Programmer finds ridiculous ATM loophole that let him withdraw ₦377 million in cash

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It sounds like something straight out of a movie: an unsatisfied bank programmer discovers the perfect scheme for making an ATM spit out free money.

But apparently, this story is true: The South China Morning Postand China’s Daily Economic News report that 43-year-old Qin Qisheng managed to withdraw over 7 million yuan (upwards of ₦377 million) from ATMs operated by his employer, Huaxia Bank — all by exploiting a crazy loophole.

According to the reports, the bank’s system didn’t properly record withdrawals made around midnight — effectively spitting out cash without removing the total from a user’s account. Normally, that might send up a red flag that a transaction had failed, but Qisheng allegedly inserted scripts into the system that suppressed those alerts.

Qisheng started pulling out money in November 2016, but it wasn’t until January 2018, some 1,358 withdrawals later, that the bank discovered the bad code in its system and brought him to the authorities.

Perhaps the most surprising part of this story: the bank didn’t want to keep pressing charges once he’d returned the money. Maybe fearing the bad publicity (apparently the loophole has already been fixed), Huaxia Bank reportedly asked police to drop the case — reportedly accepting Qisheng’s explanation that he was merely testing the bank’s security and was holding onto the money for the bank to reclaim. As one does.

The courts refused, though, and Qisheng is now looking at 10 and a half years in prison after losing his appeal. They didn’t buy the argument, considering that he’d moved the money to his personal bank account, instead of the bank’s dummy account, and had apparently been investing some in the stock market, too.

The Verge

Hackers weaponise secure USB drives

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A cyber-espionage group is targeting a specific type of secure USB drive created by a South Korean defence company in a bid to gain access to its air-gapped networks.

According to a blog post by researchers at Palo Alto Networks, the attack was carried out by a group called Tick which conducts cyber-espionage activities targeting organisations in Japan and Korea.

Researchers said the weaponisation of a secure USB drive is an uncommon attack technique and likely done in an effort to spread to air-gapped systems – networks that are not connected to the internet.

They added that the malware used in these attacks will only try to infect systems running Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

Researchers said that indicated the malware was intentionally targeting older, out-of-support versions of Microsoft Windows installed on systems with no internet connectivity.

The USB stick installs a program called “SymonLoader” as a trojanised version of a Japanese language GO game.

It then extracts a hidden executable file from a specific type of secure USB drive and executes it on the compromised system.

According to researchers, if SymonLoader finds it is on a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and finds that a newly attached device is a USB drive made by this particular company, then it will extract an unknown executable file from the USB.

Researchers said that while the identity of the file SymonLoader writes to the USB is unknown, they added that they know enough about it to know it is malicious.

“In contrast to HomamLoader, which requires an internet connection to reach its C2 server to download additional payloads, SymonLoader attempts to extract and install an unknown hidden payload from a specific type of secure USB drive when it’s plugged into a compromised system.

“This technique is uncommon and hardly reported among other attacks in the wild,” the researchers said.

Javvad Malik, security advocate at AlienVault, told SC Media UK that this particular attack bears all the signs of a very specific targeted attack designed to infect particular institutes or machines – not too dissimilar to Stuxnet.

“Employees that work in sensitive organisations that have air-gapped networks should be particularly vigilant against plugging in devices. In some cases, even approved USB drives should be tested in a separate environment prior to being loaded in secure areas,” he said.

“Prevention aside, critical systems should have threat detection controls that can alert where an infected drive has been plugged into an endpoint and take remedial steps beyond raising an alarm, such as isolating an infected machine from the rest of the network.”

Scott Walker, senior solutions engineer at Bomgar, told SC Media UK that with certain state-sponsored hacking groups’ focus on the military, financial and energy sectors, it is paramount that these organisations deploy solutions that help prevent these attacks.

“Integrating regular and up to date security training to educate employees will ensure they are aware of the most recent tactics used to target systems and what can be done to prevent these.

“In addition, implementing solutions to ensure that employees only have access to areas of the network and devices that their role requires can mitigate these types of attacks. This sounds simple, but in reality, it is an area often overlooked,” he said.

itnews

Stair-scaling robot dog to be sold in 2019

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The yellow robot dogs that so unsettled people in February by opening a door for one another can now easily walk up and down stairs on their own.

Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert — who founded the robot company known for building machines that mimic real animal and human movements — said Friday at the TechCrunch Robotics Sessions conference at UC Berkeley that the robots, called SpotMini, will be ready for purchase in 2019.

