: PIN numbers, swipe patterns, and any and all forms of biometrics. The end result is a technology that allows you to log in to a website securely using Windows Hello, Apple’s Touch ID, and any number of other methods that exist now or could be created in the future.

Passwordless authentication is possible today but still extremely rare. However, it took a big step forward in May this year when Google, Microsoft, and Apple made simultaneous, coordinated pledges to increase their adoption of the FIDO2 standard.

**Onion networking**

Onion networking, the technology behind Tor and the “dark web”, has been around for twenty years, so it might seem an odd candidate for an emerging technology that could change everything—but what if that’s just because we’ve been thinking about it the wrong way?

Tor is a network of servers that allows software clients (like web browsers) and services (like websites) to communicate securely and anonymously. Although the software is extremely good at what it does, today it services a narrow niche of users who put privacy and security above all, and it has become strongly associated with ransomware, illegal drug markets, and other forms of unsavoury criminal activity.

According to security evangelist Alec Muffett, we are overlooking a very important aspect of this technology though. Muffett was previously a security engineer at Facebook, where he was responsible for putting the social network on Tor. Speaking to David Ruiz on a recent Malwarebytes Lock and Code podcast, he explained how he sees Tor as “a brand new networking stack for the Internet” that can “guarantee integrity, and privacy, and unblockability of communication.”

Every Tor address is also the cryptographic public key of the service you want to talk to. For example, the Facebook address is:

www.facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd.onion

Having the public key act as the address provides cryptographic assurance that you are talking to the service you want to talk to, bypassing several layers of the OSI model, and cutting out fundamental Internet vulnerabilities, such as BGP hijacking.

We should stop thinking about Tor as just an anonymity tool, says Muffet. It should be attractive to anyone who cares about the integrity of their brand and what it has to say:

> If you are in the position of providing a forum, a messenger service, or news to a mass public … where your brand name is a really important part of your value proposition, then onion networking is for you, because you can make sure that no one can mess with your traffic.
> 
> Alec Muffet speaking to Lock and Code.

Although mainstream organizations like The New York Times, Pro Publica, Facebook, and Twitter have already embraced Tor, having a .onion site is still very much the exception. In all likelihood, it will take something quite dramatic to change that, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

In 2013, Edward Snowden’s revelations about pervasive Internet surveillance triggered a huge gobal effort to make encrypted web traffic the norm, rather than the exception.

A similar stimulus today could tip onion networking from its niche into the mainstream.

**Cryptocurrencies**

People may be surprised to see cryptocurrencies appearing in our list. If cryptotrading sites are naming stadia and buying superbowl ads then cryptocurrencies are already mainstream and hardly a technology for the future, surely.

Its presence near the bottom of our list tells you that isn’t how we see it.

Cryptocurrencies face a number of cyclone-force headwinds, starting with the current, across-the-board, price crash. The market cap of the biggest currencies, Bitcoin and Ether, is shrinking fast, and some cryptocurrencies have already disappeared completely; the free flow of venture capital money is likely to dry up; there are issues with scalability, scams, rug pulls, thefts from exchanges, and environmental damage; and the pseudo-anonymity blockchains provide is challenged by our ever-improving capacity to identify patterns in payments.

More importantly, from the perspective of _life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness_, almost nobody is using these currencies as actual currencies—nobody is paid in Bitcoin, and nobody is using Ether to buy groceries. Remember, Bitcoin was supposed to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system not a vehicle for speculative trading.

So why is it on our list at all?

For all the reasons to dislike them or write them off, cryptocurrencies are hard to ignore. At its core, the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was supposed to be a trustless, borderless payment system that was built on top of the Internet.

> What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.
> 
> “Satoshi Nakamoto”, from Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

It was a vision of what freedom might look like in the digital age.

That desire for freedom propelled Bitcoin it in its early days, and the attractiveness of a private, peer-to-peer currency is undimmed, even if nobody has managed to actually build one that works yet.

The current crash will pass and the strongest ideas and technology will survive. We suspect that Satoshi’s original vision will be one of them, even if Bitcoin isn’t.

