<![CDATA[[SecurityRatty] tag: factors]]> http://securityratty.com/tag/factors Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:24:17 +0000 iRatty Engine http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Premature Update on Philadelphia Wi-Fi]]> http://securityratty.com/article/95922e41bb691a60a525baab81a41942 http://securityratty.com/article/95922e41bb691a60a525baab81a41942 I'm not sure why this article was written, as there appears to be nothing particularly newsworthy in it: The News.com reporter Marguerite Reardon has covered muni-Fi for as long as I have, and after reading this in-depth piece, I'm left wondering whether it was assigned far too early, and she was meeting an editorial desk requirement instead of feeling like the story was ready to "print." The article looks at Network Acquisition Corp. (NAC), the allegedly interim name for the group that's taken over Phila-Fi.

One source at the Knight Center for Digital Excellence notes, "The new network owners are supposed to have a much more sustainable business model." Supposed to. Later, "Network Acquisition Company, which acquired the network, hasn't talked publicly about the details of its new plan, but it has hinted that its strategy will differ from EarthLink's." Hasn't talked publicly. Then, "[NAC and Tropos] spokespeople said the companies would talk more about the network later this month when details of the new business plan are ready." Huh.

Reardon explains digital divide issues and looks into what Wireless Philadelphia has been up to, although doesn't note that delays in EarthLink's deployment and other factors have led to just a few hundred individuals that have been assisted by the non-profit; numbers may have changed, but that was as of a few months ago. Still, Wireless Philadelphia has apparently diversified its funding sources--Reardon cites 30 now.

I think we're still coming off the doldrums of August.

]]> Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:23:51 +0000 network network acquisition company network acquisition corp network owners wireless philadelphia sustainable business model editorial desk requirement plan digital excellence notes Premature Update on Philadelphia Wi-Fi <![CDATA[Copycat Web Malware Exploitation Kits are Faddish]]> http://securityratty.com/article/ba56aabae03bad418cbbf5ae497d3769 http://securityratty.com/article/ba56aabae03bad418cbbf5ae497d3769
For the cheap cybercriminals not wanting to invest a couple of thousand dollars into purchasing a cutting edge web malware exploitation kit -- a pirated copy of which they would ironically obtained several moths later -- with all the related and royalty free updates coming with it, there are always the copycat malware kits like this one offered for $100.

Taking into consideration the proprietary nature of some of the kits, the business model of malware kits was mostly relying on their exclusive nature next to the number, and diversity of the exploits included in order to improve the infection rate. This simplistic assumption on behalf of the coders totally ignored the possibility of their kits leaking to the general public, or copies of the kits ending up as a bargain in particular underground deal where the once highly exclusive kit was offered as a bonus.

"Me too" web malware kits were a faddish way to enjoy the popularity of web malware kits like MPack and Icepack and try to cash in on that popularity by coming up average kits lacking any significant differentiation factors in the process. But just like the original and proprietary kits, whose authors didn't envision the long term growth strategy of integrating different services into their propositions or the kits themselves, the authors of copycat malware kits didn't bother considering the lack of long-term growth strategy for their releases. Branding in respect to releasing a Firepack malware kit to compete with Icepack which was originally released to compete with Mpack, has failed to achieve the desired results as well.

And with malware kits now a commodity, and underground vendors excelling in a particular practice with the long term objective to vertically integrate in their area of expertise -- think spammers offering localization of messages into different languages and segmented email databases from a specific country -- would we witness the emergence of managed cybercrime services charging a premium for providing fresh dumps of credit card numbers, PayPal, Ebay accounts or whatever the buyer is requesting?

That may well be the case in the long term.

