[SecurityRatty] tag: rock-solid

Is Rock Phish cybergang set for a comeback?

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:00:00 +0000

East European cybercrime gang Rock Phish is linking its Command & Control server to the Asprox botnet in an apparent effort to boost its ability to propogate phishing attacks.

Is Rock Phish cybergang set for a comeback?

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:00:00 +0000

RSA warns that the Rock Phish cybergang is upgrading its botnet for nefarious purposes.

What's Going on Between Asprox and Rock Phish?

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:00:00 +0000

When a small phishing gang decides to upgrade its infrastructure, it is often done in a quick and dirty fashion. The transition is almost immediate, and often buggy and unprofessional. But what happens when a gang on the scale of the Rock Phish group decides to abandon its old methods and upgrade its botnet infrastructure? It is done slowly, smoothly but most importantly -- professionally. The RSA FraudAction Research Labs recently gathered information that indicates major changes in the tactics employed by the Rock Phish gang. We have reason to believe that the gang is replacing its phishing infrastructure, and upgrading it to an advanced Fast-Flux botnet. We also believe that this new infrastructure belongs to none other than the infamous Asprox Botnet, which has recently been spreading itself using surges of SQL injection attacks...

Golf Driven Security

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:00:50 +0000

I don't have anything against the sport, in fact I think that if the software security people want to get in the enterprise security game they have to get a lot better at golf. I blogged about how the network security sector is about fifteen times larger than software security sector, prompting one person to write saying that we have invested wisely in network security, eliminated the problems and will address the software security problem with internal processes and tools.

The problem is that compared to software security we are clearly overspending on network security, the hardware/software is unchanged for a decade - in any other area of computing the cost would be falling like a rock (how much would 1995 version of Oracle or Windows cost now? 5 cents on the dollar, yet CISOs still cut $900M worth of checks to Checkpoint each year). The problem is there is no market effect because the CISO's budget keeps increasing and they have no idea what/where/how to spend so they just play golf with their Checkpoint rep and send in the renewal.

Internal processes and tools are necessary yet nowhere near sufficient to "solve" software security. One reason we "have gotten rid of" network attacks is that no one cares. its a 1990s 31337 attacker goal, not a mafia enterprise goal (botnets aside). business, be they legit or criminal, wants data and functionality. so its all about apps and data. we are just at the very begining crawl stage of even understanding how to solve these problems. That's why when i hear security consultants harsh on something like static analysis I just laugh. are they better than a top 1% resource in the world? no way. do we have a multi billion dollar gap to close? ya sure, ya betcha. We need things that scale.

People dont write their own virus protection, but for some reason attempt to do their own input validation, it is the same exact problem. people routinely write their own authentication, authorization and audit. i could go on.

I have rarely seen an industry so ripe for disruptive innovation as software security.

New Releases at Defcon

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:04:12 +0000

One of my funny moments at Black Rock City last year was meeting a random guy early one morning on deep playa, chatting and finding out we both were involved in IT security. He’d been at the defcon conference just before Burning Man, we talked for just a minute about industry publications and the hacker contests, before getting distracted with shinier things. I’m not going this year but everyone I know is buzzing about BM this year:)

I was just reminded of this randomly just by reading this list of new tools released at the Defcon this year. Sounds like a busy conference, with a lot of hackers who love what they do. Good stuff.

It has become more like a global fair than what most people think of conferences; even the badge is highly unique. I say this because there are so many things to do at DEFCON, other than going to talks, that you could spend your whole weekend looking at the “World’s Largest Boar!” so to speak. One of the CTF (Capture the Flag) contest winners this year actually exclaimed that he only made it to 2 talks in 12 years! I am also one of those individuals who barely get a chance to go to talks and now that the speaker pool is so diverse it’s hard to find all of the “stuff” they release.

Read the list and full article here

Phishers Backdooring Phishing Pages to Scam One Another

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:01:50 +0000

There seems to be no such thing as a free phishing page these days, with phishers scamming one another at an alarming rate according to a recently published research entitled "There is No Free Phish:An Analysis of “Free” and Live Phishing Kits".

