Did Stuxnet Infect A Russian Nuclear Plant?

Kaspersky has claimed that the infamous Stuxnet computer worm “badly infected” the internal network of an unnamed Russian nuclear plant after it caused chaos in Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Speaking at a keynote presentation given at the Canberra Press Club 2013, Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky said a staffer at the unnamed nuclear plant informed him of the infection.

“[The staffer said] their nuclear plant network which was disconnected from the internet was badly infected by Stuxnet,” Kaspersky said.

“So unfortunately these people who were responsible for offensive technologies, they recognise cyber weapons as an opportunity.”

Stuxnet was discovered to have spread throughout industrial software and equipment in 2010 and is believed to have been created by the United States and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to Kaspersky’s source, the malware was carried into the Russian nuclear plant and installed on a physically separated “air-gapped” network.

Kaspersky also made a rather outlandish joke during his speech, saying that all data is subject to theft. “All the data is stolen,” Kaspersky said. “At least twice.”

“If the claim of the Russian nuclear plant infection is true, then it’s easy to imagine how this “collateral damage” could have turned into a very serious incident indeed, with obvious diplomatic repercussions,” said security expert Graham Cluley.

“There is no way to independently verify the claim, of course. But it is a fact that Stuxnet managed to infect many computer systems outside of its intended target in Iran,” Cluley added. “Indeed, the very fact that it spread out of control, was what lead to its discovery by security firms.”

Earlier this year, Symantec claimed that the Stuxnet computer worm could date back further than 2010 and was more widespread than originally believed.

Symantec’s report called “The Missing Link” found a build of the Stuxnet attack tool, dubbed Stuxnet 0.5, which it said dated back to 2005 and used different techniques to sabotage industrial facilities.

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Adobe Data Found Online

A computer security firm has discovered data it says belongs to some 152 million Adobe Systems Inc user accounts, suggesting that a breach reported a month ago is much larger than Adobe has so far disclosed and is one of the largest on record.

LastPass, a password security firm, said that it has found email addresses, encrypted passwords and password hints stored in clear text from Adobe user accounts on an underground website frequented by cyber criminals.

Adobe said last week that attackers had stolen data on more than 38 million customer accounts, on top of the theft of information on nearly 3 million accounts that it disclosed nearly a month earlier.

The maker of Photoshop and Acrobat software confirmed that LastPass had found records stolen from its data center, but downplayed the significance of the security firm’s findings.

While the new findings from LastPass indicate that the Adobe breach is far bigger than previously known, company spokeswoman Heather Edell said it was not accurate to say 152 million customer accounts had been compromised because the database attacked was a backup system about to be decommissioned.

She said the records include some 25 million records containing invalid email addresses, 18 million with invalid passwords. She added that “a large percentage” of the accounts were fictitious, having been set up for one-time use so that their creators could get free software or other perks.

She also said that the company is continuing to work with law enforcement and outside investigators to determine the cost and scope of the breach, which resulted in the theft of customer data as well as source code to several software titles.

The company has notified some 38 million active Adobe ID users and is now contacting holders of inactive accounts, she said.

Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy for the non-profit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said information in an inactive database is often useful to criminals.

He said they might use it to engage in “phishing” scams or attempt to figure out passwords using the hints provided for some of the accounts in the database. In some cases, people whose data was exposed might not be aware of it because they have not accessed the out-of-date accounts, he said.

“Potentially it’s the website you’ve forgotten about that poses the greater risk,” he said. “What if somebody set up an account with Adobe ten years ago and forgot about it and they use the same password there that they use on other sites?”

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ATM Malware Found In Mexico

A malicious software program identified in ATMs in Mexico has been improved and translated into English, which suggests it may be used elsewhere, according to security vendor Symantec.

Two versions of the malware, called Ploutus, have been discovered, both of which are engineered to empty a certain type of ATM, which Symantec has not identified.

In contrast to most malware, Ploutus is installed the old-fashioned way — by inserting a CD boot disk into the innards of an ATM machine running Microsoft Windows. The installation method suggests that cybercriminals are targeting standalone ATMs where access is easier.

The first version of Ploutus displays a graphical user interface after the thief enters a numerical sequence on an ATM’s keypad, although the malware can be controlled by a keyboard, wrote Daniel Regalado, a Symantec malware analyst, on Oct. 11.

Ploutus is programmed for a specific ATM model since it assumes there is a maximum of four cassettes per dispenser in the ATM. It then calculates the amount of money that should be dispensed based on the number of bills. If any of the cassettes have less than the maximum number of 40 bills, it releases whatever is left, repeating that process until the ATM is empty.

Kevin Haley, director of Symantec Security Response, said in an interview earlier this month that the attackers have deep knowledge of the software and hardware of the particular ATM model.

“They clearly know how this machine worked,” he said.

The source code of Ploutus “contains Spanish function names and poor English grammar that suggests the malware may have been coded by Spanish-speaking developers,” Regalado wrote.

