The Good, the Bad and the VoIP

January 1, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Have You Heard?

In the day and age of cell phones, tablets, video calling and texting, the telephone has certainly come a long way since Alexander Graham Bell placed his first call. Well the advancement in voice communication has just taken another step into the future with VoIP technology, which is Voice Over Internet Protocol (IP). While VoIP is a sensational system when it comes to communication advantages for businesses of all sizes and industries. Here are a few of the Good and the Bad when it comes to VoIP:

Show Me the Money

The Good – Companies are saving as much as 50% when it comes to the phone bill. And the ability to trim operating costs is a huge positive for every company. This savings often comes in the form of businesses that find themselves making a lot of long distance calls.

The Bad – There is not guarantee of how much you will save, or if you’ll save at all. The variety of savings really depends on your VoIP system and your provider.

Listen Up

The Good – VoIP systems offer you all the features and perks you are used to and depend on. Call forwarding, call waiting, conference call ability and voice mail are all among the features your VoIP system can offer you. Again this still depends on the quality of your system and the provider.

The Bad – While VoIP systems are wonderful, it really depends on your system and provider. If you cut corners and don’t do your homework when it comes to a provider and a system, you could end up with dropped calls, poor sound quality and a lot of missed calls.

Power Down

The Good – With a strong bandwidth and a quality system, there are really not limitations to the quality and abilities of your VoIP system and the money you can save with it.

The Bad – Do you own a backup generator? No? Then we might have an issue. Since telephone companies transmit power over phone lines to power the system, a power outage is really no problem. This isn’t the case for the internet. If your connection to the internet goes down, so does your VoIP system.

Data On 123 Million US Households Leaked Online

December 31, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Security researchers at UpGuard recently made a terrifying discovery in finding an unprotected Amazon S3 server containing several databases belonging to a data analytics provider called Alteryx.

While the server contained a variety of databases, the two that are of biggest concern belonged to Alteryx’s business partners, Experian and the US Census Bureau.

Of these, far and away the most damaging database was the one belonging to Experian. As a credit reporting agency, Experian has access to just about everything that relates to your personal finances. In addition to your address, they’ve got details on how many credit cards you have, what your average balances on each one are, what your credit limit is, the state of your mortgage and more. All of that information was sitting on a completely unprotected server that literally anyone could access.

The scope and scale of the database are almost beyond comprehension, containing more than 3.5 billion financial details of more than 123 US households. That’s almost every household in the country.

It’s not much of a silver lining, but the database did not contain any names. Having said that, since address information was present, linking an address with the name of the current occupant is a trivial task for any hacker.

At this point, it’s unclear if anyone other than the UpGuard researchers downloaded the databases, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The simple fact that so much information on so many American households was left unguarded means that virtually every person in the country is now at risk of identity theft.

At the root, this is a problem of standards. Contractors like Alteryx simply do not adhere to the same security standards as the company or agency charged with the responsibility of safeguarding the data in the first place (Experian and the US Census Bureau, in this case). Given that, it was only a matter of time before a mishap of this scale occurred.

At this point, there’s really nothing you can do but be mindful that your personal information may have been compromised, and stay vigilant.

USB Drives Could Be Huge Factor In Data Loss, Theft

December 30, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Most people agree that the use of USB drives increases efficiency and boosts productivity, which goes a long way toward explaining their popularity, but these handy little drives can also be problematic.

According to a recently published survey by Apricorn, 87 percent of employees surveyed report that they have lost or had a USB drive stolen and failed to notify their employer. Worse, 80 percent of employees surveyed reported using non-encrypted USB drives that they’ve often acquired for free at trade shows or conferences.

The fact that these drives are unencrypted is bad enough, but there’s another, even more, frightening dimension to the problem. Such drives could be pre-loaded with malware, which could easily make it onto your company’s network the moment they’re connected to any office machine.

Apricorn had this to say about the results of the survey:

“With the ever-increasing amount of data breaches and compromises, companies need to carefully monitor what data is being created in their organizations, and what is leaving.

