Technology

SmartHome Users Aren’t Keeping Up With Security Updates

September 24, 2018 by Joseph Martin

The Internet on devices continues to be a major problem when it comes to security. Unfortunately, a big part of the reason why comes down to end users. Recently, Bitdefender released a new report entitled “The IoT Threat Landscape And Top Smart Home Vulnerabilities in 2018,” and it paints a grim picture indeed.

The average home now contains twenty smart devices, and most of them contain security vulnerabilities. 95 percent of those vulnerabilities reside in the firmware.

While the majority of smart device users (60 percent ) claim to be “worried” or “very worried” about identity theft, most are utterly failing to adequately protect their IoT devices. In fact, sixty percent indicated that they had never performed a firmware update on their router, and 55 percent reported that they had never updated their smart TVs.

It gets worse. 40 percent of users surveyed indicated that they use the same password for each of their devices, and half of all smart TV owners said they had literally never updated their password.

Thirty percent of users claim that they’re worried about the prospect of a hacker accessing a smart camera to spy on them, but paradoxically, fully 70 percent have at least one camera connected to a vulnerable router.

To provide a sense of scope and scale, the company reported that its BOX product blocked nearly half a million threats (461,718) in just a 30-day period, with 76 percent of those being malicious websites.

Analyst Bogdan Botezatu stressed that while weak passwords are a big part of the problem, it’s not only users who are to blame.

He added:

“Smart device manufacturers share responsibility for the current state of IoT security because most of them are overlooking the security aspect. In their rush to launch the product ahead of the competition, they are leaving attack avenues wide open to attackers interested in user sensitive data.”

If you have one or more smart devices in your home, and you probably do, it’s time to get serious about securing them.

Joseph Martin

President & CEO
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Vulnerability Found In Major Manufacturers Of Android Phones

September 8, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Researchers operating out of the University of Florida, Stony Brook University and Samsung Research America have made a disturbing discovery. Millions of Android smartphones manufactured by eleven different OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) were found to be vulnerable to attack via AT Commands.

If you’re not sure what an “AT Command” is, you’re not alone. Part of the Hayes Command Set, ATtention Commands were developed in the early 1980s and designed to be transmitted via phone lines to issue commands to modems.

Most people aren’t even aware of the fact that their high-tech smartphones contain a basic modem within them, which allows the high-tech wonder to connect to the internet. While AT Commands have been standardized, many vendors have added custom AT Commands to their devices, and unfortunately, these commands can control a surprising variety of advanced features including the built-in camera and the touchscreen interface.

The AT Commands can be accessed via the phone’s USB interface. This means that a would-be attacker would have to gain physical access to the device, or place a malicious component inside a user’s charger, charging station, or USB dock.

Once a hacker is connected in this manner to the victim’s phone, he could use one of the AT Commands to steal data, unlock the screen, mimic touchscreen events, or even rewrite the phone’s firmware.

The research team has complied a database of phone models and firmware versions that are vulnerable to this type of attack. They have contacted all the vendors, and are continuing their testing.

Initially, the team tested AT Commands via the USB interface. Phase two of the research will test to see if those commands can be issued via WiFi or Bluetooth connections. The team has also published the Shell script they used in their original testing, available on GitHub.

So far, none of the OEMs contacted have released any information or given a timetable for a fix.

Joseph Martin

Security Issues Abound – Texas Voter Registration Records Leaked

September 7, 2018 by Joseph Martin

The great state of Texas has 15.2 million registered voters. Unfortunately, personal details belonging to nearly all of them (14.8 million) have been compromised, but don’t blame the state’s election officials.

This staggering breach was caused by the carelessness of a conservative-focused data firm, ironically named “The Data Trust.” They left their research file completely exposed and unprotected on a server that anyone could access with no password required. It’s hard to see how the exposure could have been more damaging or all-inclusive.

