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Hackers Steal $17,000 in 'Double Your Cash' Fraud on Bitcoin.org

 

Bitcoin.org, the authentic website of the Bitcoin project was hacked by criminals who advertised a double your money scam and unfortunately, many people fell into the trap.  

On September 23, visitors to bitcoin.org were welcomed with a popup instructing them to send cryptocurrency to a Bitcoin wallet using a QR code and earn twice the amount in exchange. 

The message stated, "The Bitcoin Foundation is giving back to the community! We want to support our users who have helped us along the years," encouraging users to send Bitcoins to the attacker's displayed wallet address. 

"Send Bitcoin to this address, and we will send double the amount in return!" 

To add credibility to the claim, the false notice informed visitors that the deal was confined to the first 10,000 users. Users were unable to go beyond the bogus popup message, leaving the rest of the website unreachable for the timeframe of the fraud. 

Soon after the hack, Bitcoin.org's site operator(s), known as Cøbra, issued a public notice about the incident. The Bitcoin address used in the fraud received 0.40BTC, which was worth $17,000. The hacker transferred nearly all of the money from the primary wallet to two additional holding wallets. 

Although Bitcoin is assumed to have been established by an anonymous persona, “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the author of the research paper that gave birth to the cryptocurrency, a newer identity “Cøbra” has recently been observed running the Bitcoin.org website, social media, and community channels. 

Following Cøbra's notification, Bitcoin.org's name registrar Namecheap immediately blocked the domain until the problem was resolved. 

Unfortunately, as evidenced by the attacker's wallet balance, some cryptocurrency fanatics may have fallen for the fraud. The transaction history reveals several payments to the attacker's wallet from various Bitcoin addresses. 

According to Bitcoin.org's anonymous operator CobraBitcoin, the fraudsters may have obtained unauthorised access by exploiting a vulnerability in the website's domain name system (DNS). Hackers typically browse websites in search of underlying flaws that may be exploited to launch attacks. 

The website has been restored to its pre-hack state after being taken down to investigate the underlying cause of the security incident.

Cryptoscams Cost Australians About AU$6.6 Million Every Month

 

From the beginning of the year to the end of August, losses due to cryptocurrency investment scams accounted for over a quarter of all scams reported to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC said that it received 3,007 reports totaling losses of AU$53.2 million in response to a notice from the Senate Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre. This accounted for 55% of all investment fraud losses and 48% of all investment fraud reports. 

New South Wales had 860 reports for losses of AU$20.6 million, Victoria had 563 reports for losses of AU$12.6 million, Queenslanders lost AU$8.2 million and submitted 485 reports, and Western Australia had 268 reports for losses of AU$3.8 million. 

People in the 55-64 age group lost over AU$12.6 million and submitted 365 complaints, while those over 65 lost AU$10.7 million and filed 356 reports, and those in the 44-54 age group filed 352 reports and lost AU$8.7 million. The losses declined with age, with individuals aged 35-44 reporting 627 losses totaling AU$7.6 million. Young people aged 25 to 34 lost AU$7 million and filed 570 reports. 

Between January and July 2021, Australians lost over 70 million AUD (or 50 million USD) as a result of such scams, according to Delia Rickard, ACCC Deputy Chair. The most popular investment frauds included cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin. 

Ms. Rickard went on to say that threat actors frequently entice victims with promises of high earnings and minimal risk. She cautioned that such incidents should draw the attention of investors rather than luring them in carelessly. “Be wary of investment opportunities with low risk and high returns. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” she said. 

"While the proportion of reports involving a financial loss has dropped this year, the people who do lose money are losing bigger amounts. The average loss so far this year is about AU$11,000 compared to AU$7,000 for the same period in 2020," Delia said. 

According to the ACCC, phishing scams have increased by 261%, remote access scams have increased by 144%, and identity theft has increased by 234%. The consumer watchdog said it has been giving scammer phone numbers to Australian carriers and working with banks to "raise awareness with their consumers" who may have been infected with the Android spyware Flubot.