Cybercriminals attempting to scam other cybercriminals has been happening for years, with old school cases where backdoored malware tools such as crypters and binders are offered for free, or a newly released RAT whose client is in fact infected with a third-party malware. Realizing and definitely not enjoying the fact that the lowered entry barriers into cybercrime are empowering yesterday's script kiddies will malware kits that used to be utilized by a set of people who invested time and money into the process several years ago, this unethical competitive practice is only going to get more common. Backdooring phishing pages is one thing, backdooring entire web malware exploitation kits, next to the possibility to remotely exploit a competitor's command and control server is entirely another :

"Taking a more strategic approach, a cybercriminal wanting to scam another cybercriminal would backdoor a highly expensive web malware exploitation kit, then start distributing it for free, and in fact, there have been numerous cases when such kits have been distributed in such a fraudulent manner. The result is a total outsourcing of the process of coming up with ways to infect hundreds of thousands of users though client side exploits embedded or SQL injected at legitimate sites, and basically collecting the final output - the stolen E-banking data and the botnet itself."

What's to come in the long term? Why just backdoor the phishing page, when you can embedd it with a live exploit URL in an attempt to both, infect the cybercriminal about to use and obtain all of the already stolen virtual assets has has already stolen, and also, have a third-party maintain a blended attack campaign without even knowing it.

Related posts:
Phishing Campaign Spreading Across Facebook
Phishing Pages for Every Bank are a Commodity
RBN's Phishing Activities
Inside a Botnet's Phishing Activities
Large Scale MySpace Phishing Attack
Update on the MySpace Phishing Campaign
MySpace Phishers Now Targeting Facebook
MySpace Hosting MySpace Phishing Profiles
DIY Phishing Kits
DIY Phishing Kit Goes 2.0
PayPal and Ebay Phishing Domains
Average Online Time for Phishing Sites
The Phishing Ecosystem
Assessing a Rock Phish Campaign
Taking Down Phishing Sites - A Business Model?
Take this Malicious Site Down - Processing Order..
209 Host Locked
209.1 Host Locked
66.1 Host Locked
Confirm Your Gullibility
Phishers, Spammers and Malware Authors Clearly Consolidating
The Economics of Phishing

Twisted Coronas

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:33:51 +0000

Okay it's Saturday, so let me share something completely nontechnical and fun.

What you need to make these cocktails:

Six pack of Corona Extra
Bottle of Bacardi Limon
Lime
Coctail stirrer (a chopstick works fine)

Pop a slice of lime into a Corona and hand to a friend. Have them drink the neck, then refill with Bacardi Limon (putting the lime in first seems to reduce fizzing). Stir and hand back to them so they can drink it down as it fizzes up a bit.

Mixing rum and beer may sound nasty, but this actually results in a very smooth, tasty drink. It's our favorite accompaniment when we are playing Rock Band.

We took this recipe and applied it to one of our other favorite beers as well: Honey Moon Summer Ale (also works with Blue Moon, or any other typically orange-flavored beer). Just use Barcardi O instead of Limon.

Enjoy!

Employee fraud hits Baptist Health in Arkansas

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:00:20 +0000

Technorati Tag: Security Breach

Date Reported:
7/2/08

Organization:
Baptist Health*

*Baptist Health is the largest not-for-profit healthcare organization in Arkansas

Contractor/Consultant/Branch:
None

Victims:
Patients

Number Affected:
~1,800

Types of Data:
"name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, and reason for coming to Baptist Health"

Breach Description:
"LITTLE ROCK (AP) - A North Little Rock woman has been arrested for using financial information from patients at Baptist Health to illegally obtain Wal-Mart gift cards for her own use. The hospital has notified about 1,800 patrons of the ID theft."

Reference URL:
Associated Press via WXVT Channel 15 News
KARK Channel 4 News
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Report Credit:
Toby Manthey, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Response:
From the online sources cited above:

Baptist Health has sent letters warning about 1,800 patients that the hospital system’s records may have been breached
[Evan] Uh, "may have been breached"?!

The notification came after the arrest of a Baptist Health employee at a Wal-Mart store on 25 counts of financial identity fraud.
[Evan] Wouldn't life be grand if we could trust our employees? Maybe, I suppose.

The letters, mailed last week, follow the firing of the woman in early June

North Little Rock police say Tamara Hill, 30, of that city worked at Baptist Health Medical Center-North Little Rock in the emergency department.

Hill, an admissions clerk, was arrested May 30 at the Wal-Mart

Ebony Flowers, 25, also of North Little Rock, was arrested at the store the same day on three counts of identity fraud

Flowers was listed in a police report as a janitor for the North Little Rock School District
[Evan] Key word is "was".

Baptist Health recorded more than 950,000 patient visits systemwide in 2007, a number that includes repeat visits.

Mark Lowman, spokesman for the Little Rock-based Baptist Health system, confirmed that the system fired the employee after notification of the arrest.

Police reports say the women used a victim’s personal information to obtain temporary Wal-Mart "account authorization numbers" - credit cards, essentially - used to buy Wal-Mart gift cards.

