Windows 7, not XP, was the reason last week’s WCry worm spread so widely

Wanacry stats

Eight days ago, the WCry ransomware worm attacked more than 200,000 computers in 150 countries. The outbreak prompted infected hospitals to turn away patients and shut down computers in banks and telecoms. Now that researchers have had time to analyze the self-replicating attack, they’re learning details that shed new and sometimes surprising light on the world’s biggest ransomware attack.

Chief among the revelations: more than 97 percent of infections hit computers running Windows 7, according to attacks seen by antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab. By contrast, infected Windows XP machines were practically non-existent, and those XP PCs that were compromised were likely manually infected by their owners for testing purposes. That’s according to Costin Raiu, director of Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team, who spoke to Ars.

While the estimates are based only on computers that run Kaspersky software, as opposed to all computers on the Internet, there’s little question Windows 7 was overwhelmingly affected by WCry, which is also known as “WannaCry” and “WannaCrypt.” Security ratings firm BitSight found that 67 percent of infections hit Windows 7, Reuters reported.

The figures challenge the widely repeated perception that the outbreak was largely the result of end users who continued to deploy Windows XP, a Windows version Microsoft decommissioned three years ago. In fact, researchers now say, XP was largely untouched by last week’s worm because PCs crashed before WCry could take hold. Instead, it now appears, the leading contributor to the virally spreading infection were Windows 7 machines that hadn’t installed a critical security patch Microsoft issued in March

The Kaspersky figures are illuminating because they show Windows 7 x64 Edition, which is widely used by large organizations, being infected close to twice as much as Windows 7 versions mostly used in homes and small offices. It’s not clear if that means enterprises are less likely to patch or if there are other explanations.

Also on Friday, researchers published convincing evidence that malicious spam e-mails played no role in initially seeding last week’s ransomware worm. Rather, according to a blog post published by AV provider Malwarebytes, it spread through a mechanism that scanned the Internet for computers with open Server Message Block ports. The worm then used a modified version of “EternalBlue,”—the advanced SMB exploit that was developed by the National Security Agency and leaked by the Shadow Brokers group—to install WCry on vulnerable computers. From there, WCry propagated from vulnerable machine to vulnerable machine inside local networks.

“Developing a well-crafted campaign to identify just… a few thousand vulnerable machines would allow for the widespread distribution of this malware on the scale and speed that we saw with this particular ransomware variant,” Malwarebytes Senior Malware Intelligence Analyst Adam McNeil wrote.

A third revelation: more people than previously known may have been repackaging EternalBlue and other recently leaked NSA exploits in the weeks before the WCry outbreak. Security firm Secdo said on Friday that it unearthed evidence showing that multiple groups exploited the SMB vulnerabilities to install a separate ransomware package, steal login credentials, and to conscript computers into a botnet.

According to Secdo researcher Gil Barak:

Based on these findings, we suspect that the scope of the damage is much greater than previously thought and that there are at least three different groups that have been leveraging the NSA exploit to infect enterprise networks since late April… These attacks demonstrate that many endpoints may still be compromised despite having installed the latest security patch.

Researchers from a separate security firm already showed that criminals were using EternalBlue to make vulnerable computers part of a cryptocurrency mining botnet. A Secdo representative said the attacks the company reported occurred around the same time.

Meanwhile, EternalRocks—a separate self-replicating exploit also developed by the NSA and released in last month’s Shadow Brokers release—is also being repackaged in active attacks. Researcher Miroslav Stampar has details here.

Finally, as reported by Wired on Friday, attackers have been using a knock-off of the powerful Mirai Internet-of-things botnet to attack two servers that are currently preventing WCry and a WCry copycat variant from spreading. Before executing on a vulnerable computer, the worms are programmed to reach out to hardcoded domain names. If the domains respond, the worm aborts without infecting or spreading. Researchers suspect developers intended the mechanism to function as a killswitch they could use to stop the worm, should attackers lose control of it. Should the distributed denial-of-service attacks knock the servers out of commission, there is the possibility the self-replicating infections could start again.