Malicious software reportedly generates 39% of all internet traffic

According to experts, the share of malicious bots has been growing for a long time, but the pandemic has accelerated this process. Russia is among the top five countries in terms of the volume of generated unwanted traffic.

According to data from Barracuda Networks, 64% of Internet traffic in January-June 2021 was generated by automated tools. So, 39% of traffic was generated by malicious bots, 25% were generated by useful bots, 36% were generated by humans.

Attackers use bots for DDoS attacks, brute-force passwords from personal accounts, and create phishing sites. Malicious automated programs primarily threaten online stores and marketplaces.

The overwhelming majority of malicious traffic - 67% - is generated in North America. Europe is in second place with an indicator of 22%, Asia is in third place with 8%. The remaining 3% are in Oceania, South America and Africa.

According to Group-IB, Russia is among the top 5 countries in terms of the number of IP addresses from which unwanted traffic comes. "In August 2021, the traffic of bots for DDoS attacks in Russia increased up to 10 times compared to other months," added Olga Baranova, Director of Orange Business Services in Russia and the CIS.

According to Barracuda Networks, in the first half of 2021, malicious bots were most often directed to the websites and services of e-commerce organizations, as well as authorization pages where login and password are required.

According to Alexei Pavlov, Deputy Director of the Solar JSOC Cyber Attack Monitoring and Response Center at Rostelecom-Solar, in Russia, bots are primarily used to attack e-commerce, banks, and public services.

However, experts have recently observed the activity of bots in the energy industry, housing and communal services, medicine, education and entertainment.


Bogus Backup Message from WhatsApp Delivers Malware to Spanish Users

 

Authorities in Spain have issued a warning about a phishing campaign that impersonates WhatsApp to deceive consumers into installing a trojan. The recipients are advised to get copies of their chats and call records from a website that only sells the NoPiques virus. 

The NoPiques (“Do not chop”) malware is packaged in an a.zip archive that infects vulnerable devices on execution. The Spanish language subject line for dangerous emails is often ‘Copia de seguridad de mensajes de WhatsApp *913071605 No (xxxxx)', however, this may not be the case always as it can vary. Unlike many malware-peddling phishing messages in English and other languages, the emails are written in grammatically correct Spanish, or at least with few faults. 

The Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute's (INCIBE) Oficina de Seguridad del Internauta (OSI) has issued a warning regarding the malware campaign. “If you haven't run the downloaded file, your device may not have been infected. All you have to do is delete the file that you will find in the download folder. You should also send the mail you have received to the trash,” said INCIBE. 

“If you have downloaded and run the malicious file, your device may have been infected. To protect your device, you must scan it with an updated antivirus or follow the steps that you will find in the device disinfection section. If you need support or assistance to eliminate the Trojan, INCIBE offers you its response and support service for security incidents,” they added. 

INCIBE said that they remind consumers: in case of doubt about the legitimacy of an email, they should not click on any link or download any attached file. To check the veracity, consumers can contact the company or the service that supposedly sent them the email, always through their official customer service channels. 

They also said that in addition, for greater security, it is advisable to periodically back up all the information that consumers consider important so that, if their computer is affected by a security incident, they do not lose it. They further added that it is also advisable to keep their devices updated and always protected with an antivirus.

Newly Discovered ZE Loader Targets Online Banking Users

 

IBM Security researchers have discovered a new form of overlay malware targeting online banking users. Dubbed ZE Loader, is a malicious Windows application that attempts to obtain financial data from victims by establishing a back door connection. However, unlike the typical banking Trojans, the ZE loader employs multiple stealth tactics to remain hidden, and stores permanent assets on infected devices.

The malware is targeting banks, online payment processors, and cryptocurrency exchanges and is able to interact with the victim's device in real-time, thereby greatly enhancing the finesse of the whole operation. Once the victim falls into the trap, the attacker is notified in real-time and can take over the system remotely. Upon installation, the malware performs the steps listed below: 

• It ensures that the Trojan is running with administrator permissions. 
• It establishes a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection to the command-and-control server. 
• ZE Loader enables multiple RDP connections on the infected device by exploiting with the Windows Registry. 
• The malware also designs a new user account with the name Administart0r and password 123mudar. 
• Finally, the malware makes sure to allow RDP connections through the Windows Firewall. 