In a new blog post, Regalado wrote that the attackers made Ploutus more robust and translated it into English, indicating the same ATM software can be exploited in countries other than Mexico.

The “B” variant of Ploutus has some differences. It only accepts commands through the keypad but will display a window showing the money available in the machine along with a transaction log as it dispenses cash. An attacker cannot enter a specific number of bills, so Ploutus withdraws money from the cassette with the most available bills, Regalado wrote.

Symantec advised those with ATMs to change the BIOS boot order to only boot from the hard disk and not CDs, DVDs or USB sticks. The BIOS should also be password protected so the boot options can’t be changed, Regalado wrote.

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Will Google’s Project Shield Work?

Google has opened Project Shield, its service for small websites that don’t have the forces to repel denial of service attacks that might come their way.

Google introduced the service on Google+, saying that it is aimed at websites that might otherwise be at risk of online disruption.

“Project Shield, [is] an initiative that enables people to use Google’s technology to better protect websites that might otherwise have been taken offline by “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks. We’re currently inviting webmasters serving independent news, human rights, and elections-related content to apply to join our next round of trusted testers,” it said.

“Over the last year, Project Shield has been successfully used by a number of trusted testers, including Balatarin, a Persian-language social and political blog, and Aymta , a website providing early-warning of scud missiles to people in Syria. Project Shield was also used to protect the election monitoring service in Kenya, which was the first time their site stayed up throughout an election cycle.”

Interested websites should visit the Google Project Shield page and request an invitation to the experience. They should not try to do the same at Nvidia’s website, as they will probably just come away with a handheld games console. This will not offer much assistance against DDoS attacks.

According to a video shared by Google last night, Project Shield works by combining the firm’s DDoS mitigation technologies and Page Speed Service (PSS).

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Are Russian Hackers Exploiting Android?

Russian mobile malware factories are working with thousands of affiliates to exploit Android users, a security company has claimed.

According to Lookout Mobile Security the system is so efficient that almost a third of all mobile malware is made by just 10 organisations operating out of Russia. These “malware HQs” are pumping out nasty toll fraud apps, largely aimed at Android users, which force the user to call premium rate numbers the report said.

Thousands of affiliate marketers are also profiting from the scheme and helping spread the malware by setting up websites designed to trick users into downloading seemingly legitimate apps. Affiliates can make up to $12,000 a month and are heavy users of Twitter.

The report’s release at the DEF CON 21 conference in Las Vegas indicated that Lookout Mobile Security are working with the spooks to bring the crooks down. The malware HQs had gone to great lengths to obfuscate and encrypt their code to make detection tricky, but their advertising was pretty brazen.

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Collaborating Viruses Showing Up

Two computer viruses are collaborating to defeat clean-up operations. Microsoft researcher Hyun Choi has found that the pair of viruses foil removal by regularly downloading updated versions of their malware partner.

It is the first time that such a defense plan has been noticed before. Choi said that the Vobfus and Beebone viruses, were regularly found together. Vobfus was the first to arrive on a machine, he said, and used different tactics to infect victims. Vobfus could be installed via booby-trapped links on websites, travel via network links to other machines or lurk on USB drives and infect machines they are plugged into.

Once installed, Vobfus downloaded Beebone which enrolled the machine into a botnet. After this the two start to work together to regularly download new versions of each other. If Vobfus was detected and remediated, it could have downloaded an undetected Beebone which can in turn download an undetected variant of Vobfus.

Vobfus become a persistent problem since 2009 when it first appeared.

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Malware Infections On Android Rising

An increasing number of Android phones are infected with mobile malware programs that are capable of turning the handsets into spying devices, according to a report from Kindsight Security Labs, a subsidiary of telecommunications equipment vendor Alcatel-Lucent.

The vast majority of mobile devices infected with malware are running the Android operating system and a third of the top 20 malware threats for Android by infection rate fall into the spyware category, Kindsight said in a report released Tuesday that covers the second quarter of 2013.

The Alcatel-Lucent subsidiary sells security appliances to ISPs (Internet service providers) and mobile network operators that can identify known malware threats and infected devices by analyzing the network traffic.

Data collected from its product deployments allows the company to compile statistics about how many devices connected to mobile or broadband networks are infected with malware and determine what are the most commonly detected threats.

The malware infection rate for devices connected to mobile networks is fairly low, averaging at 0.52%, Kindsight said in its report. These infected devices include mobile phones as well as Windows laptops that use a mobile connection through a phone, a 3G USB modem or a mobile hotspot device.

In January the number of infected mobile phones accounted for slightly more than 30% of all infected devices connected to mobile networks, but by June they grew to more than 50%.

The vast majority of infected mobile phones run Android. Those running BlackBerry, iOS and other operating systems represent less than 1% of infected mobile devices, Kindsight said.

