Corporate Espionage Through Botnets

Following my previous post on OSINT Through Botnets, here's a company that's categorizing Fortune 500 companies whose networks are heavily polluted with malware infected hosts :

"Support Intelligence (SI), a network security company in San Francisco, has been running what it called "30 Days of Bots," featuring corporate networks infected with spam-churning bots. It began analyzing data in February, monitoring 10,000 domains that plow data into a trap much like a fishnet, except the intelligence in the data is designed to determine what information to keep by looking for spam. In total, SI analyzed traffic from more than 100 sources, including the aforementioned spam traps."

Considering the possibility for gathering open source intelligence through military and government infected PCs only, it is logical to conclude that a specific company can be targeted on the basis of the already infected hosts on its network as well. Think about it. For the time being, a botnet's master doesn't really care if it's a military or Fortune 500 company that's infected as long as spam, phishing and malware goes out of these hosts. But passive corporate espionage in the form of intercepting the traffic going out of a specific company's network shouldn't be excluded as an opportunity. Continue reading →

Visual Script Obfuscation

We often talk and deobfuscate scripts aiming to hide their real and often malicious intentions. But what if malicious attackers have become so efficient in their obfuscation, that they decide to show some JAPH style in order to make them harder to analyze by visually obfuscating the scripts as you can see here? Continue reading →

The Jihadist Security Encyclopedia

A month ago, the Media Jihad Battalion started distributing a 118 pages long encyclopedia on anything starting from secure communications to keywords not to search for as they'll raise an early warning system alarm. The front cover is so Blade's style, but the PSYOPS motive is highly influential. Here's a translated table of contents and the original version attached. Continue reading →

Sampling Jihadists' IPs

Great idea as a matter of fact :

"The following is based on an analysis of 4,593 IP addresses (1,452 unique IP addresses). The IPs were acquired from 19 of the more prominent of the Salafist/Jihadist forums, including both Arabic and non-Arabic forums, from 01 January through 30 April of this year."

Taking into consideration the per-country stats, do not exclude the logical possibility of IP cloaking while browsing these and also, the tiny number of intelligence and lone gunman info warriors gathering OSINT data. In another much more in-depth analysis on mapping the online jihad, the authors point out the emerging internationalization of jihad as well :

"The near exclusive use of the Arabic language in these significant jihadi websites likely accounts for the concentration of activity in the Middle East and North Africa. But with a reach to more than 40 countries, the virtual community within these ten influential sites assumes a global significance. The international jihadi movement's use of the internet to fuel the exchange of ideological expansion and its corresponding influx of support will increase the vulnerability of many countries to the appeal of extremism."

At least these organizations don't rely on setting up fake jihadist communities to come up with the sample data, but know exactly where to look for. Continue reading →

Mind Mapping Web 2.0 Threats

An informative, and for sure to be expanded mind map presenting various Web 2.0 threats courtesy of Mike Daw who by the way neatly integrated the anti virus detection results to his web backdoors compilation, I commented on in a previous post. Here are two more mind maps of Firefox security related tools, and the threats faced by mobile devices. A related post on the "wormability" of web application insecurities for everyone thinking flash worms. Continue reading →

XSS The Planet

Yet another initiative proving that major sites indeed suffer from XSS vulnerabilities in exactly the same fashion E-banking sites do. Perhaps the most interesting point regarding the list is that it's from 2005 and some of the sites still remain vulnerable but why is that? Lack of internal incentive programs to deal with the problem? Not getting the necessary attention given the rise of the lost laptop with unencrypted data issue? A lack of common sense is the best alternative for me. Consider the perspective - its like utilizing quantum encryption for the sake of protecting the confidentiality of your data but remaining vulnerable to wardriving attacks capable of obtaining the data in a pre-encryption stage, even on the fly. The encrypted data myopia is on the rise and it's the result of a yet another "stolen laptop news article" emphasizing on current and ignoring the emerging trends, namely, that a mobile workforce's improved productivity is proportional with the insecurities coming from storing sensitive data in a less controlled external environment. There's no point in implementing state-of-the-art technology when you haven't taken care of the basics, such as the ones that are so easy to exploit even a script kiddie can become the next pentagon hacker bruteforcing passwords on an unclassified system. And yes - trivial XSS ones too.