In the meantime, the malware will also plant some files on the victim's device. Some of these are created to loosen the security measures, while a JDK_SDK file carries all of the assets that malware uses during its attack. This is rather uncommon – typically, Trojans that execute overlay attacks fetch their images and phishing pages from the remote server. However, this malware stores all of these assets in an encrypted state on the victim's machine. 

The malware actively monitors newly opened processes and active browser sessions. If it spots that the victim is trying to load one of the supported online banking sites or an app that the Trojan targets, the attacker will receive a notification. Once the attackers connect via RDP, they can begin to implement commands. Usually, that would display the phishing assets from the JDK_SDK file that the ZE Loader brought along. The attackers are able to play out various scenarios to obtain data. For example, they could ask the victim for login credentials, credit card data, two-factor authentication, and more.

While the ZE Loader does not implement the most sophisticated overlay attack, it is still a very dangerous piece of malware. Protect your Windows systems from such attacks by using up-to-date antivirus tools and also make sure to learn how to browse the Web safely, researchers advised.

MSHTML Attack Targets Russian State Rocket Centre and Interior Ministry

 

An MSHTML vulnerability listed under CVE-2021-40444 is being used to target Russian entities, as per Malwarebytes. 

Malwarebytes Intelligence has detected email attachments directed especially against Russian enterprises. The first template they discovered is structured to resemble an internal communication within JSC GREC Makeyev. 

The Joint Stock Company State Rocket Center named after Academician V.P. Makeyev is a strategic asset of the country's defence and industrial complex for both the rocket and space industries. It is also the primary manufacturer of liquid and solid-fuel strategic missile systems with ballistic missiles, making it one of Russia's largest research and development centres for developing rocket and space technology. 

The email purports to be from the organization's Human Resources (HR) department. It stated that HR is conducting a check of the personal information given by workers. Employees are asked to fill out a form and send it to HR, or to respond to the email. 

When the recipient wishes to fill out the form, they must allow editing. And that action is sufficient to activate the exploit. When the target opens a malicious Office document, MSHTML loads a specially designed ActiveX control. The loaded ActiveX control can then execute arbitrary code to attack the machine with further malware. 

The second file, Malwarebytes discovered appears to be from Moscow's Ministry of the Interior. The attachment may be used to aim at a variety of fascinating targets. The documents' title translates to "Notification of illegal activity." 

It requests that the recipient complete the form and submit it to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or respond to the email. It also encourages the targeted victim to do so within seven days. 

Malwarebytes further stated, they seldom come across proof of cybercrime against Russian targets. Given the targets, particularly the first, they think a state-sponsored actor is behind these assaults, and are investigating the source of the strikes. 

Vulnerability Patch

The CVE-2021-40444 vulnerability is rather outdated in nature (it involves ActiveX) however, it was just recently discovered. It wasn't long before threat actors were posting proofs-of-concept, tutorials, and exploits on hacker forums, allowing anybody to conduct their own assaults by following step-by-step instructions.

Microsoft immediately issued mitigation instructions that blocked the installation of new ActiveX controls and managed to squeeze a fix into its most recent Patch Tuesday release, just a few weeks after the flaw was made public. 

The time it takes to build a patch, on the other hand, is frequently overshadowed by the time it takes users to apply it. Organizations, particularly large ones, are frequently discovered to be far behind in patching, thus the chances of more cyberattacks like these increase.

Raccoon Stealer has been Upgraded to Steal Cryptocurrency Alongside Financial Information

 

With the rise of ransomware and as-a-service offers, malware has become an ever-growing concern in the cyber realm. The developers of the Raccoon Stealer which is an information stealer have shifted their target, according to ZeroFox Threat Research. 

