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New ARM 'TIKTAG' Attack Affects Google Chrome and Linux Systems

 

A newly identified speculative execution attack named "TIKTAG" exploits ARM's Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) to leak data with a success rate exceeding 95%, allowing hackers to circumvent this security feature.

This discovery was detailed in a paper by researchers from Samsung, Seoul National University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. They demonstrated the attack on Google Chrome and the Linux kernel.

MTE, introduced in ARM v8.5-A architecture and subsequent versions, aims to detect and prevent memory corruption. It utilizes low-overhead tagging by assigning 4-bit tags to 16-byte memory chunks to ensure that the tag in the pointer matches the accessed memory region.

MTE operates in three modes: synchronous, asynchronous, and asymmetric, to balance security and performance.

The researchers identified two gadgets, TIKTAG-v1 and TIKTAG-v2, which leverage speculative execution to leak MTE memory tags efficiently. While leaking these tags doesn't directly reveal sensitive information such as passwords or encryption keys, it can potentially weaken MTE's defenses, making systems vulnerable to covert memory corruption attacks.

TIKTAG-v1 exploits CPU behaviors such as branch prediction and data prefetching to leak MTE tags, particularly affecting the Linux kernel functions involving speculative memory accesses, though kernel pointer manipulation is necessary.

The attack involves using system calls to trigger the speculative execution path and measuring cache states to infer memory tags.

TIKTAG-v2 exploits speculative execution's store-to-load forwarding, where a value stored to a memory address is immediately loaded from the same address. If the tags match, the value is forwarded, altering the cache state; if not, forwarding is blocked, leaving the cache state unchanged.

By probing the cache state post-speculative execution, attackers can deduce the tag check results.

The effectiveness of TIKTAG-v2 was demonstrated against the Google Chrome browser's V8 JavaScript engine, potentially exposing memory corruption vulnerabilities in the renderer process.

The researchers reported their findings to the affected parties between November and December 2023, receiving generally positive feedback but no immediate fixes. Their technical paper on arxiv.org suggests several mitigations:

1. Modify hardware design to prevent speculative execution from altering cache states based on tag check results.
2. Insert speculation barriers (e.g., sb or isb instructions) to block speculative execution of critical memory operations.
3. Add padding instructions to extend the execution window between branch instructions and memory accesses.
4. Enhance sandboxing mechanisms to strictly limit speculative memory access paths within safe memory regions.

ARM acknowledged the seriousness of the situation but did not view it as a compromise of the feature, noting that allocation tags are not intended to be secrets within the address space.

Chrome's security team recognized the issues but chose not to address the vulnerabilities, citing that the V8 sandbox is not designed to ensure the confidentiality of memory data and MTE tags. Additionally, Chrome does not currently enable MTE-based defenses by default, making it a lower priority for immediate fixes.

The MTE vulnerabilities in the Pixel 8 device were reported to the Android security team in April 2024 and were acknowledged as a hardware flaw qualifying for a bounty reward.

The DLBI Expert Called the Cost of Information about the Location of any Person

Ashot Oganesyan, the founder of the DLBI data leak intelligence and monitoring service, said that the exact location of any Russian on the black market can be found for about 130 dollars. 

According to him, this service in the illegal market is called a one-time determination of the subscriber's location. Identification of all phones of the client linked to the card/account using passport data costs from 15 thousand rubles ($200). 

"The details of the subscriber's calls and SMS for a month cost from 5 thousand ($66) to 30 thousand rubles ($400), depending on the operator. Receiving subscriber data by his mobile phone number cost from 1 thousand rubles ($13)", he added. 

Mr. Oganesyan said that fixing movement on planes, trains, buses, ferries, costs from 1.5 thousand ($20) to 3 thousand rubles ($40) per record. Data on all issued domestic and foreign passports will cost from 900 ($12) to 1.5 thousand rubles ($20) per request. Information about crossing the Russian border anywhere and on any transport costs from 3 thousand rubles ($40) per request, Ashot Oganesyan clarified, relying on the latest data on leaks. 