Related posts:
Web Based Botnet Command and Control Kit 2.0
DIY Botnet Kit Promising Eternal Updates
Pinch Vulnerable to Remotely Exploitable Flaw
The Zeus Crimeware Kit Vulnerable to Remotely Exploitable Flaw
The Small Pack Web Malware Exploitation Kit
Crimeware in the Middle - Zeus
The Nuclear Grabber Kit
The Apophis Kit
The FirePack Exploitation Kit Localized to Chinese
MPack and IcePack Localized to Chinese
The Icepack Exploitation Kit Localized to French
The FirePack Exploitation Kit - Part Two
The FirePack Web Malware Exploitation Kit
The WebAttacker in Action
Nuclear Malware Kit
The Random JS Malware Exploitation Kit
Metaphisher Malware Kit Spotted in the Wild
The Black Sun Bot
The Cyber Bot
Google Hacking for MPacks, Zunkers and WebAttackers
The IcePack Malware Kit in Action
]]> Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:18:08 +0000 malware kits web malware kits kits copycat malware kits proprietary kits term long-term growth strategy icepack icepack exploitation kit Copycat Web Malware Exploitation Kits are Faddish <![CDATA[On The History of Event Processing: Global Network Monitoring]]> http://securityratty.com/article/0a39883e48015e3b5b486ebc5391de1e http://securityratty.com/article/0a39883e48015e3b5b486ebc5391de1e In A Short History of Complex Event Processing. Part 1: Beginnings, David Luckham opens his history discussion by saying;

“Event processing has been going on for more than fifty years.”

However, in On Event Processing as a Discipline and Some Subsets another colleague mistakenly blogs,

“… people who dealt in this area [network management and event correlation] have never investigated event processing in the larger sense (e.g. looking at additional patterns), and this area has also not spawned the event processing discipline.”

If you examine just one page from the CEP history at Stanford, researchers there outlined their view of the future applications for CEP, as follows:

These applications areas mentioned by Stanford researchers, including Professor Luckham, support and validate our recent discussion Magic Quadrant for IT Event Correlation and Analysis, 2007 where we concluded that “event correlation and event analysis is Gartner’s closest magic quadrant (MQ)  [...] relates directly to complex event processing (and event processing in general).”  

If you take a detailed look at the 1999 CEP presentation, Defeating Large Scale Attacks: Technology and Strategies for Global Network Monitoring you will readily see that our colleagues are incorrect when they says that event correlational and network management folks have never investigated event processing in the “larger sense”.  For example, the 1999 slides above, Stanford, slide 6, is titled “Complex Event Processing,” defining CEP from the application perspective of event correlation;

Complex Event Processing

  • Accept network ‘events’ from any source
    • CISCO NetFlow FlowCollector, tcpdump
  • Correlates events based on content and temporal relationship between events
  • Event Processing Agents (EPAs) connected in an Event Processing Network (EPNs)
  • Both post-mortem and real-time processing

This single event correlational project example from David’s team at Stanford examined the challenging event correlation problems in the context of hierarchical events, maps, patterns, visualization tools, event processing models, patterns languages, network management abstraction layers, and more.  Those core event processing problems from this 1999 example, very large and complex then, still exist today and are much more large and complex - precisely why it is called “complex event processing.”

It is quite obvious, in just this one example, that many folks have been looking at event correlation as a motivating application for event processing, in a larger context, for a long time, contrary to what our colleagues write in their “history of event processing” posts.  

In a future post I will completely debuke these event processing “history revisionists.”   I will illustrate very clearly how the history of event processing goes back at least a decade, and perhaps two (twenty years) before the history outlined in posts like On Research and Practice in Event Processing and The History of Complex Event Processing. 

David Luckam stated that the art-and-science of event processing goes back around 50 years. 

I am not sure I will go all the way back to 1960 in my next post on the history of event processing.  However,  I will go back at least to the early days of Internet Protocol (IP) networking and illustrate why distributed IP networking, network management and network security, is one of the key  motivating factors for what we now call “event processing” and “complex event processing.”

]]> Sat, 30 Aug 2008 06:17:59 +0000 event event correlational event correlation problemsin core event complex event complex event correlation network hierarchical event On The History of Event Processing: Global Network Monitoring <![CDATA[Links List 8.29.08]]> http://securityratty.com/article/f1038682e1a7f7e06f6d230b158bd8a3 http://securityratty.com/article/f1038682e1a7f7e06f6d230b158bd8a3 michaelphelps ChangeWave Research released a survey of 1,947 people responsible for IT spending. Thirty percent of the respondents reported that third-quarter IT spending was lower than previously planned – while 12 percent spent more than planned. Thirty-five percent cited higher energy costs as the top factor for spending slowdown.