A government, healthcare, finance, and education industries have access to copious amounts of sensitive information and most of these industries are using USBs without advanced permission. Not only are these companies leaving themselves vulnerable, they are placing their customers’ and employees’ data at risk.”

Although the company notes that there is an awareness of the damage that lost or compromised data can cause, not much is being done about preventing that loss, at least where the use of USB drives is concerned. According to the survey, fully half of the respondents indicated that they didn’t need to seek permission to use a USB drive to copy or transport potentially sensitive information.

Does your company have a robust set of policies in place to control the use of USB drives? Are all the USBs used by your employees encrypted and secure? Do you have a policy in place regarding proper reporting procedures should a USB drive go missing? Important questions, all.

Popular Android Keyboard App Collected Private Information, Has Been Breached

December 29, 2017 by Joseph Martin

How many apps do you have on your smartphone? Do you know how much data they’re collecting about you?

Most people have scores of apps installed (and often hundreds), even if they only use a few on a regular basis, and shockingly, most users have no idea just how much information those apps are collecting about them.

However much you imagine, the answer is probably “more.”

This point was driven home painfully, courtesy of a recent discovery by a team of researchers at the Kromtech Security Center. They found a completely insecure database online, a staggering 577GB in size, owned by an Israeli-based startup called AI.type, makers of a virtual keyboard app bearing the same name.

The information it contained is simply mind-boggling.

Not only does it contain personal information on 31 million of the app’s 40 million users, but the database contents reveal just how intrusive AI.type actually is. The data includes:

Each user’s full name, email address and phone number

What OS version the user is using (AI.type is only available to Android users)

Each user’s nation of residence, mobile network name and what languages each user has enabled

IP and GPS location data

All information included with each user’s social media profiles, including birthdays, photos, posts, etc.

Each user’s device name, the make, and model of their smartphone and screen resolution

As If that wasn’t enough, the research team also discovered that each user’s contact list had been scraped (including names, email addresses, and phone numbers), and that the company was tracking a whole range of internet behaviors, including Google search queries, number of messages sent per day, the average length of those messages and more.

Obviously, there’s no reason that a simple keyboard app needs this level of information on its users. The only possible explanation is that it’s being collected for resale. If you use the app, be aware that the company knows almost everything about you and everyone you’ve been in contact with on your phone, and now, so do a lot of other people who don’t have your best interests at heart.

Large Number Of HP Models May Have Keyloggers

December 28, 2017 by Joseph Martin

HP is in the news again. If you missed the initial story, earlier in the year, it was reported that an audio driver that came pre-installed on a number of HP laptops contained keylogging code that stored every keystroke made by the person using the machine to a human-readable file. Once discovered, HP issued a patch that removed the keylogging function and deleted the data file.

Now, an independent security researcher going by the name “ZwClose” has discovered more built-in keyloggers in 460 HP Notebook models and counting.

At issue is the SynTP.sys file, which is an integral part of the Synaptics Touchpad driver that ships with a great many HP Notebooks. Although the keylogger is disabled by default, a hacker could enable it using open source tools, simply by changing a registry value.

After HP was notified, the company released a security advisory, which included the following:

“A potential security vulnerability has been identified with certain versions of Synaptics touchpad drivers that impact all Synaptics OEM partners. A party would need administrative privileges in order to take advantage of the vulnerability. Neither Synaptics nor HP has access to customer data as a result of this issue.”

Since the release of the security advisory, HP has issued a driver update that removes the code for all affected models, so from a business and security standpoint, there’s nothing to be done here.

In an era where privacy on the internet is under increasingly intense assault, however, it’s worth noting that this is the second time an issue like this has been tied to HP equipment, and that’s concerning. Privacy matters, and if you’re concerned about it, then two such issues might be enough to make you start looking at some other vendor when it comes time to start replacing or upgrading your equipment.

New Facebook Messenger App For Kids Raises Privacy Questions

December 27, 2017 by Joseph Martin

On the surface, the new Facebook For Kids messenger app looks like a solid win that should put the minds of parents all over the world at ease.