Currently active URLs on the list are the following:
Nortel.com
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
JC Penney
SonyStyle.com
D-Link.com
Poetry.com Continue reading →

Big Brother Awards 2007

I always liked the idea of emphasizing on the big picture when it comes to the worst privacy invadors on a worldwide basis compared to that of a particular country only. They are all interconnected to a certain extend, united under the umbrella of the common good which as a matter of fact won a golden boot in this year's Big Brother International Awards :

"PI's 'Big Brother Awards' have been running for nearly ten years, with events run in eighteen countries around the world. Government institutions and companies have been named and shamed as privacy invaders in a variety of countries and contexts. This year was the first time that Privacy International ran an international event to identify the greatest invaders around the world. The event was hosted by 'the pope', as presented by Simon Davies in full regalia. Previous hosts include 'Dr. Evil' and 'The Queen of England'."

Here are the winners in their categories :

Most invasive company - Choicepoint
Data aggregators and centralizing too much personal data in a single place makes it vulnerable even to pringles hacking attacks. Next year I'm sure Google's purchase of Doubleclick would get more attention

Worst Public Official - Stewart Baker
The way Microsoft and open source look awkward in a sentence in this very same way democracy looks awkward next to Russia

Most Heinous Government - The United Kingdom
Fully agree here. Twisting the common good is very marketable

Most Appalling Project or Technology - The International Civil Aviation Organization

I think the CCTV industry should have won here the rest are bureaucrats whose closed doors propositions later on face the public outbreak of how not to implement them. Anyway supply meets the demand for surveillance.

Lifetime Menace Award - The 'Common Good'
The main reason for the existence of today's intrusive surveillance technologies is the idea of the common good. We spy on you to protect you, we take away your civil liberties to protect you, and CCTV after CCTV you end up in a situation which can be best seen in the U.K

Related posts:
The Future of Privacy = don't over-empower the watchers!
Security vs Privacy or what's left from it
The Cell-phone Industry and Privacy Advocates VS Cell Phone Tracking
Afterlife Data Privacy
Continue reading →

Defeating Virtual Keyboards

To deal with the threat of keyloggers -- or to win time during te process of implementing two factor authentication and one-time-passwords-in-everything -- E-banking providers started introducing virtual keyboards as a pragmatic solution to the threat. Malicious attackers are anything but old-fashioned and this is a great example that insecurities are only a matter of perspective. To the E-banking providers who were aware that a static virtual keyboard would be much more easier to defeat, a randomized characters appearance came into play and so attackers adapted by first taking video sessions of the login process, and now turning each mouse click into a screenshot to come up with the accounting data in a PoC on Defeating Citibank Virtual Keyboard:

"Citibank Virtual Keyboard is a security enhancement for protecting from the key loggers. Using this virtual keyboard user can enter Card no and IPIN using mouse. This keyboard will display a keys in random position in a virtual keyboard on the screen where it makes little difficult for password capture. This only gives confidence for end user from key loggers not from other methods. Local attacker can use Win32 API’s to capture using screen shot method and obtain sensitive information including Credit Card/Debit Card (Suvidha Account), IPIN and misuse it."

From a malicious economies of scale perspective, these rather amateur techniques mean lack of efficiency compared to advanced tools suh as the Nuclear Grabber which I intend to cover in-depth in a future post from the Malicious Wild West series. Continue reading →

International Cryptography Regulations Map

Regulations on importing, exporting and using encryption greatly vary across the world. Bert-Jaap Koops came up with some informative maps highlighting the big picture :

"This is a graphic summary of the pertaining cryptography laws and regulations worldwide as outlined in the most recent version of my Crypto Law Survey. It shows the import controls, export controls, and domestic controls, according to the information available to me. Consult the corresponding entry in the Crypto Law Survey for the contents of the pertaining regulation in a particular country."