MalwareTech, the pseudonymous researcher who registered the domain that stopped last Friday’s WCry worm, said he’s not concerned about the attacks. He explained to Ars: “at this point, very few samples are actually spreading, so even if the sinkhole were to go offline, the damage would be limited.”

Just to be on the safe side, he has sought the help of an unnamed DDoS mitigation service.

Hackers can get rich using your computer — and you’d never know it

It’s getting hard to read the news without hearing about another cyber attack making its way around the global internet.

A growing trend among cybercriminals is the kind of malware attack that infiltrates your network and works quietly in the background to perform tasks such as mining a digital currency and sending the profits back to the author of the virus while the host remains unaware.

This type of threat has been highlighted by the Adylkuzz attack which exploits the same Microsoft vulnerability as the WannaCry attack. However, where WannaCry seized files and ransomed them, Adylkuzz installs a cryptocurrency miner on compromised machines.

“These are not particularly unusual, we see a lot of malware that does cryptocurrency mining,” Nick Savvides, a security specialist at Symantec told News.com.au. “There’s a very big business in it.”

Such malware can often go undetected but will likely degrade a computer’s performance and speed.

“If criminals get it right it doesn’t chew up too many resources, just enough that it can deliver something,” and the infection can go undetected for long periods of time.

Given the rising value of many cryptocurrencies in recent months, “it’s possible to make quite a bit of money out of it without it being noticed,” Savvides said.

After security firm Proofpoint published a blog this week describing how the attack turns infected users into unwitting financial supporters of cyber criminals, some reports claimed the Adylkuzz malware could end up being a bigger attack than WannaCry which infected as many as 200,000 Windows systems in more the 150 countries. But Savvides disagrees.

“I just don’t see it. The reason I don’t see it is that this has been active for some time now, the rates of infection have been pretty low, and there hasn’t been an associated e-mail campaign to infect hosts,” he said.

Proofpoint said it has detected a number of infected machines that have transferred several thousand dollars worth of the cryptocurrency Monero to the creators of the virus dating back to as early as April 24.

Interestingly, once the malware exploits the Microsoft vulnerability, it shuts it down, thus denying anyone else the chance to do the same. “One bad guy making sure no one else can steal his host.”

These types of attacks share certain characteristics with the commonly used distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks which also take control of unwitting hosts to direct their computer’s traffic at a particular network.

“In fact as a cybercriminal, you could dual purpose that botnet. You could go and infect thousands of hosts and utilize them to not just mine bitcoins for you but to also launch a denial of service attack for you,” Savvides said.

These kind of attacks “aren’t going away.”

So if your computer is running a little slower than usual, how can you check if it might possibly be compromised?

According to Savvides the only thing the average person can do to ensure they’re not the unwitting victim of such malware is to run a security tool like Norton Power Eraser which is a free virus and malware removal tool that people can run to clean their device.

“I think that’s really the only way for a layman to determine this,” he said.

New York Post

Coda Developer Panic Says Source Code for Several Apps Stolen via Handbrake Malware Attack

In a blog post on Wednesday, Panic Inc. developer and co-founder Steven Frank disclosed that he downloaded a malware infected version of HandBrake earlier this month, which led to the theft of the source code for several of the company’s popular apps.

In early May, a mirror download server hosting the popular video coding app Handbrake was hacked, and an infected version of the Handbrake app took the place of the genuine article. The hacked version infected user’s machines with OSX.PROTON, which gave hackers root-access privileges to a Mac.

Hacker’s were able to access Frank’s Mac via the infected app, and collected his login credentials, including his git credentials. Frank assures Panic customers that the hacker’s did not access customer data or sync data.

In a case of extraordinarily bad luck, even for a guy that has a lot of bad computer luck, I happened to download HandBrake in that three day window, and my work Mac got pwned.