The company conducted extensive interviews and assembled a Blue-Ribbon panel of experts to help them craft the new tool, aimed at children ages 6-12. The app itself is user-friendly and filled with bright, cheerful primary colors that appeal to kids, but there are problems, or, at the very least, valid concerns.

For one thing, Facebook has made no mention of how it plans to monetize its new app, other than to say that it won’t contain any advertising. It’s not difficult to imagine some possibilities, however, and none of them good.

For another, the company essentially used scare tactics to get parents to sign their kids up for the service, saying essentially that kids are going to chat online anyway, and if they don’t use Facebook’s new offering, they are at greater risk of talking to a child predator.

Then, there’s the issue that Facebook requires the child’s full name, and behind the scenes, the app is busily mapping out the child’s social network – who his parents are, the friends of both the children and their parents and so on.

According to the company, it has no plans to turn children’s accounts into full-fledged Facebook profiles, but given the amount of data being collected, it’s not hard to imagine them offering a one-click export function that would turn these accounts into regular Facebook accounts on the day the child turns 13.

What’s most disheartening of all is the fact that the company could have chosen another, far less intrusive route. Rather than requiring the child’s full name and the establishment of a familial relationship, the app could have been nested directly under the parent’s account, with a nickname or even a colorful symbol used to denote the child. This approach would have been far fewer data intensive and far less intrusive.

How well the new app will be received remains to be seen, much like the long-term consequences of its launch.

Files Containing Nearly 1.5 Billion Passwords Leaked On The Internet

December 26, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Researchers from the security firm 4iQ have made a disturbing discovery on the dark web. A massive repository has been discovered that contains a staggering 1.4 billion usernames and passwords in plain text.

The repository is well organized, with each letter of the alphabet having its own directory to facilitate rapid search, and 4iQ has tested a subset of the data it contains and found an alarming percentage of the usernames and passwords to be viable.

It should be noted that this data isn’t from a new, previously unknown breach, but rather, an aggregation of data stolen from 252 previous breaches. The CTO of 4iQ, Julio Casal, had this to say about the discovery:

“None of the passwords are encrypted, and what’s scary is that we’ve tested a subset of these passwords and most of them have been verified to be true. The breach is almost two times larger than the previous largest credential exposure, the Exploit.in combo lists that exposed 797 million records. This new breach adds 385 million new credential pairs, 318 million unique users, and 147 million passwords pertaining to those previous dumps.”

The usernames and passwords come from a wide range of sources including Runescape, Minecraft, RedBox, Badoo, Zoosh, Last.FM, YouPorn, Netflix, MySpace, LinkedIn, Pastebin, Bitcoin and many others.

What’s even worse is that as large as this collection is, it’s really just the tip of the spear. A shocking percentage of users have the bad habit of using the same credentials across multiple web properties, so it’s a statistical certainty that many of the passwords contained in this file will allow hackers access to much more than just the web properties the passwords were stolen from.

If you’re not yet in the habit of changing your passwords on a regular basis, you should begin doing so immediately, and if you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who use the same password on multiple sites, it’s well past time to break that habit.

New “MailSploit” Allows Email Spoofing

December 24, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Phishing attacks just got a whole lot easier.

A German security researcher named Sabri Haddouche has recently discovered a set of email vulnerabilities that have been collectively dubbed “Mailsploit.” At the root, these vulnerabilities stem from the way most email systems interpret addresses encoded with a 1992 standard called RFC-1342.

The standard is that all information in an email header must be an ASCII character. If a non-ASCII character is encountered, it gets converted. Unfortunately, a shockingly large number of email clients (33 and counting) make no effort to check the header afterward for malicious code.

Also, if the RFC-1342 decoded header encountered a null-byte, or two or more email addresses, the only address that would be read would be the one that preceded the null-byte, or the first valid email address encountered.

The email clients vulnerable to this type of attack include:

Apple Mail

Mail for Windows 10

Microsoft Outlook 2016

Mozilla Thunderbird

Yahoo! Mail

AOL Mail

And many others, but Haddouche notes that Gmail is unaffected by the exploit.