The Single, massive file contained the following details:

Voter name

Voter address

Gender

Voting history for past elections, including primaries and presidential elections

According to the independent New Zealand researcher who discovered it, who goes by the name of “Flash Gordon,” the file also contained indications of voter views on abortion, immigration, the Second Amendment, and whether or not the voter in question trusted Hillary Clinton.

Bill Evans, the VP of the security firm “One Identity,” had this to say about the incident:

“The idea of having a database like this sitting with no password is such an incredible lapse in judgement today. While we all know that keeping up with password best practices can be somewhat annoying – forgetting and resetting them in a broken cycle – it is inexcusable and maybe illegal to leave data that contains personal information like this completely unprotected.

It is a good reminder, however, and call to action for any organization that is storing sensitive data, that it is their responsibility to ensure security, as well as authentication to access it. There are four basic security measures that should be part and parcel of doing business today. Those include end-user education, multi-factor authentication, privileged-access management, and access governance to ensure only the right people have the right access to the right things at the right time.”

Indeed.

Joseph Martin

Hackers Now Targeting Point Of Sale Systems

September 6, 2018 by Joseph Martin

There’s a new threat to point of sale (POS) systems coming out of Russia, according to security researchers from Booz Allen Hamilton. The malware, which they’re calling “RtPOS” isn’t bleeding edge technology, and does not approach the level of sophistication of other recently discovered strains, but that doesn’t mean it should be taken lightly. These strains include RawPOS, MajikPOS, UDPOS, and Treasure hunter.

In its current incarnation, it has a limited feature set and is basically a RAM scrapper. Once deployed, it will watch a PC’s RAM looking for text patterns, which are saved to a local DAT file. Of interest, it doesn’t currently appear to have any sort of networking capability, so when the data is collected and stored, it has no means of actually porting it to a command and control server (yet).

There are two competing theories as to why this software is the way it is. One theory is that it’s simply a rough draft. A work in progress. Although relatively benign in its current incarnation, it would be quite easy for the authors to add enhancements to the code, and possibly to update the software remotely, turning this “nonthreatening” software into a true menace in the blink of an eye.

Another theory is that RtPOS is one part of a multi-part, much more subtle attack. The purpose of the software is simply to infect and collect data, leaving it to a separate process to exfiltrate the data at irregular intervals, which would be more difficult to detect, and unlikely to draw attention.

At present, there’s no clear indication which theory is correct, but both ideas are disturbing. As ever, vigilance is the key. Hardly a day goes by that researchers somewhere in the world don’t discover some new threat. This is but the latest.

Joseph Martin

High Frequency Audio Computer Monitors May Expose Screen Activity

September 4, 2018 by Joseph Martin

It may sound like something straight out of a science fiction movie, but recently, researchers have made a disturbing discovery. Using nothing more than an off-the-shelf microphone, it’s possible for an attacker to determine what content you’re viewing on your computer monitor.

The researchers tested a variety of LCD screens (with both LED and CCFL backlighting) and observed that the high-pitched noise made by the monitors changed as the content displayed on the screen changed.

The research team tested a variety of methods of recording audio data from the monitors in question, and found that they could capture sufficient data with a few methods. First, a smartphone positioned near the screen, second a compromised smart virtual assistant (like Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa), and third, using a parabolic microphone from up to ten meters distant.

Even more disturbing, the researchers discovered that an attacker could correctly identify the website a victim was looking at with up to 97 percent accuracy if the microphone was close to the monitor, and with 90.9 percent accuracy with microphones placed at some distance.

Worst of all, subtle changes in the pitch of your display screen make it possible for hackers to identify what specific characters are being displayed with an accuracy that ranged from 88 percent (more distant microphones) to 98 percent (microphones in close proximity to the monitor). This makes it entirely possible to glean passwords and other sensitive information.

Granted, this is an extremely exotic form of attack that requires a great deal of advance preparation by the attacker. Because of this, it’s unlikely that it will see widespread use anytime soon. Even so, it’s something that a careful and determined hacker could do right now using off the shelf technology, and there’s very little the victim could do to prevent it.