Long story short, somebody, somewhere, now has quite a bit of source code to several of our apps.

Before I continue, three important points:

  • There’s no indication any customer information was obtained by the attacker.
  • Furthermore, there’s no indication Panic Sync data was accessed.
  • Finally, our web server was not compromised.

(As a reminder, we never store credit card numbers since we process them with Stripe, and all Panic Sync data is encrypted in such a way that even we can’t see it. Read more.)

Panic offers several popular apps, including web editor Coda, FTP app Transmit, SSH client Prompt, and more. The attackers have demanded a large ransom, to be paid via Bitcoin. Panic does not intend to pay the ransom.

Panics warns customers to only download Panic’s apps from the Panic website or the Mac App Store, as the stolen source code could potentially be used to create malware-laden versions of the software packages.

Panic has been in contact with both Apple and the FBI, and Apple’s team is on the lookout for any stolen or malware-infested versions of the Panic apps. The FBI is investigating the matter.

Frank asks that customers notify the company if they see any unofficial Panic apps available in the wild. Such apps are likely to be infected with malware in an attempt to spread their evil payload.

We’ll be working overtime for the foreseeable future to keep an eye on this situation.

But we could also use your help.

If you see any cracked or otherwise unofficial versions of our apps in the wild, it’s safest to assume they are infected, and we ask that you please let us know. If you see our source show up somewhere, also let us know. And if you have information that could help with the investigation into this incident, definitely let us know.

MacTrast

How to tell if you’ve been hacked by Russia, China, or North Korea

WannaCry had North Korea’s fingerprints all over it. The massive ransomware attack that hit over 150 countries last week reportedly contained code linked to other cyber crimes allegedly perpetrated by the Hermit Kingdom. But while it might take weeks or months for researchers to identify the culprit through forensic analyses, another set of clues already points to North Korea: motive.

There are rarely smoking guns when it comes to major cyber attacks, but clear patterns and evidence have emerged that indicate which foreign governments are responsible for the biggest ones. Would Russia or China have tried to take down hospitals in the U.K. for a measly $300? Probably not. China veers more towards stealing military and trade secrets, while Russia prefers operations that destabilize foreign governments. But North Korea will definitely hack for cash.

Here’s a quick guide to distinguishing cyber threats from North Korea, China, or Russia:

1. North Korea

Why are they attacking? What are their goals?

North Korea is a relative newcomer to the field of cyber warfare, yet it has quickly established itself as a formidable foe. The isolated country has long employed a strategy of asymmetrical warfare, so cyber attacks fit neatly into its preference for cheap, unpredictable operations that hold minimal risks of retaliation. Hit hard by sanctions, cash-strapped North Korea has recently shifted its cyber capabilities to generate income through theft and ransom — a strategy it might have just blown up to a global scale.

Who do they target?

Before the WannaCry attack, North Korea’s primary targets were South Korean banks and media companies as well as American corporations and international institutions. An attempted cyber attack on a Polish bank last year, for instance, inadvertently revealed that North Korea was also targeting the World Bank, the European Central Bank, and Bank of America. An indiscriminate attack like WannaCry might be a first, but it would hardly be surprising given their past behavior.

What do they take? How do they use it?

Even before it was implicated in the WannaCry attack, North Korea had taken to ransom. Last year, the country stole the personal data of more than 10 million customers from Interpark, a South Korean online retailer. Interpark was alerted to the breach after it received an anonymous message that demanded $2.7 million in bitcoin or else the attack would be publicized. Interpark refused to pay the ransom and alerted South Korean authorities. Interestingly, despite causing so much havoc, the WannaCry operation has seen relatively meager returns: Only about $70,000 in bitcoin has been netted to date.

North Korea’s most profitable operation, however, wasn’t ransomware at all, but a heist. Last year, it attempted to steal nearly $1 billion from a bank in Bangladesh, and successfully made off with $81 million.