Parlez-vous open source? While wide-spread open source usage is still debated in many companies, the French have been advocating for all open source all the time in government and education. French President Nicolas Sarkozy set up an economic commission that recommended tax benefits to stimulate more open source development. Lesson learned from France: start ‘em early. “All students in France use open source.”

Just in time for Labor Day, John Edwards (no, not that one) comes out with an informative guide on “Who provides what in the cloud”. No doubt, this will be a rapidly expanding list, but what’s really interesting is the comment on the article. People have very strong opinions on the cloud…

Research firm Aberdeen Group reports that network costs will increase slightly more than 5 percent over 2007. Contributing factors: “need for speed”, shift from standard to mobile PCs (more end points of connectivity), and the ever-expanding network. And of course the hidden costs of multiple tools with multiple management consoles – if you’re not smart enough to choose say a comprehensive network management solution that is vendor agnostic…One tool to monitor them all…

And just because I miss the Olympics already, here’s an irreverent take on what it’s like to lose to Michael Phelps. http://www.thetechstop.net/?p=1503

Enjoy your long Labor Day Weekend!

]]> Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:00:44 +0000 percent source source development thirty percent labor day source usage costs energy costs thirty-five percent cited Links List 8.29.08 <![CDATA[Gemba & The Journey]]> http://securityratty.com/article/e207879f33e6a822f639d8ac96c2c6e7 http://securityratty.com/article/e207879f33e6a822f639d8ac96c2c6e7 Couple of things first before we get to the next post in the Hansei series.  First, Jon Robinson was thinking about reputation damage and stock price and wrote a very lucid and smart post on the subject:

Companies think they own their reputation, but in reality they don’t. A reputation is the aggregate of the popular opinion about you. Opinions, or thoughts, belong to an individual, true or not, and a company doesn’t own a person’s thoughts, therefore a company doesn’t own its reputation. QED.

Yes.  Absolutely.  In fact, there are already changes in the works to the FAIR model that reflect this line of thinking that will allow us to approach reputation damage in a much more rational manner that anything else I’ve seen to date.

Second, RE:  Hansei & Kaizen, Richard left the following comment.

I don’t agree with your view on Gemba even if we live in a virtual world. Look into any company’s wiring closet and you’ll immediately see a reflection in its maturity from the state of the equipment, the labeling / documentation and overall neatness. “Man with messy wiring closet, will have messy virtual servers.”

However, the true benefit in Gemba is not in the actual visual inspection. It is in in the journey from your desk to the data center / wiring closet.

I agree that the benefit is in the journey.  I can’t see the wiring closet as the main destination (I just don’t see it as a useful prior).  Maybe I wasn’t clear, or was taking for granted that you guys have been reading the blog for the past 2 years, but the journey needs to be to the LOB that owns the application.  The example most given when describing Gemba is going to the production line to look at the issue that causes a problem in the ability to create and sell a car.  The “security” journey is not to the wiring closet, but to the system itself and the logs that we have for the system and whatever network-based controls might be applicable.  And we, as an industry, are just starting to understand that this “security” is only part of the picture.  The whole picture is represented by the factors that create risk.

And for our “risk journey” that security journey is only a one of serveral useful pieces of prior information for use in analysis.  For risk we have to also journey back to the “production line”, or, in our case, to the application/LOB owner.  It may also be to corporate counsel, to marketing, to all sorts of other places in the enterprise because probable losses (a necessary measurement we need in order to understand risk) may come from many different sources in the organization.  For those with FAIR knowledge, think of the six forms of loss to get an idea of what sorts of journeys we need to make.

This is why tomorrow’s post is designed to look at what should we be reflecting about, and what is needed for reflection.

Hint:  our models for risk & risk management can give us an idea of how to create structure around Hansei for the IRM program.

]]> Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:27:40 +0000 journey risk journey approach reputation damage reputation security journey reputation damage risk risk management gemba Gemba & The Journey <![CDATA[Relentless Reflection - What it Means in Risk Management]]> http://securityratty.com/article/cb97e56e5e1097f1a11d050fe2f8d396 http://securityratty.com/article/cb97e56e5e1097f1a11d050fe2f8d396 Picking up from yesterday, Today I’d like to talk about:

HANSEI - WHAT IS “RELENTLESS REFLECTION?” - And why we’re talking about it in the context of Risk Analysis.