While declining to offer a price on the 66-pound, relatively quiet, and uniquely agile robot dogs, Raibert did say that they’re designed to be deployed in commercial office building-like settings — and then eventually homes.

Raibert presented the above video at the conference, which showed the dogs navigating the Boston Dynamics lab on their own. But, although the robot is traversing autonomously, this shouldn’t be confused with “AI,” the hot, and often misapplied buzzword in today’s tech realm.

To be clear, these robots have been given sophisticated motion detection software that maps out the boundaries of where they can go and where they absolutely shouldn’t go. That’s why the robots so confidently scaled the stairs, while staying clear of the edges. They “see” a navigational map in real time, which appears in the video at the bottom left of the screen.

“It knows it can’t bump into the railings,” said Raibert.

Today, the term “AI” is most accurately used to describe software — like image recognition — that is fed a wealth of information, which it can then use to make well-informed predictions on its own. This often involves being wrong, and self-correcting.

For example, in 2017 Google’s DeepMind researchers built an AI program that, over the course of a month, taught itself to become the world’s most dominant Go (an ancient Chinese board game) player, without any previous knowledge of how to win.

Some of today’s leading AI researchers, however, will make the argument that this isn’t true intelligence, but rather impressively complex machines performing sophisticated number-crunching.

Atop the robot in the video is also a small, white rectangular box, which shows how any (capable) third-party users can make their own hardware devices — like an enhanced radio receiver or specialized camera — and attach it to the robot for their specific surveillance needs.

The constant movement of four legs, however, drains the robots’ batteries pretty quickly. They’re capable of moving around for 90 minutes before needing to recharge.

Mashable

Five Apps for Keeping Windows 10 Clean

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Nobody likes an operating system that’s full of unnecessary stray files, 20 annoying apps that start up when you fire up your computer, and other crap that slows down your system, makes your desktop feel disorganised, or gives you a headache whenever you’re trying to work (or game). Thankfully, there are a number of free apps that can help you clean your Windows PC.

Disk Cleanup

Disk CleanupOne of the first apps you can try using to get control of a messy Windows PC is Windows’ very own Desk Cleanup app—built right into the operating system and free for you to use at any time. On Windows 10, just pull up the Start Menu and start typing in “Disk,” which should make it easy to load the utility. Pick a drive you want Disk Cleanup to take a look at, likely your system’s primary c:\ drive, and click OK.

Once it’s done scanning, Disk Cleanup will tell you about all the different kinds of files that you can safely remove from your system, including the cache for your Edge browser, anything in your Recycle Bin, temporary files left over from apps or app installations, and file thumbnails you might not need anymore—to name a few. You can also click on the “Clean up system files” option to have the app check for log files Windows created during an OS installation, as well as any previous Windows installations that might be lurking around your hard drive (and taking up gigabytes of space).

Once you’ve made your selections for deletion, click “OK,” and then “Delete Files,” to begin the process.

(You can also use a utility like BleachBit to give your drive a more thorough scrubbing. Just don’t use it to muck with your Windows registry; registry cleaners tend to have little noticeable effect, except for when they completely muck up your system by deleting something they shouldn’t have.)

The PC Decrapifier

The PC Decrapifier

Though this app is more useful for desktop or laptop PCs you just purchased, it’s a great tool for eliminating the more obvious bloatware on your system that, perhaps, you simply forgot about (or never had time to clean).

You don’t have to go through any installation routine once you’ve downloaded the app. Just launch it and let it analyze your system. It’ll split any apps it finds into three categories—apps definitely recommended for deletion, questionable apps that people usually remove from their systems, and all other apps. Each app listing tells you whether its a regular application you load yourself or one what starts when your computer launches, a percent that indicates how many other PC Decrapifier users also removed that app, and occasionally a little question mark icon that takes you to the web to learn more about a particular app.

All you have to do is select what you want to remove, confirm it on the next screen (which also allows you to create a Windows restore point if you’re feeling nervous), and let the app flush your unwanted apps down the digital drain.

AdwCleaner

AdwCleaner

Toolbars, spyware, and other kinds of malware can make your PC a mess. Even if you’re a semi-savvy computer user, however, you’re probably pretty good about avoiding the common traps: apps that solicit you to add crappy third-party items to their regular installation process or websites that cajole you to try out a scammy-sounding app—things like that.