All of the country’s attacks aren’t for money, though. Before WannaCry, its highest profile attack was on Sony Pictures Entertainment, when it infiltrated the company’s network in an attempt to stop the release of a comedy about the imagined assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Hackers released a trove of embarrassing emails that were widely reported on. But what received less attention was the damage done to Sony’s systems. A highly destructive form of malware was introduced and over 70 percent of its computers were left inoperable.

How did they get in?

North Korea’s sophisticated cyber capabilities are surprising considering its extreme isolation and poor infrastructure. Given the country’s limited connectivity to the outside world, its massive army of hackers, estimated to be 1,700 strong, are allowed to live and work abroad, mostly in China, Southeast Asia, and Europe. The ability to live outside of North Korea is actually a major perk for hackers given how few opportunities there are to leave the barren country. As an added bonus, many North Korean hackers are allowed to run illegal gambling websites to earn additional income.

What’s next?

With the United States and other nations ratcheting up sanctions in response to North Korea’s growing nuclear program, it is likely that North Korean hackers will continue to generate cash from hacking. Whether it returns to targeted operations or tries another indiscriminate attack like WannaCry, though, remains to be seen.

2. China

Why are they attacking? What are their goals?

Chinese cyber attacks are closely aligned with China’s broader national goals of rapidly developing its economic and military might. To that end, Chinese cyber attacks have been aimed at gathering intelligence and stealing military and trade secrets, effectively saving China billions of dollars in research and development costs and helping it quickly catch up to the U.S. in certain key areas.

Who do they target?

China’s targets stretch across American businesses, industries, and government agencies. It is widely believed that China has been responsible for many high-profile cyber attacks against the U.S. in recent years, including: stealing plans for the F-35 fighter jet; infiltrating the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s and the State Department’s networks; making off with the personal records of over 20 million Americans from the Office of Personnel Management; and breaking into the 2008 McCain and Obama presidential campaigns.

What did they take? How did they use it?

China employs a “grain of sands” approach to hacking, meaning they steal massive amounts of information — often low-level — and sift through it to find valuable nuggets.

When Coca-Cola was in the midst of negotiating the purchase of a Chinese company, for instance, Chinese hackers were poring over Coca-Cola’s systems, hoping to learn more about their negotiation strategy. In a more far-reaching and pernicious attack, Chinese hackers broke into RSA, a computer security company that supplies the SecurID tokens many employees at U.S. banks, intelligence agencies, and military contractors use to securely access computer systems. Two months later, Chinese hackers successfully penetrated Lockheed Martin’s systems partly using data stolen in the heist.

Other cyber attacks have focused on companies that manage critical infrastructure like electrical power grids and gas and water lines. One successful effort targeted a company with detailed blueprints and remote access to over 60 percent of oil and gas pipelines in North America.

How did they do it?

China loves to phish. Most cyber attacks begin with an innocent-seeming email often with an attachment. Once the attachment is opened, hackers are able to gain entry into computer networks and hunt for information. Such attacks are called spear phishing and were used to gain access to Coca-Cola, RSA, and even the State Department. Once inside, hackers can carefully prowl a network, stealing information or unleashing damaging malware.

What’s next?

After decades of widespread and brazen cyber attacks, Chinese intrusions have dramatically fallen. Since the Obama administration signed an agreement with the Chinese government to curb economic espionage in 2015, Chinese cyber attacks have decreased more than 90 percent. Chinese hackers have since turned their attention inwards to help President Xi Jinping root out corruption, and have significantly ramped up attacks on Russian industries.

3. Russia

Why are they attacking? What are their goals?

Russia possesses highly advanced cyber capabilities and is a “near peer” to the United States, according to Gen. Keith Alexander, the former head of the NSA and the military’s Cyber Command. America’s Cold War adversary has moved beyond espionage and regularly uses influence operations and electronic warfare to disrupt and destabilize countries hostile to Russian interests.