Recall from yesterday’s post about how I got to thinking about the concept of Hansei-Kaizen, “relentless reflection” and “continuous improvement” and how we might apply that to risk management.  It’s a concept born of Toyota and is, in some way, the foundation for “Lean” production.

Call me biased, but I think that Hansei - the act of ‘relentless reflection’ made structured is the analytical function.  And I hate to debate (post-mortem) the father of Toyota quality success when he says that Hansei is the “check” in Plan/Do/Check/Act, but I think that Hansei also applies to the “Plan” of the P/D/C/A or Deming cycle.

You’ll recall the P/D/C/A cycle can be thought of even as an implementation of Scientific Method, in that it is Observation & Hypothesis Creation (P), Experiment (D), Analysis (Check), and Act (Revise/New Hypothesis, etc…).  Well then as such, the Hypothesis creation involves creating a model or creating an expected outcome for data using the currently accepted model.

So in our industry there is an opportunity for Relentless Reflection in both the Observation and Hypothesis (Plan) creation steps, and the Check step.  We create an estimate for control strength, or probable losses in the context of risk- then we go to Experiment step.  That hypothesis can be put it into production, have an audit, have a penetration test, whatever, in the context of the Do step.  BTW - using Hansei/Analytics in Plan is one way that strong analytical functions can really make penetration testing more useful - as a means to test the estimates and inputs into a model.  It’s Penetration Testing 2.0!  (<- tongue fully in cheek, yes)


Those who are versed in the reasons to merge Six Sigma and Lean together are probably already seeing where I’m going with this today.  But before you think that a simple DMAIC function is all that is needed to create proper “Hansei”, let me encourage you to keep reading.


Now if the analytical function can said to be “reflection”, why must it be relentless?

One word.  Change. There are essentially four separate “landscapes” or sources of change that we face (more on those tomorrow).  But anyone who has tried to manage system compliance, log management or policy exceptions knows that change is possibly the most difficult thing we security professionals must manage.  And when you think about it, there aren’t too many other business functions like information security where significant visibility and insight about the environment is needed for “complete” information (get bullish on Log Management is my recommendation).

HANSEI STEPS ADAPTED TO INFORMATION SECURITY

This is one of those quality control concepts that we can mangle adopt.  At Toyota, Hansei-Kaizen includes the following basic steps:

1. Initial problem perception
2. Clarify the problem
3. Locate area/point of cause
4. Investigate root cause (using an ask why 5 times approach)
5. Countermeasure
6. Evaluate
7. Standardize

Now it’s important to note that part of this includes the concept of Go See For Yourself, called “Gemba“.  Gemba can be translated as “the actual place” or “the place where virtue or truth is found.” At Toyota this might mean going to the shop floor to see the issue at hand in the production line.  But for us, that’s a problem because we live in the virtual world.  There’s usually not much use in hanging out in the wiring closets to try to see the problems.

But if you combine the concept of Gemba with the concept of “Nemawashi” –the process of discussing problems and potential solutions with all those affected- we can forge a similar concept using risk analysis.  That is discussing the issue and the risk associated with an issue (what some people would call “risk management”) with the business/LOB/data owner and let them accept authority and the risk decision.  We, the risk analyst, our goal is simply to perform items 1-5 (presenting countermeasure options that include transferring or accepting risk).  By going to the line of business and involving them, responsibility is shared.  Also, if you structure organizational behavior right, personal risk is transferred!

This sort of approach is also in harmony with concepts like “mutual ownership of problems,” or “genchi genbutsu,” (solving problems at the source instead of behind desks), and the “kaizen mind,” (an unending sense of crisis behind the company’s constant drive to improve).

One of the criticisms I have with the way most people try to implement DMAIC into “Lean”

REQUIREMENTS

Now to get this done, I really see three significant requirements.

1.)  A change in political structure.

2.)  Models that provide consistent, defensible analysis.

3.)  A Quantitative approach.  This means using actual units of measurement (not just amorphous percents, ordinal scales, etc.)  for risk and it’s subsequent factors.  Sure there are times when Q&D qualitative approaches are acceptable, but policy should be to have quantitative analysis whenever and wherever possible.