**Homomorphic encryption**

The cornerstone of digital privacy, security, and freedom is encryption, and the last item in our list is one of its holy grails: Encryption that never needs to be undone.

Encryption protects your data if your phone is stolen, and it makes your emails, credit card details, and WhatsApp messages tamper proof as they whizz around the Internet. And it’s what underpins all of the other things in our list.

And all of the examples above have something in common: They are either examples of encryption that’s used to protect data at rest, or data that’s in transit. Moving or storing data only gets you so far though, sooner or later it has to be used. It can’t be used unless it’s decrypted, and you need to trust whatever system has access to that decrypted data.

Homomorphic encryption algorithms allow mathematical operations to be performed on encrypted data, so that it doesn’t need to be decrypted at all, ever, even when it’s being used.

The result of performing a mathematical operation on the encrypted data is the same as if the data was decrypted, subject to a mathematical operation, and the answer encrypted.

This incredible act of needle threading needs to ensure that you can’t learn anything about the data from the ciphertext (the encrypted version of the data), and that you can’t learn anything at all about it by observing the mathematical operations performed on it.

If you had access to homomorphic encryption you wouldn’t have to trust anyone you share your data with, whether they are the vendors in your organization’s supply chain, or your favorite, data-hungry social network.

Almost unbelievably, homomorphic encryption algorithms already exist. The reason you don’t have access to their almost magical properties though is that they are prohibitively slow. It currently takes days for them to perform actions that we expect to take seconds.

Although slow, these algorithms are already millions of times quicker than they were just a few years ago. And while that rate of improvement will surely decelerate, the processing power of computers is still doubling every few years.

At some point in the not-too-distant future, when these two trends meet, it could change how we think about trust and freedom in the digital age completely.

5 pro-freedom technologies that could change the Internet

We take a look at a site claiming to offer "free" visa access to the UK via WhatsApp. All is not quite as it seems.
The post “Free UK visa” offers on WhatsApp are fakes appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A student friend recently shared a WhatsApp message, unsure if it was scam. The message claims to offer an easy to route to free visas, housing, accommodation, and medicine access.

Here’s how we know it was a scam, and where it lead.

It read as follows:

> **UK GOVERNMENT JOB RECRUITMENT 2022**: This is open to all Individuals who wants to work in UK, Here is a great chance for you all to work conveniently in the UK. UK needs over 132,000 workers in 2022. Over 186,000 Jobs are Open for applying. THE PROGRAM COVERS: Travel expense. Housing. Accommodation. Medical facilities. Applicant must be 16 years or above. Can speak basic English. BENEFIT OF THE PROGRAM: Instant work permit. Visa application assistance. All nationalities can apply. Open to all individuals and students who want to work and study. Apply here \[url removed\]

As you might suspect, there’s multiple red flags in the above claims for anyone considering signing up.

**The bogus visa claim checklist**

The site gives the impression of being operated by UK Visas and Immigration, and repeats some of the errors and red flags from the WhatsApp message.

“We are hiring”

It said:

We are urgently looking for foreigners to apply for the thousands of jobs already available in the United Kingdom. This application is free and upon approval you will be given a work permit, visa, plane tickets and accommodation in the UK for free.

With even the most cursory of glances, the claims on this website simply don’t add up. Let’s dissect some of them:

1.  UKVI applications all begin here, on a gov.uk address. This scam site is not hosted on a gov.uk address.
2.  The Home Office does _not_ cover the cost of flights or accomodation for visa applicants coming to the UK.
3.  There is no free access to medical services in the UK. Visa holders pay an annual immigration health surcharge to access NHS services. This is paid upfront at visa application time.
4.  The minimum age requirement for a skilled work visa is 18, not “16 years or above”.
5.  In most cases, applicants need to be able to demonstrate English ability through one of several available qualifications, not just “can speak basic English”.
6.  You won’t get an “Instant work permit” without paying an additional fee to make use of same day / next day processing.