Who did they target?

Like China, Russia targets an array of Western businesses, defense contractors, government agencies, and most notably political campaigns. However, unlike China, Russia has used stolen information far more publicly.

What did they take? How did they use it?

The first major Russian cyber attack on the U.S. was uncovered in 1996. After a two-year investigation, it was discovered that hackers had broken into NASA, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Department of Energy, stealing whole weapon designs. Since then, Russia has changed tactics to influence operations and full-out cyber warfare.

Following a 2007 dispute between the Kremlin and Estonia, a former Soviet satellite state, over the relocation of a monument, Russian hackers shut down nearly all of the Estonian government’s websites, many of the country’s major news outlets, and its biggest banks. The attacks lasted nearly three weeks.

Cyber attacks were also unleashed during Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008 as well as its invasion of Crimea in 2011. In 2015, Ukraine blamed Russia for a cyber attack that left over 200,000 Ukrainians without power.

Off the battlefield, Russia has focused on influence operations aimed at undermining opponents of Russia, destabilizing governments, and discrediting democratic processes. The most notable instances, of course, were during the U.S. presidential election last year, when Russia allegedly stole and published emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and hacked into the Democratic National Committee servers in an effort to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Meanwhile, in Europe this year, hackers successfully stole emails from the campaign of now-French President Emmanuel Macron and infiltrated Germany Parliament’s computer networks.

How did they do it?

Like China, Russia relies on spear-phishing attacks to gain access to networks. Their willingness, however, to cause physical damage is unique and highly advanced.

In its attack on Ukraine’s power grid, Russia showed the world its sophisticated capabilities. In a carefully planned attack that took months to execute, Russian hackers slowly wormed their way into Ukrainian power companies’ networks, then carefully studied the infrastructure and planted malware at power substations before launching a synchronized assault.

What’s next?

Unless it is severely punished, Russia will continue to use cyber attacks to hack elections, spread false information, and sow chaos.

The Week

Zomato Hacked, Records Of 17 Million Users Stolen, Company Assures Card Details Safe

In a major cyber attack on food ordering app Zomato,  1.7 crore user records were stolen from the company’s database. The stolen database includes user email addresses and hashed passwords.

 What Zomato says

The company in its blog post on Thursday gave the following assurances:

  • The stolen information can’t be misused since the company has reset the passwords for all affected user
  • The stolen password cannot be converted/decrypted back to plain text
  • It also assured that no payment information or credit card data has been stolen/leaked.
  • It has recommended users to change passwords in case they’re using the same for other accounts as well.

Here is what Zomato wrote:

The hashed password cannot be converted/decrypted back to plain text – so the sanctity of your password is intact in case you use the same password for other services. But if you are paranoid about security like us, we encourage you to change your password for any other services where you are using the same password.

Important note – payment related information on Zomato is stored separately from this (stolen) data in a highly secure PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) compliant vault. No payment information or credit card data has been stolen/leaked.

As a precaution, we have reset the passwords for all affected users and logged them out of the app and website. Our team is actively scanning all possible breach vectors and closing any gaps in our environment. So far, it looks like an internal (human) security breach – some employee’s development account got compromised.

How can this stolen information be misused?

Since we have reset the passwords for all affected users and logged them out of the app and website, your zomato account is secure. Your credit card information on Zomato is fully secure, so there’s nothing to worry about there.

This is not the first instance where Zomato had to face a cyber attack as in 2015, ethical hacker Anand Prakash hacked 6.2 crore accounts of Zomato in order to expose the company’s flaw. Prakash later informed Zomato after which its technical team fixed the bug in an hour’s time, reports vcc circle.

ScoopWhoop

WannaCry Ransomware Decryption Tool Released; Unlock Files Without Paying Ransom

If your PC has been infected by WannaCry – the ransomware that wreaked havoc across the world last Friday – you might be lucky to get your locked files back without paying the ransom of $300 to the cyber criminals.