That last item - the quantitative approach - is really quite important.  And the reasons why will be discussed further in tomorrow’s post:

“What should we be reflecting about? & What is needed for reflection?”

P.S.  Your comments and suggestions, as always, are welcome.

P.P.S  Those who may be familiar with Lean/SixSigma/Kaizen sorts of mashups may be thinking - “hey, an Analytical step is built into SixSigma”.  Well, yes there is some prevision for analytical functions based on statistics, but I find SixSigma geared towards creating a State of Knowledge about operational processes, not towards creating a State of Wisdom for CISO’s around security & risks “big questions”.  In otherwords, the analytical function in DMAIC is in the context of Kaizen, and a different step than “reflective” analytics.

]]> Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:55:40 +0000 risk management risk call risk management call relentless reflection relentless reflection risk analyst risk decision Relentless Reflection - What it Means in Risk Management <![CDATA[Reputation Damage & Measurement]]> http://securityratty.com/article/d9577961443ca1c3cd93223077fbca5f http://securityratty.com/article/d9577961443ca1c3cd93223077fbca5f Reputation damage can be one of the most difficult concepts to build measurements around.  In fact, it can be difficult to develop the actual metrics for the measurements, as well.  Damage to things like “corporate reputation” and “goodwill” and “brand equity” can be difficult to wrap even reasonable dollar estimates around (When I use FAIR, I really only care to use one metric when describing loss magnitudes - the almighty currency).

Complicating factors is the impact (or lack thereof) of incidents on stock price.  Many researchers who identify themselves with the New School of Information Security (yours truly included) want to immediately look at stock price as a bell-weather metric for incident impact.  I think this stems from our days of slinging FUD, back when we could scream “Buy a firewall or we’ll have an incident and you’ll be on the front page of the paper and the stock price will go down!”  But these days notable incidents seem to suggest that the impact on stock price for an incident is short lived.  With qualifications, of course.

So what would/should we make of this from Money.co.uk?

£12million ($24m) Wiped off Helphire Stock after Malicious Email Sent to Clients

Car hire firm Helphire have taken Google to court after a malicious email sent from a Gmail account saw their shares plummet £12million in a single day.

The Bath-based business who specialise in providing replacement cars to ‘no-fault’ drivers involved in accidents on behalf of car insurance companies, initiated legal proceedings against the search engine giant as part of their attempt to find out who is responsible for sending the defamatory mailing.

Google are now known to have complied with the court order and have controversially supplied details of the email account and ISP used by the meddler.

Written under the psudoname Peter Franks, the 1200 word email is know to have been sent from a gmail account that was opened specifically for this purpose and closed a few minutes after the damage had been done…

…The misdemeanour couldn’t have come at a worse time for the struggling firm who have undergone a £45million rights issue and seen a 75% drop in the value of their stock already this year.

That last paragraph, for me, explains some of the difficulty in tying reputation damage to stock decreases.  It’s like when you read the headlines from Bloomberg about why the days stocks (or commodity) prices are up or down.  You know, the “Oil closes $3 higher on news that a notable South American dictator has a rather unpleasant boil in a very uncomfortable area” type of headlines.  You really do have to question the causality and correlation.  So in the Helphire case above - is this new drop in stock really because of the email sent?  If so, should we view that $24mil number as an independent data point to describe this sort of attack on reputation, or is the magnitude aggravated due to the long-term trend of stock price?

Even when we have “Objective Data” (an in-joke for Adam S.) like this decline in stock price, it is really difficult to provide any sort of precise estimate or measurement - about the future, present or past.  The best we can do is use ranges, distributions, that are reasonable based on evidence and observation.

So it’s worth filing away this sort of datum for future use - while dutifully acknowledging the qualifiers we might place around it.

So the questions I ask here - what should we make of this new information, and how should we view the $24million drop - they’re not rhetorical.  I am very interested in your views and welcome your comments!