**It’s website quiz time**

The site posed two questions, including marital and employment status. It then asks for first and last name, email address, and phone number. No matter what I entered, or even if I left all the form elements blank, I always got the following message:

> After checking your applications, You have been approved to work in the United Kingdom 2022

I most certainly had not. It continued:

> –Your UK VISA FORM will be available immediately after you click the “Invite Friends/Group” button below to share this information with 15 friends or 5 groups on WhatsApp so That They Can Also be Aware of the PROGRAM.

Unlike other sites along the same lines, this one didn’t check if I really was sending the link to people on WhatsApp, so I faked it. Did I get my visa after “sharing” the scam?

No, I did not.

**A distinct lack of visa forms**

The clue is definitely in the title. Instead of the promised form, I was greeted by the following message:

No visas yet

> To facilitate the downloading of your UK VISA FORM you must complete this final step of Nationality Verification!
> 
> 1.Click the Continent you are from and complete the given tasks, verification is by phone number or downloading, registering e.t.c.
> 
> (Remember, this step is very important, add your phone number to verify)
> 
> Do not skip any step..

I think my favourite part about all of this is that they used the logo for VISA, the financial multinational corporation. At this point, why not?

**Of redirects and surveys**

Whether I choose “Africa” or “Other Continent”, I was directed to several sites selling drones and watches or asking for mobile numbers, alongside yet more quizzes. The visa forms? Not so much.

This is not what a visa form looks like

While digging around for more information on the site involved in this, I came across this article from the last day or so. Clearly, this site is doing the rounds in WhatsApp circles. There’s also some additional UK visa-related scams listed there too, one of which was bouncing around a few months ago. All in all, this is yet another “if it’s too good to be true” escapade and should be avoided.

“Free UK visa” offers on WhatsApp are fakes

A new bill proposes the strongest Federal data privacy protections yet for reproductive and sexual health data.
The post My Body, My Data Act would lock down reproductive and sexual health data appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A new bill entered into both the House of Representatives and the Senate proposes the strongest Federal data privacy protections yet for an increasingly scrutinized form of data in the United States—reproductive and sexual health data.

The “My Body, My Data Act of 2022” was announced in early June in response to a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that reported to show the Court’s intentions to overturn a seminal decision from 1973 that guaranteed a Constitutional right to have a choice to an abortion. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-CA), sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives, said in a press release that she was focused on protecting reproductive health data in light of the new,  judicial threat.

“Since the Supreme Court leak, I’ve heard from so many people who are panicked about their personal reproductive health data falling into the wrong hands,” Jacobs said. “The My Body, My Data Act will protect that information, protect our privacy, and reaffirm our rights to make our own decisions about our bodies.”

The bill, which has 46 cosponsors in the House and 11 cosponsors in the Senate, would stop companies from collecting, using, retaining, and disclosing “personal reproductive or sexual health information” unless a company first receives express consent from a user or if a company is using such information to specifically deliver a service that a user has requested. The bill’s definition of “personal reproductive or sexual health information” is broad, including any information that could reveal a person’s attempts to “research or obtain” reproductive health services, any reproductive or sexual health conditions, such as pregnancy, menstruation, and whether a person is sexually active, and any information about procedures that a person has undergone related to reproductive or sexual health.

If passed, the bill would also extend new rights to consumers to access and delete personal reproductive or sexual health information from the companies that collect it.

Since the bill’s announcement last month, it has only gained more attention.

On June 24, the Supreme Court decided in the case _Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization_ that the right to an abortion, which was guaranteed under a right to privacy as decided in 1973, was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history or tradition.” Voting 6 – 3, the Court overturned _Roe v. Wade_.

With the Court’s decision, immediate fear arose that reproductive health data could be requested by law enforcement only to be used as evidence to prosecute individuals seeking abortions—or even those who miscarried. The Digital Defense Fund responded to the Court’s decision by updating its resources on how individuals can keep their reproductive health decisions both private and secure. The group’s resources include a section on keeping reproductive health data out of the hands of “Big Tech.”

Further, several period-tracking apps independently announced efforts to anonymize user data so that even if law enforcement requested data about certain users, those companies could not respond in a meaningful way. Users have reportedly flocked to period-tracking apps that are making these promises, but as TechCrunch recently uncovered, one such company that announced new, pro-user plans last week—Stardust—was still sharing users’ phone numbers with third parties.