When calculated separately, on average more than 1% of Android devices on mobile networks are infected with malware, Kindsight said in its report.

The malware threat most commonly seen on Android devices was an adware Trojan program called Uapush.A that sends SMS messages and steals information, Kindsight said. Uapush.A was responsible for around 53% of the total number of infections detected on Android devices.

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McAffee See Sure In Spam

The first three months of 2013 have seen a surge in spam volume, as well as a growing number of samples of the Koobface social networking worm and master boot record (MBR) infecting malware, according to antivirus vendor McAfee.

After remaining relatively stable throughout 2012, spam levels rose during the first quarter of 2013, reaching the highest volume seen in the past two years, McAfee said in a report released Monday.

The amount of spam originating from some countries rose dramatically, McAfee said. Spam from Belarus increased by 540% while spam originating in Kazakhstan grew 150%.

Cutwail, also known as Pushdo, was the most prevalent spam-sending botnet during the first quarter, McAfee said.

The increased Pushdo activity has recently been observed by other security companies as well. Last month, researchers from security firm Damballa found a new variant of the Pushdo malware that’s more resilient to coordinated takedown efforts.

On the malware front, McAfee has also seen a surge in the number of Koobface samples, which reached previously unseen levels during the first quarter of 2013. First discovered in 2008, Koobface is a worm that spreads via social networking sites, especially through Facebook, by hijacking user accounts.

The number of malware samples designed to infect a computer’s master boot record (MBR) also reached a record high during the first three months of 2013, after increasing during the last quarter of 2012 as well, McAfee said.

The MBR is a special section on a hard disk drive that contains information about its partitions and is used during the system startup operation. “Compromising the MBR offers an attacker a wide variety of control, persistence, and deep penetration,” the McAfee researchers said in the report.

The MBR attacks seen during the first quarter involved malware like StealthMBR, also known as Mebroot; Tidserv, also known as Alureon, TDSS and TDL; Cidox and Shamoon, they said.

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Kaspersky Finds New Malware

Kaspersky Lab has discovered three Flame spyware related malware threats that it said use “sophisticated encryption methods”.

Kaspersky claims that it uncovered the three new hostile programs while analysing a number of Command and Control (C&C) servers used by Flame’s creators.

“Sophisticated encryption methods were utilised so that no one, but the attackers, could obtain the data uploaded from infected machines,” the firm’s statement read.

“The analysis of the scripts used to handle data transmissions to the victims revealed four communication protocols, and only one of them was compatible with Flame.

“It means that at least three other types of malware used these Command and Control servers. There is enough evidence to prove that at least one Flame-related malware is operating in the wild.”

The discovery of the three programs indicates that Flame’s Command and Control platform was being developed in 2006, four years earlier than first thought.

Flame was originally uncovered in May targeting Iranian computer systems. The malware drew widespread concerns within the security industry regarding its advanced espionage capabilities.

The full scale of Flame and its overarching implications remain unknown, despite the ongoing joint research campaign being mounted by Kaspersky, IMPACT, CERT-Bund/BSI and Symantec.

“It was problematic for us to estimate the amount of data stolen by Flame, even after the analysis of its Command and Control servers,” said Kaspersky’s chief security expert, Alexander Gostev.

Following the discovery of the three new related programs, Kaspersky’s chief malware expert Vitaly Kamluk told The INQUIRER that Flame is not the only one in this big family.

“There are others and they aren’t just other known malwares such as Stuxnet, Gauss or Duqu,” he said. “They stay in the shadows and no one has published anything about them yet. Others were probably used for different campaigns.”

Kamluk added that it is “very possible” there are more than the three listed in Kaspersky’s report.

“They started building RedProtocol, yet another ‘language’ for unknown malware. No known client types are using that one, which means that there is even more malware out there,” he added.

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1 In 5 U.S. PCs Have No Antivirus Protection

Nearly a fifth of Windows PCs in the U.S. lack any active security protection, an antivirus vendor stated on Wednesday, citing numbers from a year-long project.

“The scale of this is unprecedented,” argued Gary Davis, the director of global consumer product marketing for McAfee, talking about the scope of his company’s sampling of PC security.

McAfee took measurements from scans of more than 280 million PCs over the last 12 months, and found that 19.3% of all U.S. Windows computers browsed the Web sans security software. Owners of those systems downloaded and used McAfee’s free Security Scan Plus, a tool that checks for antivirus programs and enabled firewalls.

Globally, the average rate was 17%, putting the U.S. in the top 5 most-unprotected countries of the 24 represented in the scans.

Of the unprotected PCs in the U.S., 63% had no security software at all, while the remaining 37% had an AV program that was no longer active. The latter were likely trial versions of commercial antivirus software that had expired.

Antivirus trials are a fact of life in the Windows world. Most new machines come with security software that runs for a limited time. Some new Dell PCs, for example, come with a 30-day trial of McAfee’s Security Center program.

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