Adrien Guinet, a French security researcher from Quarkslab, has discovered a way to retrieve the secret encryption keys used by the WannaCry ransomware for free, which works on Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 operating systems.

WannaCry Ransomware Decryption Keys

The WannaCry’s encryption scheme works by generating a pair of keys on the victim’s computer that rely on prime numbers, a “public” key and a “private” key for encrypting and decrypting the system’s files respectively.

To prevent the victim from accessing the private key and decrypting locked files himself, WannaCry erases the key from the system, leaving no choice for the victims to retrieve the decryption key except paying the ransom to the attacker.

But here’s the kicker: WannaCry “does not erase the prime numbers from memory before freeing the associated memory,” says Guinet.

Based on this finding, Guinet released a WannaCry ransomware decryption tool, named WannaKey, that basically tries to retrieve the two prime numbers, used in the formula to generate encryption keys from memory, and works on Windows XP only.

Note: Below I have also mentioned another tool, dubbed WanaKiwi, that works for Windows XP to Windows 7.

It does so by searching for them in the wcry.exe process. This is the process that generates the RSA private key. The main issue is that the CryptDestroyKey and CryptReleaseContext does not erase the prime numbers from memory before freeing the associated memory.” says Guinet

So, that means, this method will work only if:

  • The affected computer has not been rebooted after being infected.
  • The associated memory has not been allocated and erased by some other process.

In order to work, your computer must not have been rebooted after being infected. Please also note that you need some luck for this to work (see below), and so it might not work in every case!,” Guinet says.

This is not really a mistake from the ransomware authors, as they properly use the Windows Crypto API.

While WannaKey only pulls prime numbers from the memory of the affected computer, the tool can only be used by those who can use those prime numbers to generate the decryption key manually to decrypt their WannaCry-infected PC’s files.

Good news is that another security researcher, Benjamin Delpy, developed an easy-to-use tool called “WanaKiwi,” based on Guinet’s finding, which simplifies the whole process of the WannaCry-infected file decryption.

All victims have to do is download WanaKiwi tool from Github and run it on their affected Windows computer using the command line (cmd).

WanaKiwi works on Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, confirmed Matt Suiche from security firm Comae Technologies, who has also provided some demonstrations showing how to use WanaKiwi to decrypt your files.

Although the tool won’t work for every user due to its dependencies, still it gives some hope to WannaCry’s victims of getting their locked files back for free even from Windows XP, the aging, largely unsupported version of Microsoft’s operating system.

The Hacker News

‘WannaCry’ Ransomware Attack Spreads to 74 Countries

A wave of ransomware infections took down a wide swath of UK hospitals and is rapidly moving across the globe.

The so-called Wanna Decryptor ransomware is currently moving like wildfire across 74 countries in more than 45,000 attacks, including a massive takedown of several UK hospitals today.

The number of infections across the world is quickly growing, according to Kaspersky’s Twitter post. So far, some of the countries that have been hit include Britain, Spain, Russia, Taiwan, India, and the Ukraine, according to various reports streaming across the WannaCry Twitter feed.

Security experts say the ransomware attack is exploiting the Server Message Block (SMB) critical vulnerability that was patched by Microsoft on March 14, MS17-010. The 0day exploit, aka ETERNALBLUE, believed to be an NSA exploit tool, initially was leaked by Shadowbrokers, prompting a patch from Microsoft.

“There is nothing comparable to date. This is a massive global ransomware operation, the largest and most effective to date. Unfortunately, not all organizations patched against ETERNALBLUE/shadowbrokers exploits,” said Kurt Baumgartner, principal security researcher, Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) for Kaspersky Lab.

According to an Avast blog post, Telefonica in Spain and the National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in England have been hit.

In the UK, a large scale attack hit a number of hospitals across the region, forcing medical staff to re-route emergency patients to other hospitals in the area, according to a report in The Guardian.