> “TechCrunch ran a network traffic analysis of Stardust’s iPhone app on Monday to understand what data was flowing in and out of the app. The network traffic showed that if a user logs into the app using their phone number (rather than through a login service provided by Apple or Google), Stardust will periodically share the user’s phone number with a third-party analytics service called Mixpanel.”

TechCrunch also reported that Stardust’s efforts to bring “end-to-end encryption” were potentially faulty, as the company’s founder described a data transfer process that may only provide encryption for data in transit and for data that is stored on Amazon’s web servers.  

The period-tracking app morass is familiar, then: Once again, users in America of any number of services are left to independently manage their interactions with companies that could be sharing their data with an immeasurable number of third parties which, to most consumers, are entirely unknown.

The My Body, My Data Act could change that, requiring new restrictions not on how data is technologically stored, but on whether such data is ever collected in the first place.

The bill also includes what is called a “private right of action,” meaning that consumers who have had their privacy rights violated under the law could be able to sue individual companies for those violations. The inclusion of a private right of action is exceedingly rare in nearly any data privacy law that has been introduced in both statewide legislation and before the Federal government.

The bill is currently supported by Planned Parenthood, NARAL, National Abortion Federation, URGE, National Partnership for Women & Families, and Feminist Majority.

My Body, My Data Act would lock down reproductive and sexual health data

The most important and interesting computer security stories from the last week.
The post A week in security (June 27 – July 3) appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

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A week in security (June 27 – July 3)

LockBit remained the most active threat in June, and “the costliest strain of ransomware ever documented” went dark while others surged.
The post Ransomware review: June 2022 appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence builds a monthly picture of ransomware activity by monitoring the information published by ransomware gangs on their Dark Web leak sites. This information represents victims who were successfully attacked but opted not to pay a ransom.

In June, LockBit was the most active ransomware, just as it has been all year. The month was also notable for the disappearance of Conti, and the large number of attacks by groups alleged to have links with the disbanded group.

The service industry remained the hardest hit industry sector, and the USA the most attacked country. The number of attacks in the USA continued to dwarf other countries, with more known victims than Canada and all the European countries in our list combined.

Known ransomware attacks by group, June 2022

Known ransomware attacks by country, June 2022

Known ransomware attacks by industry sector, June 2022

**LockBit**

Without fanfare, LockBit has become the dominant force in ransomware this year. Although there were fewer victims on its leak site in June than in May, it was still far ahead of its competition.

While Conti—“the costliest strain of ransomware ever documented,” according to the FBI—has spent 2022 making noisy pronouncements and digging itself out of a hole of its own making with a hair-brained scheme to fake its own death, LockBit has been all business.

Like all the ransomware in our review, LockBit is offered in the form of ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS). Attacks are carried out by affiliates (“pen testers”) who pay the LockBit organization 20 percent of the ransoms they receive in return for using its software and services.

And while some ransomware gangs seem to want to tell the world what they think, and how great they are, LockBit seems to care more about what its users think. Its affiliate page begins with a statement that seems designed to contrast it with its nosiy Russian rival:

> We are located in the Netherlands, completely apolitical and only interested in money.

Thereafter the page is peppered with people-pleasing language designed to signal the gang’s trustworthiness and willingness to listen. Affiliates are asked “if you do not find one of your favorite features, please inform us,” and told that “it is very important for us to know about all our strengths and weaknesses.” It says “we have never cheated anyone and always fulfill our agreements. Decrypter work, stolen data is deleted”

It is this combination of attractiveness to affiliates and an ability to avoid costly mistakes that seems to be behind its success this year.

This risk averse approach is nothing new. Out of an abundance of self interest, ransomware has always conspicuously avoided attacking targets in Russia and the Commonwealth of Indpednent States, for example. Attracting the attention of the three-letter agencies in Russia and the USA is simply bad for business.