And here's a related post on a bureaucratic utopia, another one on bureaucracy vs reality when it comes to security, as well as famous cases related to criminals using encryption. Continue reading →

Disintermediating the Major Defense Contractors

Innovative and cost-effective altogether? Think SpaceShipOne, a commercial space ship that didn't come from a major defense contractor, not even NASA but from a competition won by a privately run company. How to disintermediate yet innovate? Become a venture capitalist, or an angel investor and optimistically hope the academic-to-commercialization process would happen with one of your investments. The DeVenCI project aims to connect sellers with buyers and seems like a sound short-term objectives oriented idea compared with In-Q-Tel the CIA's VC fund emphasizing on long-term R&D :

"Some companies have already profited from the program. In 2003, when DeVenCI was in its experimental phase, the Defense Information Systems Agency was looking for ways to protect computer networks. After speaking to several companies through DeVenCI and evaluating their technology, the agency wound up working with ArcSight, a software company based in Cupertino, Calif., which won $3.6 million in related contracts over the next few years, DeVenCI officials said. Mr. Novak of Novak Biddle said he brought with him to the March DeVenCI meeting two executives from a small start-up developing biometric technology that could be used for things like advanced fingerprinting or eye scans. Mr. Novak said the chief executive and chief technology officer from the Virginia company, which he declined to name for competitive reasons, gave a presentation to the roughly 50 assembled procurement agents."

Here's In-Q-Tel's investment portfolio so far -- Google used to be among them.

Related posts:
Insider Competition in the Defense Industry
Aha, a Backdoor!
Overachieving Technology Companies
Continue reading →

DDoS on Demand VS DDoS Extortion

There were recent speculations on the decline of DDoS attacks, in respect to the lack of companies actually paying to extortion attacks and that it's supposedly not a cost effective approach for malicious attackers to use their botnets. Think again, as it's always a matter of a vendor's sensor network diversity, one that's also excluding targeting mom-and-pop web properties. Just because DDoS extortion may not be working, and I say may not be working because only a few companies would admit they have paid money given the simple math of losing revenues on an hourly basis and spending more on bandwidth and security consultancy than the money requested, DDoS on demand still remains a well developed underground business model. DDoS attacks may not be profitable for the attacker directly performing them, but remain profitable if he's getting paid to provide the service only. Here's an excerpt from my Future Trends of Malware (January, 2006) publication related to DDoS extortion :

"Now you should ask yourself, would total cost of ownership of the business, the costs of the bandwidth, the DDoS attack protection solution, or the botmaster’s deal with the devil style proposition can solve the situation. If you’re thinking big, each and every time an organization pays, it not only risks a repeated demand, but is also fueling the growth of the practice in itself – so don’t do it!"

I'm aware of an ironic situation where a small-biz client's web server started getting DDoS without any reason whatsoever. The first thing that came to my mind was that it's either a DDoS extortion, or a possible rival, so I asked whether or not they've received any extortion emails. They declined, and here comes the interesting part, two days later, the attacks stopped, and a letter arrived in the form of the following email - "We saw you ignored our first email so we had to demonstrate you the power of our attack, this is your second chance to bla bla bla". What happened, and why did they say no extortion emails were sent? Here comes the irony, in the spam folder of the publicly obtainable email account for the domain was the original extortion email, that got detected as a spam. Time for some cyber intelligence to assess their capacity.. Never comply with such letters, or they'll come back for more. By the way, ever thought of the DDoS extortion bluff?

Here's another excerpt on DDoS on demand :

"There’s a lot of demand for paying to teens to shut down your competitors and hoping they would go under the radar, and while ethics are excluded, given these get busted, they’ll be the first to forward the responsibility to the buyer of the service. There’s also a clear indication of market for such services, and sooner or later these individuals will improve their communication skills, thereby increasing the impact of these attacks. For instance, Jay Echouafni, CEO of TV retailer Orbit Communications, paid a group of botmasters to DDoS his competitors, where the outage costs were estimated at $2 million. Another case of DDoS on demand occurred in March, 2005, when the FBI arrested a 17 year old and a Michigan man for orchestrating a DdoS attack, again causing direct monetary loses. DDoS attacks, and the ease of gaining capability in this field are clearly increasing."