The malware struck NHS hospitals around lunch time, with an initial email going out to employees that the email servers were encountering difficulty, followed by clinical and patient systems going down, the Guardian reported. That was followed by a ransom note appearing on employees’ computer screens, demanding $300 in Bitcoins to be paid in three days, otherwise the ransom would double. And if no payment was made after seven days, then the files would be forever lost, according to the report.

The NHS issued an alert and confirmed 16 medical centers had been hit, according to Kaspersky Lab.

This ransom message also appeared in Spain, where telecom giant Telefonica was also targeted, the Guardian noted.

“The suspected syndicated attack is unique in that it’s not targeted at any one industry or region, and is using a particularly nasty form of malware that can move through a corporate network from a single entry point,” says Simon Crosby, co-founder and chief technology officer at Bromium.

“As usual, it’s leveraging a recently patched vulnerability that many have failed to implement in a timely matter,” he says. “As long as the industry continues to play this never ending cat and mouse game of patchwork systems, sophisticated attackers will easily find ways to exploit the public in increasingly large scale attacks such as this.”

How WannaCry Makes You Cry

The ETERNALBLUE exploit tool surfaced on the Internet via the Shadowbrokers’ dump on April 14. Although Microsoft had issued the March patch, many organizations have not yet installed it, according to Kaspersky’s blog post on WannaCry.

The security firm said WannaCry initiates through an SMBv2 remote code execution in Microsoft Windows and then encrypts data with a file extension “.WCRY.” It then drops and executes a decryptor tool that was designed to hit users in multiple countries with a ransom note translated to the appropriate language for that country, according to Kaspersky Lab.

Kaspersky’s Baumgartner describes the attack this way: “It is a worm over SMB and the communications are over TOR, directly to hidden services, so I would not call it a peer-to-peer worm.”

Researchers recommend installing Microsoft’s patch, which closes the affected SMB Server vulnerability used in the WannaCry attack.

For organizations that have older equipment or legacy software, such as hospitals, manufacturing plants, and power plants, deploying a patch can be complicated and disruptive, which may in part explain how a wide swath of NHS hospitals fell victim to WannaCry.

Dark Reading

11 things you shouldn’t put on your Facebook

What do you put on your Facebook profile and on your wall? Anything? Everything? Well, according to a hacker, you should be very careful what you put on your Facebook, or you could lose a lot, from money, to even your life.

Some of these things include the sort of details many people use for their passwords – things like their maiden name, first pet, or their favourite album, which seem innocuous when in this other context of a personality list.

Below is a list of some of them:

1. Photographs of your children

While it might seem cute, putting up photographs of your young ones could expose them to pedophiles. Also, what type of information or pictures would your children want to see about themselves online at a later date?

2. Phone number

Your privacy is important, so unless you have a phone number for business purposes, putting up your personal number online could lead to unnecessary phone calls, stalking or even being exposed to scammers.

3. Birthday

Your birthday is one way people can access your bank account and personal details, once they link it with your name and address.

4. Location

There are location services on Android or iPhones, which means that many people know where you live including those that may wish to harm you. Please turn off your location.

5. Too many friends

Having 4,000+ friends on Facebook, when in reality, you only know about 100 is exposing yourself to a lot of unwanted information and interaction. You should definitely prune your friend list.

6. Where your child/young family member goes to school

Do not put the name of your child’s school on Facebook. Frequent offenders are prowling the internet for such information that might put your child at risk.

7. Your boss

We have heard of people losing their jobs because of Facebook posts. While you should be careful of what you post, maybe you should remove your boss, to avoid unnecessary hassle.

8. Relationship status

Your relationships are better kept private. It may not work out, and the consequent change from “in a relationship” to “single” will make you feel worse than you already do.

9. When you are going on holiday

Putting your holiday plans on Facebook is not a good idea. Burglars can choose that time to rob your house.