Unusually, LockBit hit the headlines in June with some obvious publicity seeking. The gang launched LockBit 3.0, along with a new dark web site, and a bug bounty program promising rewards of up to $1 million for finding bugs in its website and software, submitting brilliant ideas, or successfully doxing the head of the gang’s affiliate program.

The LockBit 3.0 bug bounty page

> We invite all security researchers, ethical and unethical hackers on the planet to participate in our bug bounty program. The amount of remuneration varies from $1000 to $1 million.

Whether the group seriously intends to pay out these sums remains to be seen. If all it wanted from the announcement was to drum up some publicity, it has already succeeded. However, if it does intend to use bug bounties it improve its software and sharpen its approach then it could deprive law enforcement and security researchers of valuable tools and information.

**Conti**

As expected, the last public vestige of the Conti ransomware gang, its leak site, disappeared in June, after a few weeks of inactivity. As we reported in last month’s ransomware review, detailed research by Advintel in May suggested that the gang’s alignment with the Russian state in February had caused victims’ lawyers to warn against paying it ransoms, for fear of breaking sanctions.

When the group’s revenue dried up its leaders allegedly hatched a plot to retire the brand by dispersing its members into other ransomware gangs like BlackBasta, BlackByte, KaraKurt, Hive and ALPHV, and then faking its own death.

Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence was able to independently confirm that Conti sent an internal announcement about its retirement to affiliates at the end of May, and that its internal chat servers stopped working around the same time.

The leak site disappeared on June 22, 2022, and remains down.

The Conti leak site on June 22, 2022

The Conti shutdown has overlapped with the overnight arrival of BlackBasta in April and a big increase in activity (and the appearance of a new leak site) by KaraKurt in June. It may be a coincidence, but we note that last month the combined activity of BlackBasta, BlackByte, and KaraKurt reached Conti-like levels.

Known attacks involving Conti compared to known attacks involving alleged Conti “brands” BlackBasta, BlackByte, and KaraKurt

The resurgent KaraKurt extortion group has a new leak site

**Trends**

Most software, even malware, trends towards “feature completeness”—a point where adding new features adds little, if anything, to its usefulness. Ransomware has been more-or-less feature complete for a number of years, and most RaaS offerings have very similar capabilities.

Similarly, the way that ransomware is packaged and sold, and the ways that different affiliates break into networks and deploy ransomware vary little from one ransomware group to another, and evolve slowly.

The most active area of innovation in the last few years appears to be how gangs operate as a business, and in how they put pressure on victims to pay a ransom.

In June we saw some things we haven’t seen before: The LockBit gang offering bug bounties, and a leak site by the ALPHV group aimed at the staff and customers of a victim.

At least one ransomware gang has tried targeting executives at the top of companies in an effort to ramp up the pressure, but ALPHV’s targeting of employees and customers with a dedicated website is new. The site allowed guests and employees to explore the personal data ALPHV had stolen from them in the attack and, very unusually, the leak site was _not_ on the dark web.

A leak site dedicated to one victim, a hotelier, allowed guests and employees to explore the data about them that had been stolen

By putting the site on the regular web the gang made the infrmation much more accessible to non-technical users, but without the protection of Tor it only lasted a few days before being taken down. The gang would certainly have known this would happen, but presumably it only had to last long enough to gather the attention it needed in order to impact negotiations.

The experimental ALPHV leak site appeared on the regular world wide web and was even indexed by Google

Such innovation is nothing new—ransomware gangs experiment with new ideas all the time. The experiments that don’t work are forgotten and those that do are quickly copied by other gangs.

In this case the experiment appears to have been unsuccessful. The victim has since appeared on the main ALPHV dark web leak site, which normally indicates they have resisted the pressure to pay a ransom.

**Malwarebytes protection**

Malwarebytes can protect systems against all ransomware variants in several ways.

The Malwarebytes Anti-Malware technology detects malicious files, browser modifications, and system modifications on Windows PCs using a combination of signature-based and signatureless technologies.

For those already infected, Ransomware Rollback can help recover encrypted files within 72 hours of the attack. Rollback creates a local cache on the endpoint to store changes to files on the system. It can use this cache to help revert changes caused by a threat. The rollback feature is dependent on activity monitoring available in Malwarebytes Endpoint Detection and Response.