Since the beginning of the quarter, there have been several upgrades, the most prominent of which is the installation of new "crypters." The goal of a crypter is to obfuscate a binary by adding junk code, breaking up the flow of code without affecting the original functionality, or encrypting parts of code so that static signatures cannot identify them. Support for stealing various new bitcoin wallets has also been added, as well as the addition of Discord to the list of targeted applications. 

The stealer is being bundled with malware such as malicious browser extensions, crypto miners, the Djvu/Stop consumer ransomware strain, and click-fraud bots targeting YouTube sessions, according to samples received by Sophos. 

Raccoon Stealer is a sort of information stealer malware that was originally advertised in April 2019 on several underground forums by an attacker using the handle "raccoonstealer." It can steal stored auto-fill data, cookies, credentials, credit card info, and history from Chromium-based browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, just like most other stealers. Theft of many cryptocurrency wallets on a targeted basis is also possible. New cryptocurrencies are frequently added via updates, but it may also be customised to look for any wallet.dat file. 

A "clipper" for cryptocurrency theft is included in the upgraded stealer. The QuilClipper tool specifically targets wallets and associated passwords, as well as Steam-based transaction data. "QuilClipper steals cryptocurrency and Steam transactions by continuously monitoring the system clipboard of Windows devices it infects, watching for cryptocurrency wallet addresses and Steam trade offers by running clipboard contents through a matrix of regular expressions to identify them," the researchers noted. 

In the two years after its release, the team behind Raccoon Stealer has established itself as a capable team, frequently releasing new features and gaining a mostly positive reputation among the community. They've also showed a readiness to add functionality in response to customer requests, as demonstrated by the recently launched API for automatically creating encrypted builds.

The August cyber attacks targeted a dozen Russian banks

Up to 15 Russian financial organizations were subjected to a large-scale cyberattack in August and September of this year.

The first deputy head of the Information Security Department of the Bank of Russia, Artem Sychev, said that 10-15 Russian financial organizations that serve e-commerce were subjected to cyber attacks in August and early September.

According to him, it was several DDoS attacks. “Most of these attacks were repelled in an automated mode by the means that financial organizations have,” Sychev noted.

Financial CERT (Financial Sector Computer Emergency Response Team, a special division of the Bank of Russia) also helped to cope with the attacks, which quickly notified banks about the attacks and connected telecom operators to solving problems. They helped to quickly redirect traffic and enable tools that filter malicious traffic.

According to Sychev, the attacks were serious, but the attackers failed to disrupt the performance of credit institutions.

“But, nevertheless, there is such a risk of dependence on monopoly service providers for financial organizations,” he added.

“The events that took place in Russia in August and early September and were associated with massive DDoS attacks clearly showed that it is not enough for us, as the financial industry, to exchange information with each other, we need to do this with telecom operators, as they are the basis for interaction between customers and financial organizations. How quickly we can interact between financial organizations and telecom operators largely depends on how quickly we can respond to the attacks that occur in the financial sector, and how quickly we can cope with these attacks,” Sychev added.

On September 2, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Stanislav Kuznetsov said that the bank had successfully repelled the world's most powerful DDoS attack on the financial sector.

Exchange/Outlook Autodiscover Bug Exposed $100K Email Passwords

 

Guardicore Security Researcher, Amit Serper identified a critical vulnerability in Microsoft's autodiscover- the protocol, which permits for the automatic setup of an email account with only the address and password needed. 

The vulnerability allows attackers who buy domains containing the word "autodiscover," such as autodiscover.com or autodiscover.co.uk, to capture the clear-text login details of users experiencing network issues (or whose admins incorrectly configured DNS). 

From April 16 through August 25 of this year, Guardicore purchased many similar domains and used them as proof-of-concept credential traps: 
  •  Autodiscover.com.br 
  •  Autodiscover.com.cn 
  •  Autodiscover.com.co 
  •  Autodiscover.es 
  •  Autodiscover.fr 
  •  Autodiscover.in 
  •  Autodiscover.it 
  •  Autodiscover.sg 
  •  Autodiscover.uk 
  •  Autodiscover.xyz 
  •  Autodiscover.online 
A web server linked to these domains got hundreds of thousands of email credentials in clear text, most of which also operated as Windows Active Directory domain credentials. 

