Blog – Page 25

Corporate Attacks On The Rise Through Vulnerable Printers

January 10, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Few things are more ubiquitous in an office environment than printers. Of course, these days, most printers are much more than simply that. They can also scan, copy and even send emails. As such, they’ve become an increasingly attractive option to hack, according to the latest data released by Barracuda Networks.

The reason is simple. Most printers aren’t as well protected as PCs and other devices on your network. They’re the weak point in your company’s defensive armor.

The upsurge in this type of attack seems to be focused on Cannon, HP and Epson printers, and works like this:

A printer is compromised and used to send spoofed scanned attachments, usually bearing an innocuous subject line such as “Scanned From HP,” “Scanned from Epson” or “Scanned from Cannon.”

Most employees don’t think twice about opening such attachments because they appear to be from a legitimate source inside the company, which is, of course, exactly what the hackers are counting on.

While any sort of payload can be delivered in this manner, the most common strain found installs a backdoor on the target PC, allowing the hackers to:

Monitor behavior and log keystrokes

Change computer settings

Copy files

Access other connected systems

And more.

In a clear indication that the malware could be used to launch a ransomware style attack, it also gives the hackers the ability to replace the PC’s wallpaper with any file they choose.

Employees should be more mindful of this type of attack and always double check to make sure the sender is valid. Also, it’s important to hover over the links embedded in such emails in order to be sure they’re valid before clicking on them.

If you haven’t been on the receiving end of an attack like this yet, count yourself lucky and stay vigilant.

Joseph Martin

President & CEO
I hope you enjoyed this article. My mission is to take your stress away from dealing with IT problems. Call (252) 565-1235 or send me a message at our contact us page if you have a question, comment or want help.

2017 List Of Most Used Passwords Released

January 9, 2018 by Joseph Martin

SplashData has released their latest annual report on the most commonly used passwords. Unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

By now, everyone knows that the number of hacking attempts and high-profile data breaches is on the rise. Everyone has heard, on more than one occasion, how important it is to not use the same password across multiple web properties, to enable two-factor authentication if and where it is offered and to use passwords that contain a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols in order to make them more difficult to crack.

Although these are things that everyone knows, the wisdom embedded in the advice above often goes unheeded. According to the data collected by aggregating passwords leaked in data breaches over the past year, the most commonly used password for 2017 is “123456,” followed closely by the ubiquitous “password.” These are unchanged from last year.

The rest of the top 25 list contains a mix of the old and the new, including:

12345678

Qwerty

12345

123456789

Letmein

1234567

Football

Iloveyou

Admin

Welcome

Monkey

Abel123

Starwars

123123

Dragon

Passw0rd

Master

Hello

Freedom

Whatever

Qazwsx

And Trustno1

If you make use of any of these passwords, we urge you to change them immediately. As important as data security is and as much as is at stake, you’re putting yourself, your friends and your co-workers at grave risk by using such easily cracked passwords.

SplashData’s CEO Morgan Slain had this to say on the topic:

“Unfortunately, while the newest episode may be a fantastic addition to the Star Wars franchise, ‘starwars’ is a dangerous password to use. Hackers are using common terms from pop culture and sports to break into accounts online because they know how many people are using those easy-to-remember words.”

Joseph Martin

Apple Might Be Working On Universal Apps Across Mac, iOS

January 7, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Apple has been quietly working on something called “Project Marzipan” for a couple of years now, and it appears that they’re getting closer to unveiling it.

The company seeks to bring its MacOS and iOS platforms closer together by developing universal apps that will work in either environment. This mirrors Microsoft’s Universal Windows app strategy, where apps can detect the environment they’re running on and adjust their display and navigation accordingly.

Project Marzipan presents some real challenges for Apple because MacOS programs use an entirely different set of development tools, although there is some overlap. The programming language called Swift, for example, can be used to make apps that run in either environment and if the company placed a greater emphasis on it, the process of creating their own universal apps would be greatly simplified.

The thinking behind Marzipan seems to be driven by the company’s desire to breathe new life into the Mac App Store, which hasn’t seen nearly the level of success as their iOS Store. The move would be a boon to developers because creating a common platform would allow Mac app developers to get their product in front of more potential customers.

Another potential reason is that the company may be planning to ultimately merge MacOS and iOS into a singular operating system that runs every Apple product. It’s a compelling theory, but the company has said nothing to confirm it.

In any event, if Apple goes ahead with Marzipan, and at this point, all indications are that they will, then we can expect a public announcement to that effect at next year’s World Wide Developer Conference. The first of the universal apps should appear not long after that, although the process of merging the two app stores and building out a robust collection of universal apps could take more than a year.