Unethical competitions would favor a service where a third party maintains the infrastructure, launches the attack, and for the safety of both parties, remain as anonymous as possible. Here' a related article at BBC News:

"We are seeing a lot of anti-competitive behaviour," he said. Mr Sop added that many more Asian targets were being hit by DDoS attacks - a region in which Symantec did not historically have a big presence. In Asia, he said, DDoS attacks were proving very popular with unscrupulous firms keen to get ahead of their rivals. "The really frightening thing is you can buy access to a botnet for a small amount of money and you can have you competitor down for a long time," he said."

I never actually enjoyed articles emphasizing on how Russian script kiddies are taking over the world given the idea of "outsourcing malicious services". So next time you see a DDoS attack coming from the Russian IP space against U.S companies, it could still be U.S based rivals that requested the attack on their U.S based competitors -- stereotypes keep you in the twilight zone.

Meanwhile, here's a proof hacktivism is still alive and fully operational as the Estonian Internet infrastructure's been recently under permanent DDoS attacks due to real-life tensions of removing a statue from the Soviet era. It wasn't Chinese Mao-ists that did it for sure, but the recent case is another proof that it's always about the money, as everyone not aware of different malicious attackers' motives is preaching. DDoS extortion isn't dead, it's just happening beneath the radar, as targets are picked up more appropriately balanced with less greed regarding this underground business model only.

UPDATE : More developments on the DDoS attacks in Estonia now combined with defacements, which I think was only a matter of time.

Related posts:
The Underground Economy's Supply of Goods
The War against botnets and DDoS attacks
Emerging DDoS Attack Trends
Korean Zombies Behind the Root Servers Attack
Hacktivism Tensions - Israel vs Palestine Cyberwars Continue reading →

A Chronology of a Bomb Plot

A very detailed overview of a bomb plot, especially the lines related to anything digital such as :

- "An e-mail sent from Mr. Khawaja to Mr. Khyam on Nov. 30, 2003, read: "It's not as easy as we thought it would be. We have to design the whole thing ourselves. "There are two parts to it, one transmitter and another receiver that will be at a distance of about 1 or 2km that will be attached to the wires and send out 5 volts down the line and then we get fireworks."

No details on whether or not the communication was encrypted, how it was decrypted -- indirectly through client side attacks for sure -- and was their communication on purposely intercepted or filtered though the noise with keywords such as transmitter, wires and fireworks.

- "Mr. Mahmood was working for the British gas company, Transco, and had stolen sensitive CD-ROMs from National Grid, a British utility, that detailed the layout of hundreds of kilometres of high-pressure gas pipelines in southeast England."

And the insider threat was just an overhyped threat with lack of statistical evidence of it happenning. Think twice. Don't dedicate efforts in ensuring such information never makes it out of the organization due to terrorist fears only, but consider the consequences of it getting into the wrong hands at the first place.

- "A notebook in the living room included references for books including The Virtue of Jihad, and Declaration of War."

Propaganda writings are easily obtainable online, which reminds me that monitoring them to the very last mile is worth the risk in order to further expand their network, of both, sites they visit and people they communicate with.

- "Downloaded on to his laptop was a computer file, The Mujahideen Explosive Handbook. It contained the exact recipe to build an ammonium nitrate bomb."

On purposely placed online DIY manuals can act as honeypots themselves. As we've already seen, counter-terrorism forces across the world are establishing such fake cyber jihad communities in order to lure and monitor wannabe jihadists. But monitoring who's obtaining the already hosted in the wild manuals, is far more beneficial than hoping someone will eventually fall a victim into your cyber trap.