Ransomware review: June 2022

Through malice or carelessness, AstraLocker breaks the "circle of trust".
The post AstraLocker 2.0 ransomware isn’t going to give you your files back appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Reversing Labs reports that the latest verison of AstraLocker ransomware is engaged in a a so-called “smash and grab” ransomware operation.

Smash and grab is all about maxing out profit in the fastest time. It works on the assumption by malware authors that security software or victims will find the malware quickly, so it’s better to get right to the end-game as quickly as possible. Adware bundles in the early 2000s capitalised on this approach, with revenue paid for dozens of adverts popping on desktops in as short a time as possible.

That smash and grab spirit lives on.

In a ransomware attack, criminals typically break into a victim’s network via a trojan that has already infected a computer, by exploiting a software vulnerability on an Internet-facing server, or with stolen Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials. They then make their way silently to devices and servers where important data is stored. Anything of value is stolen and sent outside of the network. When the attacker is good and ready, ransomware is deployed, encrypting the files on the machines and rendering them useless. From here, double or even triple threat extortion (blackmail and the threat of data leakage) is deployed. This careful approach, which can sometimes take weeks, allows attackers to stop organisations dead in their tracks and demand multi-million dollar ransoms.

It is so successful that almost all major ransomware families are used in this way.

But AstraLocker is not a major ransomware family, and it doesn’t do this. (These two things may be connected.)

**Click to run**

In the attacks observed by Reversing Labs, AstraLocker just arrives and encrypts.

It starts life as a rogue Word document attachmed to an email. The payload lurking in the document is an embedded OLE object. Triggering the ransomware requires the victim to double click the icon within the document, which comes with a security warning. As researchers note, this isn’t as slick a process as the recent Follina vulnerability (which requires no user interaction), or even misusing macros (which some user interaction).

In its rush to encrypt, AstraLocker still manages to do some standard ransomware things: It tries to disable security programs; it also stops applications running that might prevent encryption from taking place; and it avoids virtual machines, which might indicate it’s being run by researchers in a lab.

The sense of this being a rushed job doesn’t stop there.

**Reaffirming (and then breaking) the circle of trust**

When decryption doesn’t happen, either because of a poor quality decryptor, or because no decryption process actually exists, the ransomware author’s so-called circle of trust is broken. Too many decryption misfires is bad for business. After all, why would victims pay up if there’s no chance of file recovery?

It’s interesting, then, that the following text is in AstraLocker 2.0’s ransom note:

> **What guarantees?**  
> I value my reputation. If I do not do my work and liabilities, nobody will pay me. This is not in my interests. All my decryption software is perfectly tested and will decrypt your data.

So far, so good…you would think. Unfortunately, there’s a sting in the tail.

The cost of their decryption software is “about $50 USD”, payable via Monero or Bitcoin. There is some question as to who the author of this version of AstraLocker is, as the email addresses tied to the original campaign have been replaced. Unfortunately, this is where the circle of trust falls apart.

You can certainly pay the ransom with no problem whatsoever. That side of things, the making money side, works perfectly. The getting your files back side of things? Not so much. The new contact email address mentioned above is only partially included.

There is currently no way to ask the ransomware author for the decryption tool. Unless some sort of update is forthcoming, this is the quickest way you’ll ever lose both your files and $50.

Whether this is by accident or design, the circle of trust here is more of a downward curve.

AstraLocker 2.0 ransomware isn’t going to give you your files back

We take a look at reports of scammers targeting Youtuber's channels with malware called YTStealer, that eats authentication cookies.
The post YTStealer targets YouTube content creators appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Researchers are reporting the discovery of malware targeting YouTub content creators. The aim is to compromise accounts and then take over the victims’ channels completely.

The malware, dubbed YTStealer, has one game plan: Grabbing authentication cookies. A site gives you an authentication cookie when you log in, and your browser then uses it in place of a password until you log out. If somebody can steal the authentication cookie from your browser they can use it log into whatever website you’re using, as if they are you.