Joseph Martin

Windows 10 Third Party Password Manager Could Have Security Issue

January 6, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Do you use “Keeper?” If you’re not sure what it is, then you probably don’t. It’s a password manager that Microsoft has been bundling with some of its Windows 10 releases. Either way, there’s a serious flaw in its design that you should be aware of.

Earlier in the year, Tavis Ormandy, a researcher on Google’s Project Zero team, discovered a bug that saw Keeper injecting privileged user information into web pages, exposing all manner of private data unnecessarily to website owners.

The potential damage comes from a user being lured onto a hacker-controlled website, whose owner could siphon up the information (including literally every password stored by Keeper) and resell it, or use it to launch a highly targeted attack against a specific user or device.

The bug was reported, and a patch was issued. Then, in a later version, Ormandy found the same bug cropping up again. He had this to say about the matter:

“I’ve heard of Keeper, I remember filing a bug a while ago about how they were injecting privileged UI into pages. I checked and, they’re doing the same thing again with this version.

I think I’m being generous considering this a new issue that qualifies for a ninety-day disclosure, as I literally just changed the selectors and the same attack works. Nevertheless, this is a complete compromise of Keeper security, allowing any website to steal any password.”

Craig Lurey, the CTO of Keeper Security, had this to say when informed of the bug:

“This potential vulnerability requires a Keeper user to be lured to a malicious website while logged into the browser extension, and then fakes user input by using a ‘clickjacking’ technique to execute privileged code within the browser extension.”

The two important takeaways here are as follows:

The company reports that so far as anyone can tell, this flaw has not actually been exploited in the wild.

Keeper Security has issued an emergency patch that has disabled the “Add to Existing” feature, which is where the problem code actually resides.

This temporary measure was implemented as a stop-gap until the bug can be properly patched.

Used with permission from Article Aggregator

Joseph Martin

Researchers Find Malware Targeting Industrial Systems

January 5, 2018 by Joseph Martin

In the malware ecosystem, few strains are more terrifying than those that target industrial control systems. Think Stuxnet, Industroyer and IronGate. Recently, security researchers from FireEye have identified a new threat in this class of malware. Alternately called “Triton” or “TRISIS,” this new code targets Triconex Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) controllers, which are manufactured by Schneider Electric. These control systems are found in a wide range of industrial equipment. They are, in effect, the gears that keep the machine of modern industry moving.

So far, there’s suggestive evidence that at least one state-sponsored attack has been carried out using the new strain of malware, although neither the identity of the target of the attack nor the organization responsible for it have been disclosed. All we know for sure is that the attack was launched against an industrial concern in the Middle East.

The code base of the new threat utilizes the TriStation Protocol, which is a proprietary tool used by Triconex SIS products. There is no public documentation available for the protocol, which suggests that the hackers who developed the malware must have reverse engineered it.

A spokesman for FireEye had this to say about the code in general and the recent attack:

“The attacker gained remote access to an SIS engineering workstation and deployed the Triton attack framework to reprogram the SIS controllers. During the incident, some SIS controllers entered a failed safe state, which automatically shut down the industrial process and prompted the asset owner to initiate an investigation.

The attacker deployed Triton shortly after gaining access to the SIS system, indicating that they had pre-built and tested the tool, which would require access to hardware and software that is not widely available.”

The real danger of software like this is that it can reprogram control systems to ignore when equipment begins operating beyond normal operating parameters, which can lead to physical damage to critical infrastructure.

If deployed against a power station, for instance, it could result in widespread blackouts. If deployed against a nuclear installation, it could send the reactor into a meltdown.

Threats like these are becoming more common by the day, and with hundreds of millions of controllers deployed around the world, it’s just a matter of time before the hackers succeed at hitting close to home.

Joseph Martin

Microsoft Word Gets Update To Disable DDE After Malware Concerns

January 4, 2018 by Joseph Martin

In recent months, Microsoft Word has been getting a fair amount of bad press, thanks to an old-but-still-supported feature called DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange). This is the feature that allows Word to pull data from other MS Office applications. For instance, if you embed a chart into your Word document, each time you open the doc, it will automatically poll the spreadsheet the chart was created from an update it dynamically.

It’s a good feature, but unfortunately, it’s subject to abuse by hackers, who can use it to insert malicious code.

For a long time, Microsoft held the opinion that DDE wasn’t flawed per se, and as such, refused to take any action to try and limit its abuse. The thinking was that the company had already done enough since MS Office is designed to display a warning message before actually opening a file, which gives the user a choice.

Unfortunately, hackers have found ways to game that system as well and get around the warning box, and ultimately, that’s what changed the company’s mind.