That said, it never hurts to run a quick scan every now and then to make sure there’s nothing on your computer that shouldn’t be there. You probably don’t need to pay for a real-time malware scanning app when you have something like AdwCleaner, a lightweight app that requires no installation to effectively (and efficiently) scan your system for crap.

The company that makes the ever-popular Malwarebytes anti-malware app owns AdwCleaner. While you can always switch up to the former for extra protection, given its reputation, the app feels a little more bloaty and definitely loves to let you know about its Premium services.

Steam Cleaner

Steam Cleaner

This one’s for you, gamers. You might not even know that the major online distribution services—Steam, Origin, Uplay, and GoG—might leave some crap on your hard drive even after you’ve uninstalled a game you’re done playing. Even though this app is called “Steam Cleaner,” it does a great job of scanning through each service’s default installation folders and identifying leftover files from past games that you can safely remove. With some simple scanning, you could save gigabytes of space.

(For regular apps, consider using a program like Revo Uninstaller to ensure that all traces of a program are deleted whenever you want to remove it from your system.)

MiniBin

MiniBinHaving to navigate to your Windows desktop to fiddle with your Recycle Bin is annoying. While it’s easy to delete (or shift-delete) files from File Explorer, it’s always nice to have a trash can at the ready. This tiny utility drops a Recycle Bin directly in your system tray, which makes it much easier to drag-and-drop files to oblivion, empty the trash, and restore that which you accidentally deleted.

lifehacker

Judge says Samsung ‘rigged the deck, fixed the game’ with Galaxy S4

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Samsung Galaxy S4Samsung has been slammed by a federal judge for allegedly misleading consumers who purchased the Samsung Galaxy S4, by fraudulently misrepresenting the amount of power available in the device.

The statement came about as a result of a long-running legal dispute between the Korean tech giant and a class action lawsuit, headed by plaintiff Daniel Norcia. Back in 2011, Norcia filed a suit against Samsung, alleging that the capabilities of the Galaxy S4 flagship phone had been grossly misrepresented, and Samsung had used this to mislead customers into thinking the phone was more powerful than competitors’ phones. Parts of the lawsuit surrounding the available storage have since been dropped, but the courts have upheld Norcia’s complaint on the processing power of the phone.

According to the accusation, Samsung coded the Galaxy S4’s software to detect when specific benchmarking software was being used, and have it commit extra resources to its operation — effectively cheating the test and providing results that could not be replicated outside of the benchmarking app by a casual user. Since these benchmarks are commonly used in third-party reviews of the device, that alleged cheating led to a false impression of superior speed being made public.

“Samsung also knew that if it artificially boosted the performance of its devices when running benchmarking apps, reviewers and the public would falsely believe that the Galaxy S4 was similarly fast in real-world situations. In reality, the processors in the Galaxy S4 run at a lower speed and the artificial performance boost disappears when the devices are performing real-world tasks instead of running benchmarking apps” states Norcia’s complaint.

Samsung had previously attempted to move the case to arbitration court by arguing the Galaxy S4’s warranty specifically forbad class actions lawsuits being brought. Unfortunately for Samsung, an appeals court dismissed this claim on the basis that warranties do not impose anything on the buyer, especially when introduced after the sale.

Speaking in a previous hearing on the case, U.S. District Judge James Donato said: “Samsung rigged the deck, fixed the game; and as a result of that, consumers were misled about the speed of the phone.”

The case is due to be heard in front of a U.S. magistrate judge next week.

Digital Trends

Cisco Switches in Iran, Russia Hacked in Apparent Pro-US Attack

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Hacked Cisco Switch

A significant number of Cisco switches located in Iran and Russia have been hijacked in what appears to be a hacktivist campaign conducted in protest of election-related hacking. However, it’s uncertain if the attacks involve a recently disclosed vulnerability or simply abuse a method that has been known for more than a year.

Cisco devices belonging to organizations in Russia and Iran have been hijacked via their Smart Install feature. The compromised switches had their IOS image rewritten and their configuration changed to display a U.S. flag using ASCII art and the message “Don’t mess with our elections…”

The hackers, calling themselves “JHT,” told Motherboard that they wanted to send a message to government-backed hackers targeting “the United States and other countries.” They claim to have only caused damage to devices in Iran and Russia, while allegedly patching most devices found in countries such as the U.S. and U.K.

Iran’s Communication and Information Technology Ministry stated that the attack had impacted roughly 3,500 switches in the country, but said a vast majority were quickly restored.