According to him, both law enforcement agencies and security services of companies are struggling with leaks, but only banks have managed to achieve some success. The staff of mobile network operators, selling data of calls and SMS of subscribers, are almost weekly convicted, however, the number of those wishing to earn money is not decreasing. 

The expert noted that under the pressure of the Central Bank of Russia and the constant public scandals, banks began to implement DLP systems not on paper, but in practice, and now it has become almost impossible to download a large amount of data unnoticed. As a result, today it is extremely rare to find a database with information about clients of private banks for sale. 

However, another problem of leakage from the marketing systems of financial organizations has emerged. The outsourcing of the customer acquisition process and the growth of marketplaces have led to information being stored and processed with a minimal level of protection and, naturally, leaking and getting into sales.

Exposed Corporate Credentials Endanger the Pharmaceutical Industry

 

Constella Intelligence published a report that includes fresh and additional information relevant to pharma sector exposures, breaches, and leakages, with a specific focus on employees and executives from the top twenty pharma firms on the Fortune Global 500 list. 

The report examined eighteen prominent pharmaceutical corporations and their nine hundred plus subsidiaries around the world to assess the presence of exposures of services, sensitive platforms, unpatched CVEs, and other security vulnerabilities. Among the major insights were some alarming numbers, such as 92% of pharmaceutical organisations having at least one exposed database with possible data leakage and 46% having an exposed SMB service. SMB flaws have already been used in prominent assaults such as WannaCry, NotPetya, Nachi, and Blaster worms. 

In 70% of the pharmaceutical M&A deals examined in 2020, the newly acquired subsidiary had a detrimental impact on the parent company's security posture, introducing tens, if not hundreds, of sensitive unprotected and unpatched services. 

The threat intelligence team identified 9,030 breaches/leakages and 4,549,871 exposed records—including attributes such as email addresses, passwords, phone numbers, addresses, and even credit card and banking information—related to employee corporate credentials from the companies examined by analysing identity records from data breaches and leakages discovered in open sources and on the surface, deep, and dark web. 

The proliferation and distribution of this sensitive employee data provides threat actors with the resources they need to carry out a wide range of cyberattacks, including impersonation, phishing, account takeover, and a variety of others that can lead to more sophisticated attacks like ransomware or coordinated disinformation campaigns. 

“The pharma sector’s role within the healthcare ecosystem, especially with today’s public health needs, only emphasizes how critically important it is that these companies protect themselves from cyber threat actors,” said Constella Intelligence CEO, Kailash Ambwani. “As we have seen before, only one exposed employee credential can lead to a company having their systems or supply chain shut down by a data breach leading to a ransomware attack, resulting in a shortage of life-saving supplies.”

Because of their intellectual property and confidential information, as well as their critical role in creating life-saving treatments, pharmaceutical firms are high-value targets for threat actors. The pandemic-driven shift toward remote workforces, combined with accelerating operational digitization, has increased the overall digital footprint of enterprises in this industry, resulting in more digital vulnerabilities and risk.

Experts Reported Data Theft in Dozens of Companies Through Modified 1C Modules

 

RTM Group found the malicious code in the finalized 1C software by outsourced programmers. Experts estimate that with its help the fraudsters could steal the data of several dozens of companies. 1C called the described scheme technically imperfect and recognized that the platform modules can be finalized by third-party specialists and subsequently used by criminals. 

A representative of the information security company RTM Group said that the data of several dozen companies were stolen through malicious code in 1C modules, which were being finalized by programmers on outsourcing. 

According to him, at least a third of 1C users order the completion of some modules from third-party programmers who can embed malicious code in them. As a result, such modules, when checking the license key, send the data available in them about customers, payments, and potential contracts to an email address that is pre-registered. 