Armed with YouTube cookies, YTStealer plunders YouTube accounts, and their real owners have some customer support chats waiting in their immediate future.

**Targeting interests**

How do malware distributors reel in YouTube channel owners in the first place? Like so many of these scams, they promote a variety of bogus applications designed to lure victims. The rogue apps don’t just install YTStealer though, they also drop several other malicious files, depending on which installer is used. Vidar and RedLine may also be present.

Several popular (fake) versions of editing and design tools, which would naturally appeal to people in video circles, are on offer. Adobe Premiere Pro, HitFilm Express, and Filmora are some of the fake installers mentioned.

Games, too, are a popular revenue stream on YouTube with game streamers and reviewers galore. No surprise, then, that fake installers and cheats for titles like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are along for the ride.

The final group of bogus files relate to imitation security products and supposed cracks for Discord Nitro and Spotify Premium.

**System checks and balances**

Once installed on a target machine, YTStealer performs some checks to see if its running inside of a virtual machine. This is to see if the malware is being analysed by security researchers. If detection takes place, files like YTStealer will typically terminate or become incredibly stubborn.

With this out of the way, YTStealer proceeds to harvest authentication cookies and fire up a browser in “headless” mode (a browser with no windows to look at). In other words: A silent, invisible browser. The victim is completely unaware of what’s happening. Swiped cookies are loaded into the phantom browser, which can now log in to YouTube as the victim.

The malware harvests the victim’s subscriber count, channel name, age of channel, verification status, and whether or not the channel is monetised. The data is collected, encrypted, and sent to the Command and Control (C2) server tied to the malware.

**How to avoid malware aimed at Youtubers**

*   Scammers will target your interests, and try to interest you in cheap / free copies of software related to the content you create. Is a stranger really going to give you free editing tools worth a few hundred dollars? Almost certainly not. “If it sounds too good to be true,” and all that.
*   Many of these files insist you turn off security protection prior to installing. Ask yourself why they’d want you to do this, and then make a sharp exit.
*   Are they directing you to a YouTube channel of their own for the download links? Check the comments. Are they disabled? Is every single comment positive, and posted from new / low quality accounts? There’s a reason for that…
*   Free cheat tools advertised on YouTube are not going to work. Bypassing anti-cheat protection in major video game titles is big business, and people pay to use these tools. Anything given away for free in this manner will do little beyond infect your system.

YTStealer targets YouTube content creators

Researchers have analyzed a long running campaign that compromises SOHO routers to further penetrate and eavesdrop on networks.
The post ZuoRAT is a sophisticated malware that mainly targets SOHO routers appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Researchers have analysed a campaign leveraging infected SOHO routers to target predominantly North American and European networks of interest.

The so-called ZuoRAT campaign, which very likely started in 2020, is so sophisticated that the researchers suspect that there is a state sponsored threat actor behind it.

**SOHO routers**

SOHO is short for small office/home office and SOHO routers are hardware devices that route data from a local area network (LAN) to another network connection. Modern SOHO routers have almost the same functions as home broadband routers, and small businesses tend to use the same models. Some vendors also sell routers with advanced security and manageability features, but most SOHO devices are only monitored in exceptional cases.

Which is probably the reason why the ZuoRAT managed to fly under the radar for so long.

**Compromise the router**

The first step in the campaign is to take control of the router. The researchers identified infected routers of several manufacturers including popular brands like ASUS, Cisco, DrayTek, and NETGEAR. It is likely that the threat actor used unpatched vulnerabilities to steal credentials from the targeted routers. Although patches for these vulnerabilities exist, it is not uncommon for device administrators never to apply these patches.

This lack of security is often caused by lack of awareness. And the lack of awareness starts by small business owners not knowing which type or model of router they have exactly. So even if they read about a vulnerability in their router, it may not sink in that it applies to them. The rebranding of routers by providers is another contributing factor to the owners’ ignorance.

**Drop the RAT**

The vulnerability or chain of vulnerabilities allow the threat actor to download a binary, then execute it on the host. Once installed, ZuoRAT enumerates the devices connected to the infected router. The threat actor can then use DNS hijacking and HTTP hijacking to cause the connected devices to install other malware.