The victim reported to police that he had not authorized the transactions

the same victim confirmed he was a Baptist Health patient

He expressed appreciation of the handling of the case by the system and by the North Little Rock police.

Among the items found during a search connected with the arrest of Hill was personal information for 24 other people, including "screen shots" - printouts showing the exact appearance of the images on a computer screen - that showed victims’ personal information.
[Evan] This seems like confirmation that "may have been breached" is not all that accurate.

Also found were four Wal-Mart gift cards and $ 1,490 in cash

Police found a small bag of marijuana on Flowers, according to the reports. In a search connected with her arrest, they also discovered a. 25-caliber magazine with six bullets, as well as a receipt for four of the gift cards and information on three-identity theft victims.
[Evan] A thug.

The U. S. Secret Service is helping with the investigation.

"Due to a breach of our information systems security policies, there is a possibility that some personal information, such as your name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, and reason for coming to Baptist Health, was accessed by an unauthorized person."
[Evan] This is from the letter to the victims.

No information in the patient’s "medical records" and no information about the patient’s diagnosis or prognosis was accessed

while no "medical record" information was accessed, the letter mentioned the patient’s "reason for coming" to the system possibly was accessed

Lowman said a reason stated by a patient using the system isn’t considered medical information because the reason is a layman’s explanation, not one from a medical professional.
[Evan] This is Mark Lowman, spokesman for the Little Rock-based Baptist Health system

He said the breach wouldn’t violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

But Pam Dixon, executive director of the San Diego-based World Privacy Forum, a privacy advocacy group, thinks all the information mentioned in the letter falls under HIPAA.

"It doesn’t matter that [it’s not ] a prognosis or diagnosis," she said.
[Evan] Splitting hairs. The bottom line is that confidential personal information was stolen and there are victims. Whether or not it is a HIPAA violation seems somewhat irrelevant.

Dixon found the system’s letter lacking in several respects, such as clarifying the exact meaning of a "reason for coming to Baptist Health." The letter also should have mentioned when and for how long the breach occurred, she said.

"Almost all breach letters have that," Dixon added.
[Evan] Almost all breach letters have what? A mention about for how long the breach occurred? I must be reading some of the wrong breach letters because it seems to me that this information is 50/50 at best. Also missing is the "we have no reason to believe that the information will be misused", but this one doesn't fit does it?

Dixon said Baptist Health should have offered in the letter to set up free credit monitoring for victims.
[Evan] Why? One year (or two) of credit monitoring is almost useless. Credit monitoring alerts a victim after fraud has already occurred and one year (or two) of monitoring is too limited for information that has a much longer lifespan. I guess credit monitoring would be better than nothing, but not by much.

Lowman said the health system continually conducts audits to know which staff members are accessing what information, and whether or not the access is appropriate.
[Evan] Good!

"We’re always looking to provide better audits and better oversight of private, confidential and protected information," Lowman said.
[Evan] And Good!

Commentary:
Preventing and detecting employee fraud has always been a challenge. This doesn't mean we give up though. We have some tools at our disposal such as employee background checks, role-based access control, segregation of duties, and job rotation to name a few.

I don't think that these two crooks are anything more than common criminals. The fact of the matter is that identity theft and fraud are very easy crimes to commit and require very little skill.

Past Breaches:
Unknown

The Angry Spamtool...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:29:27 +0000

Here's a spamming program that targets Xfire users, with a particularly distasteful name. If you're under 16, you'll probably find the name incredibly lulzy (or whatever it is that kids under 16 are saying at the moment). Open up the zip the program comes in, and you'll see that it's called...er...

...yeah, charming. Note that it also comes bundled with a solitary MP3, presumably to rock out to over and over again while you get your fill of spamming chatboxes for a small portion of eternity.

Here's the application in action - there seems to be an abundance of angry, red shouty faces with this one, doesn't there?

Click to Enlarge

Hit the "Bomb Em" button, and the program rather helpfully asks you how many times you want to nuke your victim. For no real reason, I went for a comic reference and selected 52:

But wait! One more charming popup box awaits:

Click to Enlarge

.....anyone think the creator needs anger management classes yet?

Black Kids, Lesbians from Arkansas and a Swedish Bloke who plays guitar

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:02:00 +0000

http://www.myspace.com/blackkidsrock All I need to rock my iPod these days is Black Kids, Beth Ditto (doing the Skins classic (stay with the intro, trust me)) and I can drive home from the airport after a 12 hour flight and just feel alive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMFExJzaO1c Throw in some Jose Gonsalez and the Audi TT purrs like a true [...]