The credentials are sent from clients who request the URL /Autodiscover/autodiscover.xml with an HTTP Basic authentication header that already contains the unfortunate user's Base64-encoded credentials. 

The various factors contribute to the overall vulnerability like; the Autodiscover protocol's "backoff and escalate" behaviour when authentication fails, its failure to check Autodiscover servers before giving up user credentials, and its readiness to utilise insecure methods such as HTTP Basic in the first place. 

Failing upward with Autodiscover 

The main task of the Autodiscover protocol is to simplify account configuration—one can depend on a normal user to memorise their email address and password, but years of computing have imparted us that asking them to remember and correctly enter details like POP3 or IMAP4, TLS or SSL, TCP 465 or TCP 587, and the addresses of actual mail servers is several bridges too far. 

By keeping all nonprivate elements of account information on publicly available servers, the Autodiscover protocol enables regular users to configure their own email accounts without assistance. 

When the user creates an Exchange account in Outlook, they provide an email address and a password, such as bob@example.com with password Hunter2. With the user's email address in hand, Autodiscover searches for configuration information in a published XML document. It will attempt HTTP and HTTPS connections to the URLs listed below: (Note: contoso is a Microsoftism that refers to a hypothetical domain name rather than a specific domain.)

http(s)://Autodiscover.example.contoso.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml http(s)://example.contoso.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml 

Thus so far, it can be fairly believed that anyone permitted to store resources on example.contoso.com or its Autodiscover subdomain has been given explicit trust by the owner of example.contoso.com. 

However, if these initial connection attempts fail, Autodiscover will back off and attempt to locate resources in a higher-level domain. In this case, Autodiscover would seek for /Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml on both contoso.com and Autodiscover.contoso.com. 

If this fails, Autodiscover will attempt to submit email and password information to autodiscover.com itself. It would be terrible enough if Microsoft controlled autodiscover.com, but the truth is far more complicated. That domain was registered in 2002 and is now held by an unknown individual or organization that is utilizing GoDaddy's WHOIS privacy shield. 

Guardicore’s Analysis 

Guardicore acquired 96,671 distinct sets of email usernames and passwords in clear text over four months while running its test credential trap. These credentials were obtained from a diverse range of businesses, including publicly listed firms, manufacturers, banks, electricity companies, and others. 

When the Autodiscover protocol fails up from Autodiscover.contoso.com.br to Autodiscover.com.br, the security offered by Contoso's ownership of its own SSL cert disappears. Whoever purchased Autodiscover.com.br—in this scenario, Guardicore—merely supplies their own certificate, which fulfills TLS warnings despite not being associated with Contoso at all. 

In many situations, Outlook or a similar client will initially present its user's credentials in a more secure format, such as NTLM. 

Unfortunately, a simple HTTP 401 from the webserver requesting HTTP Basic auth in its place is all that is required, to which the client using Autodiscover will abide (typically without error or warning to the user) and send the credentials in Base64 encoded plain text, completely readable by the web server responding to the Autodiscover request.

Conclusion 
The truly terrible news is that there is no mitigation solution for this Autodiscover issue available to the general public.

If your company's Autodiscover infrastructure has a bad day, your client will "fail upward," possibly revealing your credentials. This issue has yet to be patched; according to Microsoft Senior Director Jeff Jones, Guardicore publicly revealed the flaw before reporting it to Microsoft. 

But Guardicore did offer these protective measures:
  • Make sure that you are actively blocking Autodiscover. domains (such as Autodiscover.com/Autodiscover.com.cn, etc) in your firewall. 
  • When deploying/configuring Exchange setups, make sure that support for basic authentication is disabled – using HTTP basic authentication is the same as sending a password in clear text over the wire.
  • A comprehensive-textual list of all top-level domains can be found in the following url: https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt 
For developers and vendors, the company offered this tip: 

Make sure that when you are implementing the Autodiscover protocol in your product you are not letting it “fail upwards”, meaning that domains such as “Autodiscover.” should never be constructed by the “back-off” algorithm.

