Sign up for our Technology Newsletter 
Kemoge Malware Menacing Android Phones
Comments Off on Kemoge Malware Menacing Android Phones
Smartphone owners running Google’s Android operating system
in more than 20 countries have been infected with a particularly aggressive malware program that bombards devices with unwanted advertisements.
Researchers from FireEye found that the malicious component, nicknamed Kemoge, has been seeded inside what appear to be legitimate apps offered on third-party application stores.
“This is another malicious adware family, possibly written by Chinese developers or controlled by Chinese hackers, spreading on a global scale that represents a significant threat,” wrote Yulong Zhang, a staff research scientist with FireEye.
Whomever created Kemoge repackaged legitimate apps with the malware and then promoted them on websites and through in-app ads to persuade people to download them.
Zhang listed a dozed affected apps: Sex Cademy, Assistive Touch, Calculator, Kiss Browser, Smart Touch, Shareit, Privacy Lock, Easy Locker, 2048kg, Talking Tom 3, WiFi Enhancer and Light Browser.
Third-party apps stores are considered risky places to download Android apps, as hackers frequently upload malicious apps to them. Google performs a security check on apps in its Play store, although harmful ones occasionally sneak in.
Kemoge not only displays unwanted ads, but it’s also loaded with eight root exploits that target a wide range of Android devices, Zhang wrote. A successful attack using those exploits means an attacker would have complete control over the device.
Kemoge will collect a device’s IMEI (International Mobile Station Equipment Identity) and IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) numbers, information on storage and apps, and send the information to a remote server.
That command-and-control server was still running, Zhang wrote. An analysis of traffic exchanged between an infected device and the server showed Kemoge also tries to uninstall antivirus apps.
FireEye came across an app called Shareit in Google’s Play store that was signed by the same digital certificate as the malicious one found on the third-party source.
The Google Play version of ShareIt did not have the eight root exploits or contact the command-and-control server, but it did have some of the same Kemoge code libraries. It now appears to be gone from Google Play.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/kemoge-malware-menacing-android-phones.html
Anthem Gets Hacked
Health insurer Anthem Inc, which has nearly 40 million U.S. customers, has confirmed that hackers had breached one of its IT systems and stolen personal information relating to current and former consumers and employees.
The No. 2 health insurer in the United States said the breach did not appear to involve medical information or financial details such as credit card or bank account numbers.
The information accessed during the “very sophisticated attack” did include names, birthdays, social security numbers, street addresses, email addresses and employment information, including income data, the company said.
Anthem said that it immediately made every effort to close the security vulnerability and reported the attack to the FBI. Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc FEYE. said it had been hired to help Anthem investigate the attack.
The company did not say how many customers and staff were affected, but the Wall Street Journal earlier reported it was suspected that records of tens of millions of people had been taken, which would likely make it the largest data breach involving a U.S. health insurer.
Anthem had 37.5 million medical members as of the end of December.
“This attack is another reminder of the persistent threats we face, and the need for Congress to take aggressive action to remove legal barriers for sharing cyber threat information,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement late Wednesday.
Chinese Hackers Go After Dissidents
August 26, 2013 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Chinese Hackers Go After Dissidents
The “Comment Crew,” a group of China-based hackers whose outing earlier this year in major media outlets caused a conflict with the U.S., have resumed their attacks against dissidents.
FireEye, a security vendor that specializes in trying to stop sophisticated attacks, has noticed attackers using a fresh set of tools and evasion techniques against some of its newer clients, which it can’t name. But Rob Rachwald, director of market research for FireEye, said in an interview Monday that those clients include an organization in Taiwan and others involved in dissident activity.
The Comment Crew was known for many years by security analysts, but its attacks on The New York Times, described in an extensive report in February from vendor Mandiant, thrust them into an uncomfortable spotlight, causing tense relations between the U.S. and China.
Rachwald said it is difficult to determine if the organizations being targeted now were targeted by the Comment Crew previously, but FireEye said last month that the group didn’t appear to be hitting organizations they had compromised before.
Organizations opposing Chinese government policies have frequently been targeted by hackers in what are believed to be politically motivated surveillance operations.
The Comment Crew laid low for about four months following the report, but emerging clues indicate they haven’t gone away and in fact have undertaken a major re-engineering effort to continue spying. The media attention “didn’t stop them, but it clearly did something to dramatically alter their operations,” Rachwald said in an interview.
“If you look at it from a chronological perspective, this malware hasn’t been touched for about 18 months or so,” he said. “Suddenly, they took it off the market and started overhauling it fairly dramatically.”
FireEye researchers Ned Moran and Nart Villeneuve described the new techniques on Monday on FireEye’s blog.
Two malware samples, called Aumlib and Ixeshe, had been used by the Comment Crew but not updated since 2011. Both malware programs have now been altered to change the appearance of their network traffic, Rachwald said.
Many vendors use intrusion detection systems to spot how malware sends data back to an attacker, which helps determine if a network has been compromised. Altering the method and format for how the data is sent can trick those systems into thinking everything is fine.
In another improvement, encryption is now employed to mask certain components of the programs’ networking communication, Rachwald said. The malware programs themselves, which are designed to steal data and log keystrokes, are basically the same.
Mandiant’s report traced the hacking activity to a specific Chinese military unit called “61398.” The company alleged that it waged a seven-year hacking spree that compromised 141 organizations.
Rachwald said it is strongly believed the Comment Crew is behind the new attacks given its previous use of Aumlib and Ixeshe. But the group has also re-engineered its attack infrastructure so much over the last few months that it is difficult to say for sure.