The victims of the scheme were several dozen companies engaged in the trade or distribution of software. The representative of the RTM Group noted that the materials were sent to law enforcement agencies. 

The representative of 1C called the described scheme technically imperfect since the license check is performed at the "core" level of the system, the code of which is closed. At the same time, he acknowledged that the platform modules can be modified by third-party specialists and used by attackers in the future. 

According to IDC, the share of 1C software in the corporate market in Russia in 2020 was 39.2%. Small and medium-sized businesses, which do not have money for their own IT departments, and they turn to small firms, are at risk of getting to scammers first of all.

“There are hundreds of thousands of 1C programmers in Russia, some of them can really be intruders, especially in the current deteriorating economic environment,” explained Pavel Korostelev, head of the Security Code company’s product promotion department. 

Alexander Dvoryansky, Director of Strategic Communications at Infosecurity a Softline Company, noted that such incidents do not always occur maliciously, as programmers when finalizing the module may use third-party or free software, the source code of which already contains malicious code.

City of Grass Valley, California, Suffers Data Breach

 

After discovering about the breach, Grass Valley stated that they took quick steps to safeguard their networks, alerted law enforcement, and launched an investigation with the help of a cybersecurity firm.

The information of employees, citizens, and others was duplicated and transmitted to another network, according to more details about a significant data breach at the City of Grass Valley, California. The city council previously admitted that "unauthorised access" to its networks occurred between April 13 and July 1, 2021, according to a statement. 

The scope of the attack has now been determined, with the malicious actor transferring files outside of the city's network, including the financial and personal information of "individuals associated with Grass Valley," according to the investigation. The following information was accessed: 
  • Grass Valley employees, former employees, spouses, dependents, and individual vendors, name and one or more of the following: Social Security number, driver’s license number, and limited medical or health insurance information. 
  • Individual vendors that were employed by the city, name, and Social Security number. 
  • Individuals whose information may have been provided to the Grass Valley Police Department, name and one or more of the following: Social Security number, driver’s license number, financial account information, payment card information, limited medical or health insurance information, passport number, and username and password credentials to an online account.
  • Individuals whose data was provided to the Grass Valley Community Development Department in loan application documents, name and one or more of the following: Social Security number, driver’s license number, financial account numbers, and payment card numbers. 
Grass Valley stated it started contacting those affected on January 7 and has notified the appropriate authorities, including law enforcement. For everyone affected by the hack, the city is also providing free credit monitoring services. 

It noted, “Grass Valley sincerely regrets that this incident occurred and apologizes for any inconvenience or concern. To help prevent something like this from happening again, Grass Valley continues to review its systems and is taking steps to enhance existing security protocols.”

The source code of the Public Services Portal of the Russian Federation was made publicly available

On December 25, a publication appeared on the Cybersec hacker website, in which the author posted the source code of Public Services Portal in open access. According to him, the data was downloaded from resources from mos.ru subdomains.

The author of Cybersec discovered an open repository containing the source code of Public Services Portal in the format.git and unencrypted. In addition to the source code, the leak contains ESIA certificates that can be used to hack accounts.

After studying the code, it turned out that the Public Services Portal was created on the Bitrix engine, and the ESIA authorization system was based on OpenID. The author noted that his study will help to find other vulnerabilities of the system and close them or wrap them in his side and steal user data.

Also in the article, the author said that before publication he turned to the administration of Public Services Portal to tell about the data leak. However, they only asked him for a detailed description of the leak and its confirmation, and after that they stopped responding at all.

The head of the analytical center specializing in information security, Zecurion, Vladimir Ulyanov, said that most likely the fault is the usual human factor. In such cases, it is always either someone simply made a mistake due to lack of competence or carelessness and allowed the code to be disclosed, or it is a deliberate leak of information from those who have access to the source code.

Ashot Oganesyan, the founder of the DLBI data leak intelligence and monitoring service, said that user data did not get into the Network. However, it cannot be ruled out that the compromised code will allow attackers to gain access to them in the future.