10. ATM card pictures

This is never a good idea as the number on your card can be used to defraud you.

11. Boarding pass pictures

Taking a photo of your boarding pass, is a way to show off. But it could have serious consequences, the barcode on your boarding pass is unique to you, and can be used to find the information you gave to the flight company.

Naij

7 Steps to Fight Ransomware

Ransomware can be a highly lucrative system for extracting money from a customer. Victims are faced with an unpleasant choice: either pay the ransom or lose access to the encrypted files forever. Until now, ransomware has appeared to be opportunistic and driven through random phishing campaigns. These campaigns often, but not always, rely on large numbers of emails that are harvested without a singular focus on a company or individual.

As ransomware perpetrators continue to hone their skills, we’re seeing a shift to more specific targets. The driver of this shift is the realization that companies, especially larger ones, are much higher-value targets than an average individual and are thus able to pay significantly higher ransoms.

This change has elevated the need for companies to strengthen their defensive strategies. Executives must allocate resources and ensure strategies are active against ransomware intent on paralyzing their organization.

The best defensive strategies should include the following:

1. Provide user awareness training and friendly testing. This can reduce the human attack surface.

2. Maintain a comprehensive patch management program to keep all systems up to date and reduce the endpoint attack surface.

3. Limit users’ privilege and network drive connectivity to the minimum essential for job requirements.

4. Conduct frequent backups and store them offline because many ransomware variants will spread through drive shares and can even reconnect a disconnected drive share.

5. Use network segmentation that requires authentication. For example, a user must enter a password before traversing the network. This will reduce the network attack surface.

6. Deploy advanced threat intelligence tools. Threat intelligence can be used to identify IP addresses of known command and control sites. Blocking these sites can potentially prevent malware from being able to establish its encryption routine. It’s important to note this strategy may not work on some newer versions of ransomware that operate independently and create their own encryption keys without having to communicate with a command and control server.

7. Lastly, as a final fallback, know how to buy Bitcoin (or Monero, which is emerging as an alternative means of payment.) Consider pre-purchasing some in advance in the event a ransom needs to be paid on short notice.

Should you pay the ransom to continue operations, or do you refuse to pay it as a matter of principle? The tie-breaker is the cost of downtime — measured potentially in the range of thousands of dollars per hour. One should establish in advance the financial impact of losing access to critical information or business processes, and work through the decision before facing a crisis.

Ransomware is a clear and present danger. Companies can no longer afford to take a wait-and-see attitude. If you’re vulnerable to ransomware and take no precautions to mitigate those vulnerabilities, then the only thing you’re relying upon to prevent an infection is hope — and hope is not a strategy. By implementing the seven defensive actions listed above you can greatly reduce, and potentially eliminate, vulnerabilities. Review the list again, and remember that increased security awareness training with testing can be your most effective defense.

Dark Reading

IBM Warns Customers After Shipping Them Infected USB Drives

IBM is urging customers to destroy flash drives it shipped to storage system customers because they contain malware.

The company warned in an advisory Tuesday that an unspecified number of USB flash drives shipped with the initialization tool for Storwize systems contain malicious code. IBM instructed customers who received the V3500, V3700 and V5000 Gen 1 systems to destroy the drive to prevent the code from replicating.

“When the initialization tool is launched from the USB flash drive, the tool copies itself to a temporary folder on the hard drive of the desktop or laptop during normal operation,” IBM said in its advisory.

The malicious code is part of the Reconyc Trojan malware family, which typically targets computers in Russia and India, according to data from Kaspersky Lab.

IBM said that while the malware is copied onto the victim’s device, the malicious code is not executed during initialization.

IBM recommends users who have already inserted the drive into their systems run an antivirus system to remove the malware. Users can also remove the directory containing the identified malicious file.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the malware landed on the flash drives. IBM didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The affected Initialization USB flash drive looks like the image below, and contains a folder called InitTool.

IBM infected USB