Kaspersky Lab reported that the attack appeared to mostly target the “Russian-speaking segment of the Internet.”

While there are some reports that the attack involves a recently patched remote code execution vulnerability in Cisco’s IOS operating system (CVE-2018-0171), that might not necessarily be the case.

The Cisco Smart Install Client is a legacy utility that allows no-touch installation of new Cisco switches. Roughly one year ago, the company warned customers about misuse of the Smart Install protocol following a spike in Internet scans attempting to detect unprotected devices that had this feature enabled.

Attacks, including ones launched by nation-state threat actors such as the Russia-linked Dragonfly, abused the fact that many organizations had failed to securely configure their switches, rather than an actual vulnerability.

Cisco issued a new warning last week as the disclosure of CVE-2018-0171 increases the risk of attacks, but the networking giant said it had not actually seen any attempts to exploit this vulnerability in the wild. Cisco’s advisory for this flaw still says there is no evidence of malicious exploitation.

There are hundreds of thousands of Cisco switches that can be hijacked by abusing the Smart Install protocol, and Cisco Talos experts believe attackers are unlikely to bother using CVE-2018-0171.

The Network Security Research Lab at Chinese security firm Qihoo 360 says the data from its honeypot shows that the attacks have “nothing to do with CVE-2018-0171” and instead rely on a publicly available Smart Install exploitation tool released several months ago.

While none of the major players in the infosec industry have confirmed that the attacks on Iran and Russia rely on CVE-2018-0171, technical details and proof-of-concept (PoC) code have been made available by researchers, making it easier for hackers to exploit.

Hamed Khoramyar, founder of Sweden-based ICT firm Aivivid, said the attacks exploited CVE-2018-0171. Kudelski Security also reported seeing attacks involving both CVE-2018-0171 and another recently disclosed IOS vulnerability tracked as CVE-2018-0156. However, Kudelski’s blog post also lists Khoramyar as one of its sources.

Security Week

Previews of the New Alexa Backseat Driver by Ellen

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Toyota announced they’re adding Amazon Alexa as a feature in some of their cars, but will it be as convenient and helpful as it’s supposed to be?
Ellen Tube

China busts iPhone smugglers who used drones to get them into Shenzhen

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China customs officials have taken down smugglers who used drones to carry iPhones from Hong Kong into Shenzhen. They managed to transport 500 million yuan (about ₦28,728,000,000) worth of refurbished iPhones before the operation was busted, according to Reuters.

Under the cover of dark, the group of 26 used the unspecified drones to “fly two 200-meter (660-feet) cables between Hong Kong and the mainland.” From there, they loaded around 10 iPhones into small bags and sent each across the cable system. The smugglers could move up to 15,000 iPhones each night, so they managed to get things running pretty efficiently.

The local, state-owned Legal Daily reported this to be “the first case found in China that drones were being used in cross-border smuggling crimes.” As a result, Shenzhen customs plans to keep a close eye on this high-tech smuggling — perhaps using its own drones to help combat illegal cross-border activity.

Last year, China implemented a policy requiring owners of civilian drones over a given weight to register their flying gadgets using their real names. As is the case in the US and elsewhere, China has experienced its share of drone incidents, leading to delayed or disrupted flights. In the United States, drone owners must register any device over 0.55 pounds.

The Verge

macOS High Sierra Bug Lets Anyone Gain Root Access Without a Password

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If you own a Mac computer and run the latest version of Apple’s operating system, macOS High Sierra, then you need to be extra careful with your computer.

A serious, yet stupid vulnerability has been discovered in macOS High Sierra that allows untrusted users to quickly gain unfettered administrative (or root) control on your Mac without any password or security check, potentially leaving your data at risk.

Discovered by developer Lemi Orhan Ergin on Tuesday, the vulnerability only requires anyone with physical access to the target macOS machine to enter “root” into the username field, leave the password blank, and hit the Enter a few times—and Voila!

In simple words, the flaw allows an unauthorized user that gets physical access on a target computer to immediately gain the highest level of access to the computer, known as “root,” without actually typing any password.

Needless to say, this blindingly easy Mac exploit really scary stuff.

This vulnerability is similar to one Apple patched last month, which affected encrypted volumes using APFS wherein the password hint section was showing the actual password of the user in the plain text.

Here’s How to Login as Root User Without a Password

If you own a Mac and want to try this exploit, follow these steps from admin or guest account:

  • Open System Preferences on the machine.
  • Select Users & Groups.
  • Click the lock icon to make changes.
  • Enter “root” in the username field of a login window.
  • Move the cursor into the Password field and hit enter button there few times, leaving it blank.