]]> Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:33:56 +0000 stock helphire stock reputation damage reputation stock price damage email email account malicious email Reputation Damage & Measurement <![CDATA[Web Based Botnet Command and Control Kit 2.0]]> http://securityratty.com/article/4f945955ba8a424fe6b9352583602062 http://securityratty.com/article/4f945955ba8a424fe6b9352583602062
The average web based command and control kit for a botnet consisting of single user, single campaign functions only, has just lost its charm, with a recent discovery of a proprietary botnet kit whose features clearly indicate that the kit's coder know exactly which niches to fill - presumably based on his personal experience or market research into competing products.

What are some its key differentiation factors? Multitasking at its best, for instance, the kits provides the botnet master with the opportunity to manage numerous different task such as several malware campaigns and DDoS attacks simultaneously, where each of these gets a separate metrics page.  

Automation of malicious tasks, by setting up tasks, and issuing notices on the status of the task, when it was run and when it was ended. Just consider the possibilities for a scheduling malware and DDoS attacks for different quarters.  

Segmentation in every aspect of the tasks, for instance, a DDoS attacks against a particular site can be scheduled to launched on a specific date from infected hosts based in chosen countries only.  

Customized DDoS in the sense of empowering the botnet master with point'n'click ability to dedicate a precise number of the bots to participate, which countries they should be based in, and for how long the attack should remain active. Quality and assurance in DDoS attacks based on the measurement of the bot's bandwidth against a particular country, in this case the object of the attack, so theoretically bots from neighboring countries would DDoS the country in question far more efficiently.  

Historical malware campaign performance, is perhaps the most quality assurance feature in the entire kit, presumably created in order to allow the person behind it to measure which were the most effective malware and DDoS campaigns that he executed in the past. From an OSINT perspective, sacrificing his operational security by maintaing detailed logs from previous attacks is a gold mine directly establishing his relationships with previous malware campaigns.

Bot Description:  
1. Completely invisible Bot work in the system.
2. Not loads system.
3. Invisible in the process.
4. Workaround all firewall.
5. Bot implemented as a driver.
Functions Bot (constantly updated): 
1. Downloading a file (many options).
2. HTTP DDoS (many options, including http authentication).
The web interface 
-- Convenient manager tasks.
-- Every task can be stopped, put on pause, etc. ...
-- Interest and visual scale of the task.  
-- A task manager for DDoS and Loader
    
-- For DDoS tasks
Bots involved in DDoS 'f.
Condition of the victim (works, fell).
2. Bots manager
-- Displays a list of bots (postranichno).
-- Obratseniya date of the first and last.
-- ID Bot.
-- Country Bot.
-- Type Bot.
-- The status Bot (online / offline).
-- Bot bandwidth to different parts of the world (europe, asia).
-- The possibility of removing bots
-- When you click on ID Bot loadable still a wealth of information about it
3. Statistics botneta
-- Statistics both common and build Bot.
-- Information on the growth and decline botneta dates (and build).
-- Bots online
-- All bots
-- Dead bots.

4. Statistics botneta country
-- All countries to work on 
-- New work by country 
-- Online work from country to country
-- Dead bots by country
5. Detailed history botneta 
6. Convenient user-friendly interface adding teams
8. Admin minimal server loads
-- Use php5/mysql
Upcoming features :
1. Form grabber (price increase substantially), for old customers will be charged as an upgrade
2. Public key cryptography
3. Clustering campaigns and DDoS attacks

Despite it's proprietary nature, it's quality and innovative features will sooner or later leak out for everyone to take advantage of, a rather common lifecycle for the majority of proprietary malware kits in general.

Related posts:
]]> Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:02:15 +0000 ddos attacks based ddos attacks malware previous malware campaigns ddos attacks simultaneously botnet country country bot ddos Web Based Botnet Command and Control Kit 2.0 <![CDATA[Banker Malware Targeting Brazilian Banks in the Wild]]> http://securityratty.com/article/4c146364a5e5366271bb42a4f795af8d http://securityratty.com/article/4c146364a5e5366271bb42a4f795af8d
Despite the ongoing customerization of malware, and the malware coding for hire customer tailored services, certain malware authors still believe in the product concept, namely, they build it and wait for someone to come. In this underground proposition for a proprietary banker malware targeting primarily Brazillian bank, the author is relying on the localized value added to his malware forgetting a simply fact - that the most popular banker malware is generalizing E-banking transactions in such a way that it's successfully able to hijack the sessions of banks it hasn't originally be coded to target in general.