In another related research by the RAND Corporation entitled "Exploring Terrorist Targeting Preferences" the authors try to come up with various scenarios on the process of prioritizing possible targets such as :

"the coercion hypothesis; the damage hypothesis; the rally hypothesis; and the franchise hypothesis. If Al-Qaeda directs the next attack the coercion and damage hypothesis, and, quite possibly both, are the most likely to influence the nature of the target.

Great psychological imagination applied in the paper, worth the read. From a statistical point of view, the probability of death due to a car accident is higher than that of a terrorist attack, so consider escaping the FUD related to terrorism that's streaming from your favorite TV channels in order to remain objective. The ugliest part of them all is that everyone's discussing the post-event actions taken, and no one is paying any attenting to the pre-event activities that made it possible, and with training camps under heavy fire, the digitalization of terrorist training is taking place.

And here's another great analysis, this time covering the process of how terrorists send money by combining anonymous Internet services in between mobile banking :

"Advanced mobile technology, cooperation between international mobile communications providers and international financial institutions and the lack of regulations make for a swift, cheap, mostly untraceable money transfer -- known as "m-payments" -- anywhere, anytime, by anyone with a mobile telephone."

Dare we say adaptive? Continue reading →

Winamp PoC Backdoor and a Zero Day

Listen to your infection? Not necessarily as this backdoor binds cmd.exe on port 24501, but needs to be socially engineered in the form of a plugin for Winamp. Code originally released in December, 2006, see attached screenshot. Not much of a fun here either, but as the folks at SANS point out Winamp doesn't play .MP4 files automatically from a web page, so no chance to have it embedded within popular sites and cause mass outbreaks as we saw it happen with the with ANI exploit code and the WMF one.

gen_wbkdr.dll
File size: 45056 bytes
MD5: 74d149f4a1f210ea41956af6ecedb96b
SHA1: 5a2e8d5727250a647ce44d00cf7446775e6cd7d5 Continue reading →

Anti-Censorship Lifestyle

Following a previous post on security lifestyle(s), and in between the ongoing efforts to censor a 16 digit number I feel it's about time you dress yourself properly in case you haven't done so already. Censorship in a Web 2.0 world is futile, the way security through obscurity is. Seems as everyone's talking about the number today, there's even a domain name registered with it. Continue reading →

The Brandjacking Index

Picture a situation where a customer gets tricked into authenticating at the wrong site of company XXX. Would they do business with company XXX after they get scammed, trojan-ized, and spammed to (virtual) death? I doubt so, and as we can also see in the results of a recently released survey on whether or not customers would do business with retailers who exposed personal data - they'd rather dump them right away.

MarkMonitor just released their first quarterly Brandjacking Index :

"The Brandjacking Index investigates trends, including drilled-down analysis of how the most popular brands are abused online and the industries in which abuse is causing the most damage. The report examines the ever-adaptive tactics of brandjackers such as cybersquatting, false association, pay-per-click (PPC) fraud, domain kiting, objectionable content, unauthorized sales channels and phishing. The Brandjacking Index tracks the top 25 brands from the 2006 Top 100 Interbrand study plus additional Interbrand ranked companies for business segment analysis."

The old marketing rule that a dissatisfied customer will share the bad experience with at least five more fully applies here, and given he or she's an opinion leader in their circle - you've got a problem as it's your brand in the domain name. Therefore, despite the companies developing a market segment for timely and reliably shutting down phishing sites, the most obvious "cybersquatted" domains shouldn't even be allowed to get registered at the first place. But given the flexibility of registering a domain these days, from a company's perspective, cybersquatting's an uncontrollable external factor, and in order to protect their future flow of "soft dollars" efforts to monitor the domain space are highly advisable.