 

Experts reported a possible data leak from the Mosgortrans website

According to their data, more than 1,000 phone numbers with names and more than 30,000 email addresses could have been leaked into the network.

Files containing names, email addresses, phone numbers, as well as usernames and passwords of the Mosgortrans (a state-owned company operating bus and electrical bus networks in Moscow and Moscow region) website users were publicly available. In total, the hacker posted about 1.1 thousand phone numbers and 31 thousand email addresses on the Internet.

The fact that the data appeared on the Network was reported by the Telegram channel “Information Leaks” on Thursday, October 14.

A representative of Kaspersky Lab confirmed that the company's employees found a message on one of the forums about a data leak, which presumably relates to the Mosgortrans website.

“According to a post on the forum, among the leaked data there are a number of configuration files: group, hosts, motd, my.cnf, networks, passwd, protocols, services, sshd_config, as well as files containing presumably user data: mails.txt , mostrans_admins.txt , Names.txt , phones.txt ", reported in the company.

Alexander Dvoryansky, Communications Director of Infosecurity, said that the company has not yet been able to confirm the authenticity of the database. But if the database is still real, the attackers can use the received data for phishing and targeted advertising.

It is noted that there is no possibility to create a personal account on the Mosgortrans website, where users could specify personal data, but there is a feedback form.

The company itself denies the fact of data leakage. “The published documents contain the standard contact information of employees, which is available in any bus depot, branch and office. In fact, this is a phone book, and most of the information is outdated. There was no hacking of the website and the internal database, this was already checked by our IT -specialists“, said the representative of the company.

Hacker gained access into a major CIS drug marketplace

Part of the database of the forum and its owners is available free of charge, the hackers offered to purchase the rest for 1 bitcoin. Experts hope that the action will allow a series of arrests and deal a major blow to the drug trade.

According to the leaked data, the owner and developer of the forum is a citizen of Latvia Artem Shvedov, one of the former developers is Roman Kukharenko, registered in the Moscow region, and the current administrator is a citizen of Ukraine Alexander Prokhozhenko.

Cybersecurity experts pointed out that in 99% of cases a person, whose name domain and hosting such resources are registered, may not even know about it.

According to Blockchair, a total of 20.57 bitcoins (about $1 million) went through the Legalizer forum's cryptocurrency wallet. At the same time, it is associated with larger wallets. More than 5.3 thousand bitcoin (about $248 million) passed through one of them.

In addition, the email address given by the hacker who hacked Legalizer matches the contact whose user calls himself a Russian-speaking hacker and an information security specialist at the shadow site o3shop.

An analyst of the operational monitoring group Angara Professional Assistance said that usually shadow forums are hacked "because of competition or partner revenge." In his opinion, the attack on Legalizer may be related to the redistribution of the drug market or extortion.

The expert admitted that hacking Legalizer can lead to arrests.

State borders may also become an obstacle for law enforcement agencies. Although the forum is oriented at the Russian-speaking audience from the CIS, it may be physically located on servers hosted in a country where drugs are legal.

Experts explained how and where confidential company data leaks

Despite the development of security tools, the number of leaks of confidential information of companies and individuals is not decreasing. At the same time, organizations are reluctant to report such incidents trying to hide the amount of damage caused. 

A survey of the financial, industrial, retail and IT segments showed that 35% of leaks are due to photographing and screen screenshots, 13% of employees make physical copies of documents, 30% of leaks are made in text format via messengers, e-mail and social networks.

According to the survey, the majority (76%) of organizations are aware of leaks and are trying to investigate them, 21% of companies do not have the opportunity to find insiders, and 17% do not even track such incidents.

The developer of DeviceLock DLP reported that at the moment, insider leaks are the most common cause of corporate data leaks. About 70% of all leaks occur due to the fault of unscrupulous employees. Then there are hacker attacks (about 15%) and negligence in storing and destroying data (about 15%).