While we’re unlikely to see equipment manufacturers take the necessary steps to mask acoustic emanations, robust on-site physical security measures would make detection of this type of attack fairly easy.

Joseph Martin

Millions Of T-Mobile Customers Data May Have Been Leaked

September 4, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Telecommunications giant T-Mobile is the latest victim of a large-scale data breach, with personal data belonging to more than two million of its customers having been leaked. The exposed information included customer name, phone number, email address, billing zip code, account number and whether the account was pre-paid or post-paid.

As bad as that is, it could have been far worse. Fortunately, no financial information, passwords, or social security numbers were compromised.

According to the official statement released by T-Mobile, their security team shut down the “unauthorized capture of some information” on August 20th of this year. The statement did not provide specific details about how the hackers got into the company’s servers, and only provided an estimate of the total number of customer records impacted.

The statement read, in part:

“We take the security of your information very seriously and have a number of safeguards in place to protect your personal information from unauthorized access. We truly regret that this incident occurred and are so sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.”

T-Mobile has reached out to law enforcement and has contacted all customers who were impacted by the breach.

Although no passwords were compromised, if you received a notification from the company that information about your account was compromised, it would be wise to change your password just to be safe. Be on guard against phishing attacks that may target you based on the information that was gleaned via the breach.

This is but the latest in a long and growing stream of high profile breaches this year, but it is by no means the largest. Earlier this year, for example, Car phone Warehouse suffered a breach that impacted all of its ~10 million customers. As ever, vigilance is the key.

Joseph Martin

Gmail Releases New Confidential Mode

August 29, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Google has introduced a new Gmail feature called “Confidential Mode,” which seeks to make sending and receiving important or sensitive emails more secure. Unfortunately, it may have inadvertently created as many problems as it solves.

Here’s how the new feature works, and why you may be leery of using it:

To send a confidential email, compose your message as normal, and then, click the “lock” icon located at the bottom of the email screen. When this button is pressed, you’ll be presented with a number of options that will enable you to specify a self-destruct time ranging from one day to five years. The email will auto-delete after the amount of time specified.

You’ll also be able to specify whether the email requires a password to open, and of course, giving you the ability to set that password. Also, a message sent in Confidential mode cannot be forwarded to any other user or be printed out.

The new service works across all email systems because Confidential messages aren’t actually sent. The user will get a notification that they’ve received a confidential mail, and a link to click to access it, which points back to Google’s own servers where the email is housed.

Given this, the sender of the message also has the ability to selectively remove access to confidential emails if one was inadvertently sent to the wrong recipient.

All of that sounds great in theory, but there’s a problem. That’s exactly how phishing attacks work.

Security professionals have sounded the alarm that hackers will quickly begin spoofing Google’s new service, pointing the links in their messages toward their own servers. When users are prompted to provide their login credentials to see the message, they’ll be handing access to their email account over to the hackers. Google has not yet responded to or commented on this flaw in their new system. Use with caution.

Joseph Martin

If You Use Photoshop, Update Immediately

August 28, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Do you use Photoshop? Does anyone who works for you use it? If so, you’ll want to apply the latest security patch immediately.

Two new vulnerabilities were discovered after the release of Adobe’s regularly scheduled August 2018 security patch update. This prompted the company to take the unusual step of releasing an emergency, out-of-band update to correct the issue.

These two newly discovered vulnerabilities (tracked as CVE-2018-12810 and CVE-2018-12811) impact Adobe photoshop CC2017, v18.1.5 and earlier 18.x versions, and Adobe Photoshop CC 2018, v19.1.5 and earlier 19.x versions.

It was discovered and initially reported by Kushal Arvind Shah, a security researcher with FortiGuard Labs. The vulnerabilities allow hackers to exploit a pair of critical memory corruption flaws, which allows a them to remotely execute malicious code on the target user’s machine.

Again, it must be stressed that neither of these issues were addressed by the company’s regularly scheduled patch update released earlier this month. Although if you haven’t yet applied that patch, you should. It addresses a total of eleven different security flaws spread across a number of the company’s products including: Flash Player, Acrobat, Reader, Experience Manager and Creative Cloud.