SonicWall Patches Critical Flaw in SMA 100 Products

 

SonicWall has released a security advisory to warn users regarding a critical flaw impacting some of its Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 appliances. The vulnerability spotted as CVE-2021-20034 could potentially allow a remote unauthenticated hacker to delete arbitrary files from the targeted appliance and secure administrator access to the device.

"The vulnerability is due to an improper limitation of a file path to a restricted directory potentially leading to arbitrary file deletion as 'nobody'. There is no evidence that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild,” researchers explained. 

The critical flaw has received a score of 9.1 out of 10 on the CVSS scale of severity. The products that are affected are SMA 100, 200, 210, 400, 410, and 500v; As there are no temporary mitigations, SonicWall recommends impacted users execute applicable patches as soon as possible. 

Since the start of 2021, SonicWall SMA 100 series appliances have been targeted multiple times by ransomware gangs, with the end goal of moving laterally into the firm’s network.

Earlier, a threat group Mandiant tracked as UNC2447 exploited the CVE-2021-20016 zero-day bug in SonicWall SMA 100 Series VPN appliances to set up a new ransomware strain known as FiveHands. Their attacks targeted multiple North American and European organizations before SonicWall released patches in late February 2021. A similar zero-day flaw was also abused in January in attacks targeting SonicWall's internal systems and later instinctively exploited in the wild. 

Earlier this year in July, SonicWall issued a warning for an increased threat of ransomware attacks targeting unpatched end-of-life (EoL) SMA 100 series and Secure Remote Access (SRA) devices. Security researchers at CrowdStrike and CISA added to SonicWall's warning saying that the ransomware campaign was ongoing.

The latest updates for SMA 100 series products also address two medium-severity flaws, including one that can direct to privilege escalation to root, and one that can be abused for authenticated arbitrary code injection and DoS attacks. 

SonicWall recently revealed that its products are used by more than half a million customers in over 215 countries and territories worldwide. Many of them are deployed on the networks of the world's largest organizations, businesses, and government agencies.

Hackers Discover Technique to Make Malware Undetectable on Windows

 

Investigators within the cybersecurity industry have revealed a unique approach used by a threat actor to purposefully avoid detection using flawed digital signatures of their malware payloads. 

In a written report on Thursday, Google Threat Analysis Group's Neel Mehta claimed attackers produced flawed code signatures that seem to be valid by Windows and are not capable of somehow be decoded or controlled by OpenSSL code. 

A notorious family of undesirable software, called OpenSUpdater, used it to download and install other suspected programming on affected computers, was found to be exploiting the new technique. Users in the U. S., most likely to download pirated game versions and other gray-area software, were among the campaign or cyber attack targets. 

However, these conclusions are made from samples of OpenSUpdater that have been uploaded to VirusTotal since at least mid-August. 

Whilst still opponents are dependent on unlawfully procured digital certificates in previous malware and undesired software, or even have embedded attack code in digitally signed software components by trying to poison the supply chain, OpenS Updater continues to stand out because it uses deformed signatures deliberately to slip through the defense. Whereas the attack code has been entered into the digitally signed software. 

"This is the first time TAG has observed actors using this technique to evade detection while preserving a valid digital signature on PE files," Mehta said. 

"Code signatures on Windows executables provide guarantees about the integrity of a signed executable, as well as information about the identity of the signer. Attackers who can obscure their identity in signatures without affecting the integrity of the signature can avoid detection longer and extend the lifetime of their code-signing certificates to infect more systems." 

The artifacts are authenticated/signed with an invalid leaf X.509 certificate – modified in such a way so as contain an End-Of-Content (EOC) marker rather than a NULL tag in the 'parameters' feature of the Signature Algorithm fields. Despite products that use OpenSSL to get signature data are denied as invalid, tests on Windows PCs could enable the file to be executed without any notice of security.