Displaying items by tag: Security

On February 23rd, 2017, Google published a paper on their security blog that showed how a SHA-1 collision was possible. It proved that the aging cryptographic and hashing standard was no longer a safe or secure method. Google showed that they could produce two different files yet have them show the same hash, thus causing a collision and getting around some of the file hashing systems in place at the time. The problem is that SHA-1 hashing is still in use today by many tools.

Universal Plug and Play UPnP) is one of those technology decisions that make you wonder what people were thinking. The concept is fairly clear, find a way to make things easy for someone to just connect a device to a network and have it function without interaction. Devices like the Xbox Series X|S require this for their remote play feature as the ports and IP addresses needed to function would be overly complicated for most users to set up. So, you enable UPnP on your router and just plug the Xbox in. Sound great, but as with anything that create convenience, it also brings about risk.

Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence team has recently disclosed their discovery and analysis of a new malware family. The malware in question is being tracked as a Trojan named UpdateAgent. The team has been watching as it progressed from a simple information stealer for the macOS to much more sophisticated capabilities including being able to bypass the macOS Gatekeeper security function.

The SolarWinds supply chain attack was and still is one of the most complex and ingenious attacks that has come to light. How it was discovered is also an interesting topic for another conversation. The attack group in question is still being speculated on although one most people tend to gravitate towards is the Russian APT group COZY BEAR (APT29). The actual attack and compromise of the software repository at SolarWinds is the stuff of legend. Once that was completed it allowed the attackers access to a wide swath of business verticals along with government agencies from a single trusted source. They could, almost on a whim, compromise anyone that leveraged the SolarWinds product. Of course, supply chain attacks are nothing new and are not going anywhere. They are complicated to set up and maintain, but once in place they can yield amazing results.

Tracking users and devices as they browse the web is a common thing these days and has been for many years. The technology has evolved from the original tracking cookie to some of the more advanced methods in use now, but the concept is the same. How can someone identify an object on the internet and follow it. Regardless of whether the information is used for “legitimate” or nefarious purposes, the technology remains and continues to move forward.

Samba has released several updates that patch critical flaws in their popular Sever Message Block (SMB) freeware implementation. SMB is a protocol that allows for simple sharing of network resources and has had its share of critical vulnerabilities in the past. The sharing of network resources is a common target for attackers as it can be a quick an easy way to compromise a system. One of the vulnerabilities includes all versions of Samba before 4.13.17 (CVE-2021-44142).

WhatsApp is one of a group of relatively secure messaging services available to both iPhone and Android users. WhatsApp states that it supports full end-to-end encryption, secure deletion of messages (by the sender and receiver) as well as the option to setup disappearing messages. It can also be set to block screen shots of chats which is nice when you want to keep your conversation private.

Mobile device security is not where is should be. There is just no way around this fact. The vas majority of people simple download and install an app on their phone or tablet thinking that they are not going to get something nasty. They never review the permissions that new app is asking for or what those permissions might allow it to do. Now it seems that clever threat actors have slipped a malware into a Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) App.

Metabook has announced some new security features in their messenger app and platform. Many of these are items that competing SMS/MMS applications and services already have, but Meta knows that they need are now facing some solid competition, so they are finally getting around to these. Of course, this does not mean that people are going to flow back to Meta Messenger. None the less, it is good to see these show up.

Researchers at Morphisec have detailed a new delivery type for AsyncRAT (Remote Access Trojan) used in part of a phishing campaign that has been running since at least September 2021. The phishing part of the campaign is routine, an email with an HTML attachment. The attachment looks like a receipt. When opened, the victim is directed to a webpage that asked them to save a file (an ISO file). On the surface it looks like it would be a regular file download that will go through common security channels. However, things turn out not to be what they expected (read that in Morgan Freeman’s voice).