Back in October, Microsoft published Security Advisory 4053440, which warned of the potential dangers of DDE and advised users on how to disable the feature in Word, Outlook and Excel. The company has now taken things a step further, disabling the feature inside MS Word in the Office Defense in Depth Update, ADV170021.

In fact, the company now sees the problem as being so severe and pervasive that they took the unusual step of issuing an emergency, out-of-band patch to update Word 2003 and 2007, two versions that Microsoft has officially stopped supporting.

If your employees use MS Office, this most recent patch is of critical importance, so if you’re not getting updates automatically, make sure your team knows to grab and apply this one.

Joseph Martin

DirecTV Genie DVR May Have A Major Vulnerability

January 3, 2018 by Joseph Martin

If you have a Genie DVR system, you should be aware of a major security flaw in the firmware that could allow a hacker to take complete control over the device.

At issue is the equipment offered by AT&T as part of their free DireTV WVB Kit. Researchers of the ZDI initiative and Trend Micro discovered a zero-day vulnerability in one of the core components of the system, Linksys WVBR0-25, which is a Linux-powered wireless video bridge. It is this bridge that allows customers to connect up to eight Genie client boxes connected to television sets in customers’ homes.

Trend Micro researcher Ricky Lawshae took a deep dive into the firmware and was able to get the Linksys WVBR0-25 to divulge a wealth of information from the device’s web server, without requiring any sort of authentication whatsoever. There wasn’t even a login screen, just a wall of easy-to-access text, which included:

Customer WPS PIN

Connected clients

Processes currently running

And more. Lawshae had this to say after completing his investigation:

“It literally took 30 seconds of looking at this device to find and verify an unauthenticated, remote root command injection vulnerability. It was at this point I became pretty frustrated.

The vendors involved here should have some form of secure development to prevent bugs like this from shipping. More than that, we as security practitioners have failed to affect the changes needed in the industry to prevent simple yet impactful bugs from reaching unsuspecting consumers.”

It gets worse, though. When the ZDI Initiative reported this security flaw to the manufacturer, rather than issuing a patch to correct it, they simply ceased all communication. After more than six months of trying, and getting nowhere, ZDI decided to publicize the vulnerability in the hopes that doing so would finally prompt the company to take action.

Until they do, about your only option (aside from simply canceling your service) is to limit the number of devices that can interact with Linksys WVBR0-25 so as to limit your exposure.

Joseph Martin

Always Connected Laptops Could Be The Next Generation Of Hardware

January 2, 2018 by Joseph Martin

What’s the next big thing for the PC world? If the industry’s major players have anything to say about it, it will be the “always-on” PC.

Forget about plugging into your company’s network. Forget about free WiFi Hotspots. With an always-on PC, you won’t have to worry about either. If they’re not available, your PC can connect via the same cellular data network your smartphone uses, which means you’ll always be just a few mouse clicks away from your data.

It sounds fantastic, but there is, of course, one giant wrinkle in the equation: cost. More specifically, although several major hardware manufacturers are planning to sell always-on PCs soon, nobody knows how much the data plans will wind up costing in the longer term.

A few telecommunications companies have already given some indications here. T-Mobile has announced that its ONE unlimited service will be available for $20 a month. AT&T’s rates are significantly higher, charging $30 a month for 3GB of DataConnect data, and Verizon is charging $10 a month per gigabyte of data.

Depending on how much data you’re working with, that can get expensive very quickly. You could easily wind up paying more on your data plan than the PC itself set you back, and that’s before taking into account what impact the recent reversal on the Net Neutrality policy may have going forward.

One thing’s for certain: carriers won’t be able to get away with charging too much for the service, or customers will simply opt not to play the game, preferring to continue to flock to free WiFi hotspots as they’re doing now.

The first always-on PCs will start shipping in 2018, at which time we’ll find out how anxious the market is to embrace the new feature, and what kind of premium they’ll be willing to pay for it. Stay tuned.

Joseph Martin

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.

Joseph Martin

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.

Joseph Martin

Corporate Attacks On The Rise Through Vulnerable Printers

2017 List Of Most Used Passwords Released

Apple Might Be Working On Universal Apps Across Mac, iOS

Windows 10 Third Party Password Manager Could Have Security Issue

Researchers Find Malware Targeting Industrial Systems

Microsoft Word Gets Update To Disable DDE After Malware Concerns

DirecTV Genie DVR May Have A Major Vulnerability

Always Connected Laptops Could Be The Next Generation Of Hardware

Data On 123 Million US Households Leaked Online

USB Drives Could Be Huge Factor In Data Loss, Theft

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