Cybersecurity expert Sergey Vakulin believes that information is often leaked due to the absent-mindedness of employees.

So, US Congressman Mo Brooks accidentally posted a username and password from his mail on a social network. The politician posted a tweet with a photo of his computer attached. The photo showed a sticker glued to the monitor, on which users saw the pin code and password from the mail. Notably, Brooks is a member of the cybersecurity subcommittee.

Another serious problem is the leakage of personal data. According to experts, former and current law enforcement officers often agree to this illegal business. The passport data of an ordinary person costs around 2-3 thousand rubles ($30-40).

It is quite difficult to deal with leaks. In March 2021, Roskomnadzor blocked several Telegram channels that sold personal data. However, their closure did not have any impact on the personal data trading market.

"Nothing has changed in the work of closed forums and darknet sites. In addition, new channels are constantly emerging in place of the closed Telegram channels," the expert noted.

Security Experts listed who responsible for leaking your data to scammers

"There are three most common types of data leakage," said Vseslav Solenik, Director of the R-Vision Center of Expertise.

Personal data of Russians become available to fraudsters due to the negligence of employees and partners of companies, hacking of IT structures of organizations, or due to the carelessness of the citizens themselves.

Mr. Solenik stressed that in most cases, data leakage is illegal. Often, scammers find out personal data from the people themselves, promising them profitable bonus programs.

"Fraudsters attract them with various bonus programs, favorable offers and other things. And in exchange, the attackers receive a full set of personal data," the expert added.

The specifics of the Russian legislation is that even when transferring the full name and phone number of the company, the subject is obliged to fill out the consent form prescribed by law, where he is forced to specify his passport data, registration address and other information that can be used later by fraudsters.

"At the same time, it is impossible to fully protect your personal data from fraudsters today. You can only observe the hygiene of information security, raise your awareness to resist phishing and attacks, be vigilant and refuse to transfer personal data in exchange for minor services from dubious companies," the expert stressed.

Solenik added that it is equally important to know the current legislation. He called on the Russians to defend their rights in the field of personal data processing: to report incidents of leakage to the regulator and to seek the responsibility of companies for this.

Earlier, the majority of Russians supported the introduction of amendments to the law on personal data. Thus, 62 percent consider it necessary to be able to withdraw consent to the use of their personal information. In this case, Internet services will have to delete it within three days.

Russian experts give tips on how to prevent personal data leakage

In Russia, the number of cyber attacks increased by almost a quarter in the first quarter of 2020, said Anton Kukanov, head of the Russian Quality System (Roskachestvo) for Digital Expertise, citing Positive Technologies data.

The expert also clarified that about 13% of fraudulent links were related to the topic of the coronavirus pandemic. He drew attention to the fact that almost half of all stolen information in the first quarter of 2020 were usernames and passwords.

According to Anton Kukanov, the main purpose of scammers is not the personal data of users, but payment information.

"They use phishing campaigns, social engineering techniques, and a wide range of malicious programs for this purpose, such as keyloggers that record and transmit passwords, remote access programs that allow a hacker to control the device," said Mr. Kukanov.

The expert advises not to click on suspicious links and not to use sites with illegal content in order to prevent fraudsters from stealing logins and passwords. In particular, resources with free movies, including new products, or games that users love so much, can actually be "monetized" by viral software.

"It is also not recommended downloading applications on third-party sites. You need to do it exclusively in official stores, otherwise, you can quickly "catch" the virus. However, there is a risk of "infecting" the gadget through the official store, although less", noted Anton Kukanov.

Moreover, a specialist from Roskachestvo advises looking at the rating of the application before installing it and read reviews without fail in order not to download an application with a virus.

He also recommended paying attention to the permissions that are requested by installed applications. For security reasons, according to Kukanov, it is better to reject those that contradict the meaning of the application.