There're several key techniques you should keep in mind. Cybersquatting, vulnerabilities within the browser to spoof the status bar and make it look like the legitimate page, or a malware infected PC that's basically redirecting all the known E-banking sites to fake ones. No anti virus, no Ebanking is highly advisable, yet not a solution to the problem, and E-banking site's compatibility with the most popular -- and targeted -- Internet Explorer browser ONLY, turn many precautions into a futile attempt to deal with the problem -- heading in the opposite direction. The question is, which technique is more effective at the end user's perspective, and how should the targeted organizations deal with this indirect form of attack on their brands, reputation and the rest of the "soft dollars" goodies such as favorable PR and stakeholder's comfortability? From another perspective, who's more irresponsible, the unaware end user, or banks whose web application security ignorance make it easier for phishers to establish trust?

One solution to the problem is shortening the lifetime of such a domain to the minimum by tracking and shutting them down by using a commercial service like this online trademark monitor, a screenshot of which you can see at the top of the post. Perhaps rather resources-consuming, but educating your customers for their own safety in times when anyone can register a pay-pal-login.tld domain like through third-party registers, is another way to go. Did I mention that anti-phishing toolbars are a free alternative in case common sense fails -- like it does? Continue reading →

Cryptome Under Fire

John Young at Cryptome.org is reporting that its hosting provider decided to terminate their relationship on the basis of violating their Acceptable Use Policy :

"This notice of termination is surprising for Verio has been consistently supportive of freedom of information against those who wish to suppress it. Since 1999 Cryptome has received a number of e-mailed notices from Verio's legal department in response to complaints from a variety of parties, ranging from British intelligence to alleged copyright holders to persons angry that their vices have been exposed (see below). In every case Verio has heretofore accepted Cryptome's explanation for publishing material, and in some cases removal of the material, and service has continued. In this latest instance there was no notice received from Verio describing the violation of acceptable use to justify termination of service prior to receipt of the certified letter, thus no opportunity to understand or respond to the basis for termination."

Guess who'll be the first echo-cursing in an unnamed CavePlex? That'll be Osama Bin Laden feeling sorry for not making copies of key documents on how the U.S Coast Guard is vulnerable to TEMPEST attacks. Cutting out the sarcasm, Cryptome is an OSINT heaven, no doubt about it, but it's also an initiative debunking the entire concept that secrecy actually results in improved and sustained security on an international level.

The data collected at Cryptome would never be destroyed, mainly because it's all digital, it's all distributable, and it simply wants to be free. Thought of the day - The man who brought fire to the world got burned at the stake. Continue reading →

Video Demonstration of Vbootkit

Orignally introduced at this year's Blackhat con in Amsterdam, the Vbootkit is a kit showcasing the execution of unsigned code on Windows Vista. Recently, the researchers released two videos demonstrating the attack worth watching. Here's the authors' research itself. Answering the mythical question on which is the most secure OS, direct the reply in a "which is the most securely configured one" manner, and you'll break through the technology solution myopia and hopefully enter the security risk management stage. A secure OS from what? Nothing's unhackable, the unhackable just takes a little while -- where the invisible incentivising in the desired direction is the shortcut. Continue reading →

Malicious Keywords Advertising

Blackhat SEO's been actively abused by spammers, phishers and malware authors, each of them contributing to the efficiency of the underground ecosystem. Comments spam, splogs, coming up with ways to get a backlink from a .EDU domain, the arsenal of tools to abuse traffic acquisition techniques has a new addition - paid keyword advertising directly leading to sites hosting exploit code :

"Those keywords put the criminals' sponsored links at the top of the page when searches were run for brand name sites like the Better Business Bureau or Cars.com, using phrases such as "betterbusinessbureau" or "modern cars airbags required." But when users clicked on the ad link, they were momentarily diverted to smarttrack.org, a malicious site that used an exploit against the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) function in Windows to plant a back door and a "post-logger" on the PC."