Banks targetted in this banker malware :
Bank Equifax
Bank Itau
Bank Check
Bank Vivo
Bank Banrisul
Tim Bank Brazil
Bank Nossa Caixa
Bank Santander Banespa
Bank Infoseg
Bank Paypal
Bank Caixa Economica Federal
Bank Bradesco
Bank Northeast
Royal Bank
Bank Itau Personnalite
Bank PagSeguro
Australia Bank
Credicard Citi Bank
Credicard Bank Itau
Rural Bank

Taking into consideration the fact that not everyone would be willing to pay a couple of thousand dollars for a banker malware kit targeting banks the customer isn't interested in at the first place, malware authors have long been tailoring their propositions on the basis of modules. Adding an additional module for stealtness increases the prices, as well as an additional module forwarding the process of updating the malware binary to the "customer support desk". Moreover, stripping the banker kit from modules in which the customer doesn't have interest, like for instance exclude all Asian banks the kit has already built-in capabilities to hijack and log transactions from, decreases its price.

In a truly globalized IT underground, Brazillian cybercriminals tend to prefer using the market leading tools courtesy of Russian malware authors, so this localized banker malware with its basic session screenshot taking capabilities and accounting data logging has a very long way to go before it starts getting embraced by the local underground.

Related posts:
The Twitter Malware Campaign Wants to Bank With You
Targeted Spamming of Bankers Malware
A Localized Bankers Malware Campaign
76Service - Cybercrime as a Service Going Mainstream
The Underground Economy's Supply of Goods and Services
The Dynamics of the Malware Industry - Proprietary Malware Tools
Using Market Forces to Disrupt Botnets
Multiple Firewalls Bypassing Verification on Demand
Managed Spamming Appliances - The Future of Spam
Localizing Cybercrime - Cultural Diversity on Demand
E-crime and Socioeconomic Factors 
Malware as a Web Service 
Coding Spyware and Malware for Hire
Are Stolen Credit Card Details Getting Cheaper?
Neosploit Team Leaving the IT Underground
The Zeus Crimeware Kit Vulnerable to Remotely Exploitable Flaw
Pinch Vulnerable to Remotely Exploitable Flaw
Dissecting a Managed Spamming Service
Managed "Spamming Appliances" - The Future of Spam
]]> Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:01:03 +0000 banker malware banker malware kit kit popular banker malware malware bank itau personnalite bank itau malware authors russian malware authors Banker Malware Targeting Brazilian Banks in the Wild <![CDATA[UPDATES GALORE! or, THE PRONOUN WE MEANS YOU AND ME!]]> http://securityratty.com/article/6ebd2507c3c7a5fbc11f6123a9af9559 http://securityratty.com/article/6ebd2507c3c7a5fbc11f6123a9af9559 So much traveling, so little blogging.  Sorry everyone.  I’ve gotta say first that I really enjoyed meeting readers and friends of the blog this past two weeks.

Today, allow me to update you on FAIR and the movement towards a formal, open standard.  There’s a couple of cool things going on in our little risk-world.

First, The Open Group Security Forum continues to move towards a formal adoption of FAIR.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN “WE” - YOU GOT A STANDARDS BODY IN YOUR POCKET OR SOMETHING?

Our meeting in Chicago a few weeks ago was great, but also slightly disturbing for me. I got pronoun-confusion syndrome.   I’m used to using the “we” pronoun to refer to RMI, or Jack and myself as we vet the models.  So without even thinking I would said “we have been looking at how loss occurs, and may want to change the model some” and The Open Group Members freaked out (rightfully so).  Adrian Seccombe gently reminded me that the “we” was now the Security Forum, and that “we” didn’t go changing things at will without vetting against each other.  Man I love this stuff.  I get to run our thoughts and ideas past some great folks now - you know, those smart people who tend to have really complex problems and are trying hard to solve them.