There are two ways a hacker can use Mailsploit. First and most obvious to the eye is the fact that it can be used to spoof an email address, making it appear to be from someone you know, which, of course, has the impact of making it much more likely that you’ll click on any links embedded in the body of the message.

Secondly, and potentially even more troubling, is the fact that the exploit can be used to inject malicious code directly onto the recipient’s machine, which can easily give the hacker sending the email full control of the target’s system.

Worst of all, though, is the fact that while Haddouche contacted all of the companies found to offer vulnerable email clients, only eight of them have released a patch to correct the issue. Twelve vendors opted to triage the bug, but gave no information on if or when the issue might be patched, and twelve others made no reply at all.

Mozilla and Opera (both vulnerable) flatly refused to address the problem, which they see as a server-side issue.

Your IT staff’s job just got a whole lot harder.

Some Websites Can Force Your Computer To Mine Cryptocurrency

December 23, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Researchers at Malwarebytes have discovered a new exploit that allows malicious website owners to use your PC to mine various forms of cryptocurrency, even if you exit the browser window the malicious site was displayed on.

The exploit relies on a smart pop-under trick. A code on the website determines your monitor’s resolution and places a ghost browser session sitting behind the clock on the MS Windows task bar, where it continues to mine cryptocurrency, utilizing a portion of your CPU’s power and resources.

The impact on your system’s performance is nominal, so only the most observant users will notice anything amiss.

According to Malwarebytes researcher Jerome Segura, “This type of pop-under is designed to bypass adblockers and is a lot harder to identify because of how cleverly it hides itself. Closing the browser using the “X” is no longer sufficient. The more technical users will want to run Task Manager to ensure there is no remnant running browser processes and terminate them. Alternatively, the taskbar will show the browser’s icon with slight highlighting, indicating that it is still running.”

It’s worth noting that there are a couple of other ways you can determine whether some portion of your system’s resources are being coopted in this manner. Restarting your system will certainly do the trick, and if you have your taskbar set to transparent, you’ll be able to see the pop-under quite clearly. Also, resizing or relocating the task bar will reveal the hidden browser window.

This is but the latest chapter in the ongoing battle between hackers and unscrupulous website owners and the makers of adblocking and other types of security software. In time, ad blocking software will be modified to catch this type of exploit, and in response, the owners of malicious websites will change their approach and find a new way to get around various detection schemes. As ever, while software can certainly help, vigilance remains the best defense.

Some Computer Manufacturers Are Disabling Intel Chip Firmware

December 22, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Intel is catching some flak for releasing CPU technology that’s filled with security flaws. At issue is Intel’s Management Engine (ME), which is designed for Enterprise use and is of no real value on equipment designed for personal or home use.

Although many popular PC and laptop manufacturers, including Acer, Panasonic, Lenovo, Fujitsu, HP, and others are selling equipment with Intel ME enabled, so far, three hardware vendors have opted to disable the firmware.

These three vendors are Dell, System76 and a company called Purism. Of particular interest is the fact that Purism opted to disable the Management Engine almost a full month before Intel released any information about the security flaws in their technology. Apparently, someone else found a way to disable Intel ME, and the company decided to use it as a means of improving the privacy protections of its customers.

According to a recent blog post published by Purism:

“Disabling the Management Engine is no easy task, and it has taken security researchers years to find a way to properly and verifiably disable it. The Librem 13 and Librem 15 products can be purchased today and will arrive with the Management Engine disabled by default.”

The equipment manufacturers who are selling their wares with the Intel Management Engine enabled have all promised to patch the security flaws in a future update, but as of right now, none of those manufacturers have provided an ETA for when that might be.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to upgrade your equipment and you don’t want to expose yourself or your organization to unnecessary risk, buying from any of the three vendors mentioned above, Dell, System76 or Purism, is a smart choice. It gives your network security team one less thing to worry about, and that’s always a good thing.