Here's another interesting subdomain that was using JPG images to "break the .exe extension ice" and redirect to anything malicious - pagead2.googlesyndication.com.mmhk.cn

What's the most cost-effective approach, yet the most effective one as well when it comes to that sort of scheme? On a quarterly basis, a "for-the-masses" zero day vulnerability becomes reality. The fastest exploitation of the "window of opportunity" until a patch is released and applied, is abused by embedding the exploit into high traffic web sites, or even more interesting, exploiting a vulnerability in a major Web 2.0 portal to further spread the first zero day. Therefore, access to top web properties is a neccessity, and much more cost effective compared to using AdSense. I wouldn't get surprised to find out that hiring a SEO expert to reposition the malicious sites is also happening at the time of blogging. Some details at McAfee's blog.

Despite the amateurs using purchased keywords as an infection vector, at another malicious url _s.gcuj.com we have a decent example of a timely exploitaition with _s.gcuj.com/t.js and _s.gcuj.com/1.htm using Microsoft's ANI cursor vulnerability to install online games related trojans - _t.gcuj.com/0.exe_ The series of malicious URLs are mostly advertised or directly injected into Chinese web forums, guestbooks etc. Here are some that are still active, the majority of AVs thankfully detect them already :

_cool.47555.com/xxxx.exe_
_d.77276.com/0.exe_
_www.puma163.com/pu/pu.exe_
_rzguanhai.com/server.exe_

The key point when it comes to such attackers shouldn't be the focus on current, but rather on emerging trends, and they have to do with anything, but malicious parties continuing to use AdSense to direct traffic to their sites in the long term. Watch a video related to the attacks, courtesy of Exploit Prevention Labs.

Continue reading →

Conventional Weaponry VS Cyber Terrorism

Insightful comment on how assymetric warfare and abusing the most versatile communication medium is something conventional weaponry cannot and should not aim to fight :

"Terrorists use a flat, open network of communications and pass their information mainly through the Internet, Lute said as he briefed the group at the Pentagon. These are aspects that defy U.S. military capability. “We buy airplanes, ships and tanks and recruit and train soldiers to deal with the geographics of a tangible target,” he said. “We can bomb training camps, and we can hunt down the enemy, but we can’t bomb the Internet.” By using a nodal network to spread their extremist ideologies, Lute said, terrorists are able to easily recruit members, acquire weapons, build leaders and receive financial backing."

A short excerpt from a previous post :

"A terrorists' training camp is considered a military target since it provides them the playground to develop their abilities. Sooner or later, it will feel the heat and dissapear from the face of the Earth, they know it, but don't care mainly because they've already produced and are distributing Spetsnaz type of video training sessions. So abusing information or the information medium itself is much more powerful from their perspective then destroying their means for communication, spread propaganda, and obviously recruit."

Reminds me of a great cartoon where soldiers are in the middle of a network centric warfare situation, all the equiptment on the field is in smoke or doesn't work, and soldiers beg the generals for more "shock and awe" action and less ELINT attacks. Which, of course, doesn't mean known adversary locations shouldn't get erased from the face of the Earth. Post strike imagery courtesy of FAS, here's the rest of the collection. Continue reading →

Malware Infected Removable Media

In a previous post I discussed various thought to be outdated physical security threats such as leaving behind CDs and DVDs malware ready and taking advantage of the auto loading feature most people conveniently have turned on by default. Seems like on purposely leaving behind pre-infected removable media with the hope that someone will pick them up and act as a trojan horse themselves, still remains rather common. Unless your organization has taken the necessary removable media precautions, a story on USB sticks with malware should raise your awareness on an attacker's dedication to succeed :

"Malware purveyors deliberately left USB sticks loaded with a Trojan in a London car park in a bid to trick users into getting infected. The attack was designed to propagate Trojan banking software that swiped users' login credentials from compromised machines. Check Point regional director Nick Lowe mentioned the ruse during a presentation at the Infosec trade show on Tuesday, but declined to go into further details, citing the need for confidentiality to protect an investigation he's involved in."

From an attacker's perspective that's an investment given USB sticks are left in parking lots around major banks, and finding a 1GB USB stick laying around would make someone's day for sure. Despite that in this case it's a banking trojan we're talking about, on a more advanced level, corporate espionage could be the main aim though the exploitation of various techniques. Continue reading →