Formal Adoption:  Soon, Very Soon Now

Formal Adoption basically means we’ve made this document, everyone is close to saying that they generally like it, and once that finally happens then “bam”, we’re ready to move onward and upward with better things (see Cookbooks, below).  We’ve got a couple of changes to the current document that have been requested that aren’t a big deal.  For example, one request is that we make some statement about general applicability of FAIR to risk domains outside of the IT realm.   But once additions like that and others are done, this long process should be complete.

New Document Moving Towards Public Release:

We’ve got a basic document that should be public in the next few weeks on “What Makes a Good Risk Assessment Methodology” - written by yours truly and Jack.  It’s a very high-level document, and serves two purposes:

  • For novices it helps parse out what is important in any undertaking to understand corporate risk (the repeated discussions on the ISO 27001 mailing list make me think it would be a place ripe for such a document).
  • For those who “know” risk, it helps to re-establish some fundamental principles like the use of scales (ratio, please), the implications of dealing in probabilities, what attributes like consistency and defensibility mean, how “risk” should be reported to the business (something you know, meaningful) and so on.

When this doc is deemed ready for public consumption I’ll be sure to post on this blog here.

COOKBOOKS, EUROPEAN AGENCIES, AND, IRON CHEF “RISK” - WHOSE CUISINE WILL REIGN SUPREME?

One interesting thing that came up in the Chicago meeting was that ENISA (The European Network and Information Security Agency) developed a very nice document that reviewed something like 18 different risk assessment methodologies against their Criteria for Goodness.  FAIR was one of the ones they reviewed, and we (the royal “we” used there to include all us FAIR-Folk) did awfully well.  Things of interest:

  1. They based their work on the current introduction paper which is not at all a step-by-step guide towards an organizational risk assessment (what ENISA really wanted) and we did pretty well.  Well enough that if we had developed a paper along the lines of NIST 800-30 or OCTAVE for the use of FAIR in a formal process, we could have done really, really well.  Like won-the-bake-off kind of well.
  2. FAIR is actually not at all incongruous to many of the risk assessment methodologies offered, and in fact compliments many of them by letting those methodologies develop real, structured probabilities.  Think OCTAVE, where they basically say “math is (probabilities are) hard, so if you want to do them for reals, good luck!  But here’s a nonsensical way to do things if you want to believe in magic-fairy risk“.  FAIR fits right in there by stomping on the magic-fairy risk with the jack-boots of rationality.  FAIR similarly helps other risk standards that might lack structured probability development.

So The Open Group Security Forum decided that though we could create a new document and totally p0wn any future ENISA bake-off, there wasn’t much demand for the development of that documentation by the membership  - a point which was made quite apparent at the beginning of the discussion when one large European company CISO asked “What’s ENISA?”  Relevancy is everything, I suppose.

But that second item up there - the one about helping rather than competing with other “risk assessment methodologies” - really struck a chord.  So “we” (The Security Forum) are going to develop some “Cookbooks” that basically are high-level documents that say “If you want to use FAIR with (OCTAVE/COSO/CoBIT/Whatever) here’s how it fits, makes it better, and improves your life.  I’m pretty excited about these, and our first document looks like it’s going to be COSO integration.

THE OPEN GROUP SECURITY FORUM - THEY’RE A TRUSTING BUNCH (WITH QUALIFICATION, OF COURSE)

Finally, many people have asked me “Why work with The Open Group?”  There are many reasons, to be sure, but I will give you one example.  Members of the Security Forum there are not only great at vetting the model and getting consensus on risk and risk factors - but they’re quick to start applying.  So in Chicago, I thought I’d be talking about FAIR and the standard and fighting groupthink.  Nope.  Not at all.  In fact, the forum members spent more time suddenly discussing use of FAIR in a new Trust Model they’re developing.  So all of the sudden, I’m part of a new and exciting project to develop a Trust Model - how cool is that?  While formal adoption of the Trust Model will be necessarily long and deliberate - the collaboration and development is happening much faster than I can keep up with.  But if you all will allow me, it will help me get my head around it all by blogging about it later this week.  So be prepared to read about me dealing in “Trust” a little bit.

]]> Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:24:17 +0000 risk risk assessment methodologies security forum forum magic-fairy risk risk standards fair risk-world fair similarly helps UPDATES GALORE! or, THE PRONOUN WE MEANS YOU AND ME!