The ZuoRAT agent framework enables in-depth reconnaissance of target networks, traffic collection and network communication hijacking. Some of the functions will run by default, while others might be intended to be called by additional commands.

**Mirai**

ZuoRAT looks like a heavily modified version of the Mirai malware. The authorities may have caught the Mirai creators, but the spirit of their botnet lives on. Numerous groups took advantage of the open-source code to create mini variants. But the command and control infrastructure used in this campaign is intentionally complex in an attempt to conceal what’s happening.

**Attribution**

While attribution is always hard, the researchers listed several indications that the group behind this campaign might be of Chinese origin. One set of C2 infrastructure controlled by this threat actor and used to interact with the Windows RATs was found to be hosted on internet services from China-based organizations. Also, some of the program database paths contained Chinese characters, while others referenced “sxiancheng”, a possible name or Chinese locality.

China is a likely candidate even if it seems they have already bitten off more than they can chew. According to an article in the Financial Times Chinese university students have been lured to work as translators to help identify hacking targets, and to analyze stolen material.

**DNS hijacking**

Using the gathered information about the DNS settings and the internal host in the adjacent LAN, there were several functions designed to perform DNS hijacking. Some functions allowed the threat actor to update DNS hijacking rules specifying which domains to hijack, the malicious IP address resulting from the hijack and the number of times to trigger the rule.

**HTTP hijacking**

Another noteworthy function enabled the actor to specify which client or subnet to hijack. It hijacked the process so that it could match the traffic pattern. If the pattern matched one of the rules, it displayed a 302 error that redirected the client’s browser to another location where the threat actor could manipulate the connection.

**Mitigation**

If you fear that your router has been compromised, simply restarting an infected device will remove the initial ZuoRAT exploit. To fully recover, however, a factory reset clears infected devices.

To avoid your router from getting infected, find the most recent firmware and install it so you have all the latest patches.

Systems that used an infected route for their internet access and used no block lists that included the C2 infrastructure of ZuoRAT may be infected. This is not only true for Windows systems. The researchers found samples written in GO, which is a cross-platform language.  

IoCs associated with this campaign for threat hunting can be found on the Black Lotus Labs GitHub page.

Stay safe, everyone!

ZuoRAT is a sophisticated malware that mainly targets SOHO routers

The retail giant patched a serious flaw in its Amazon Photos app that left user access token exposed to potential attackers.
The post Amazon Photos vulnerability could have given attackers access to user files and data appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Amazon has patched a flaw in the Amazon Photos app which could have allowed an attacker to steal and use a user’s unique access token that verifies their identity across multiple Amazon APIs.

That would give attackers access to a trove of information, since many of these APIs contain personal data, such as names, email addresses, and home addresses.

Amazon Photos, previously known as Prime Photos, is a service related to Amazon Drive, the company’s cloud storage application. To date, it has been downloaded more than 50 million times from the Play Store. The Photos app is geared towards the storing, organizing, and sharing photos and videos.

Due to a misconfiguration of a component in the app, rendering a client’s access token severely unprotected, a third-party malicious app could access and use this token. In a ransomware scenario, threat actors could steal, delete, and encrypt files and leave affected users with no means to restore them.

To put it plainly, it’s like sending a password over to another app in plain text, the researchers who found the bug explained.

The researchers from Checkmarx informed Amazon in November 2021. The following month, the company issued a patch for the vulnerability.

Because this flaw also affects Amazon Drive, threat actors could theoretically modify files while erasing a user’s history, effectively rendering original content irrecoverable.

Erez Yalon, Checkmarx’s vice president of security research, was quoted in an interview with The Record:

> “We know there is nothing completely secure in the software world. But seeing that kind of vulnerability in the software of Amazon, one of the leading companies in the world when it comes to security practices, means that it can happen to every software company.”

An Amazon spokesperson also told The Record they found “no evidence that sensitive customer information was exposed as a result of this issue.”

“We appreciate the work of independent security researchers who help bring potential issues to our attention,” the spokesperson said.

Source

Malwarebytes