To get the fix for the Photoshop vulnerabilities, you’ll need to go to the company’s website and download the out of band patch designed specifically to address this issue.

It should be noted that both issues, while having been assigned a severity rating of “Critical,” have only been given a priority rating of three. This suggests that these flaws have not been exploited in the wild. That, however, is simply a matter of time. If members of your creative team employ Photoshop to generate graphics for your business, applying the latest patch should be a top priority. To do anything less is to invite an attack against your business.

Joseph Martin

Macs Can Be Hacked With Synthetic Dismissal On Warning Boxes

August 25, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Depending on the lens you view him through, Patrick Wardle (former hacker for the NSA and macOS security expert) is either your best friend or your worst nightmare.

Most people (whether fans of Apple or not) will readily concede that the company works hard to make their products as secure as possible. Unfortunately, at this year’s Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas, Wardle made a presentation that is currently sending shockwaves through the Apple user community. He exposed a major security flaw in the company’s products that impacts many of their secondary defensive measures.

Normally, when an Apple device detects an action that is potentially malicious, Apple’s OS will block it, then display an alert box to let the user know.

Unfortunately, as Wardle demonstrated, it is a trivial task for a hacker to generate a “synthetic click” to dismiss the warning box. This could be done in the blink of an eye, or with only slightly more effort, and be made utterly invisible to the end-user.

As Wardle puts it, “The ability to synthetically interact with a myriad of security prompts allows you to perform a lot of malicious actions. Many of Apple’s privacy and security-in-depth protections can be trivially bypassed.”

This is hardly a new trick. Over the years, several malware strains have used synthetic clicks to dismiss warning boxes, so Apple is certainly no stranger to the strategy. In response, they have given their OS some ability to detect and ignore synthetic clicks, but as Wardle demonstrated, it’s far from perfect and even a fully updated High Sierra system was not completely protected.

Wardle concluded his presentation with the following: “I wasn’t trying to find a bypass, but I uncovered a way to fully break a foundational security mechanism. If a security mechanism falls over so easily, did they not test this? I’m almost embarrassed to talk about it.”

Apple has not yet responded to Wardle’s presentation.

Used with permission from Article Aggregator

Joseph Martin

Android Still Tracking Users With Location History Turned Off

August 22, 2018 by Joseph Martin

According to Google’s support page on the matter, disabling your phone’s “Location History” in your phone’s privacy settings will prevent Google from tracking every move you make.

The support page reads as follows:

“You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”

That doesn’t leave much in the way of wiggle room. A pity it’s not even close to being true.

A new investigation conducted by the Associated Press reveals that even with your Location History turned off, some Google Apps are designed so that they automatically store time-stamped location data on users, without asking their permission.

The AP report on the matter explains in further detail:

“…for example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are, and some searchers that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude – accurate to the square foot – and save it to your Google account.”

To demonstrate their claim, the AP created a map of the movements of Gunes Acar, who carried his Android phone with “Location History” switched off in a bid to prevent his location data from being collected.

Despite taking this step, the AP researchers were able to produce a map of his train commute on a pair of trips to New York and visits to the High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hell’s Kitchen, Central Park, and Harlem. The team also discovered his home address in this manner, but in a bid to protect the professor’s privacy, they did not publish that information on the map tracing the routes mentioned above.

At this point, Google has not responded to the AP’s research.

Joseph Martin

SmartHome Users Aren’t Keeping Up With Security Updates

Vulnerability Found In Major Manufacturers Of Android Phones

Security Issues Abound – Texas Voter Registration Records Leaked

Hackers Now Targeting Point Of Sale Systems

High Frequency Audio Computer Monitors May Expose Screen Activity

Millions Of T-Mobile Customers Data May Have Been Leaked

Gmail Releases New Confidential Mode

If You Use Photoshop, Update Immediately

Macs Can Be Hacked With Synthetic Dismissal On Warning Boxes

Android Still Tracking Users With Location History Turned Off

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