With that (after a few tries in some cases) macOS High Sierra logs the unauthorized user in with root privileges, allowing the user to access your Mac as a “superuser” with permission to read and write to system files, including those in other macOS accounts as well.

This flaw can be exploited in several ways, depending on the setup of the targeted Mac. With full-disk encryption disabled, a rogue user can turn on a Mac that’s entirely powered down and log in as root by doing the same trick.

At Mac’s login screen, an untrusted user can also use the root trick to gain access to a Mac that has FileVault turned on to make unauthorized changes to the Mac System Preferences, like disabling FileVault.

All the untrusted user needs to do is click “Other” at the login screen, and then enter “root” again with no password.

However, it is impossible to exploit this vulnerability when a Mac machine is turned on, and the screen is protected with a password.

Ergin publicly contacted Apple Support to ask about the issue he discovered. Apple is reportedly working on a fix.

“We are working on a software update to address this issue. In the meantime, setting a root password prevents unauthorized access to your Mac. To enable the Root User and set a password, please follow the instructions here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204012. If a Root User is already enabled, to ensure a blank password is not set, please follow the instructions from the ‘Change the root password’ section.”

Here’s How to Temporarily Fix the macOS High Sierra Bug

Fortunately, the developer suggested a temporary fix for this issue which is as easy as its exploit.

To fix the vulnerability, you need to enable the root user with a password. Heres how to do that:

  • Open System Preferences and Select Users & Groups
  • Click on the lock icon and Enter your administrator name and password there
  • Click on “Login Options” and select “Join” at the bottom of the screen
  • Select “Open Directory Utility”
  • Click on the lock icon to make changes and type your username and password there
  • Click “Edit” at the top of the menu bar
  • Select “Enable Root User” and set a password for the root user account

This password will prevent the account from being accessed with a blank password.

Just to be on the safer side, you can also disable Guest accounts on your Mac. for this, head on to System Preferences → Users & Groups, select Guest User after entering your admin password, and disable “Allow guests to log in to this computer.”

 

Built-in Keylogger Found in MantisTek GK2 Keyboards—Sends Data to China

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“The right keyboard can make all the difference between a victory and a defeat in a video game battlefield.”

If you are a gamer, you can relate to the above quote.

But what if your winning weapon betrays you?

The popular 104-key Mantistek GK2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard that costs around €49.66 has allegedly been caught silently recording everything you type on your keyboard and sending them to a server maintained by the Alibaba Group.

This built-in keylogger in Mantistek GK2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard was noticed by a few owners who headed on to an online forum to share this issue.

According to Tom’s Hardware, MantisTek keyboards utilise ‘Cloud Driver’ software, maybe for collecting analytic information, but has been caught sending sensitive information to servers tied to Alibaba.

After analysing more closely, Tom’s Hardware team found that Mantistek keyboard does not include a full-fledged keylogger. Instead, it captures how many times a key has been pressed and sending this data back to online servers.

The affected users also provided a screenshot showing how all your plain-text keystrokes collected by the keyboard are being uploaded to a Chinese server located at IP address: 47.90.52.88.

However, even if there’s no malicious intent, capturing and uploading keystroke counts without users’ consent violates trust and puts systems’ security at risk by leaking sensitive information.

Mantistek-GK2-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard-Keylogger

Since Alibaba Group also sells cloud services like Google and Amazon, this collected information is not necessarily being sent to the Alibaba itself, but someone who is using its cloud service.

Opening the IP address in question directly into a web browser and on a Chinese login page, which translates to “Cloud mouse platform background management system” and is maintained by Shenzhen Cytec Technology Co., Ltd.

Reportedly, the MantisTek keyboard’s software sends the collected data to two destinations at that IP address:

  • /cms/json/putkeyusedata.php
  • /cms/json/putuserevent.php

The best way to prevent your keyboard from sending your keystrokes to the Alibaba server is to stop using your Mantistek GK2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard until you hear back from the company about this issue.

If you cannot prevent yourself from using the keyboard, but want to stop it from sending your key presses to the Alibaba server, just make sure the MantisTek Cloud Driver software is not running in the background, and block the CMS.exe executable in your firewall.

To block the CMS.exe executable, add a new firewall rule for the MantisTek Cloud Driver in the “Windows Defender Firewall With Advanced Security.”

The Hacker News