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Are Russian Hackers Exploiting Android?
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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.
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.
Malware Infections On Android Rising
July 8, 2013 by admin
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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.
Adobe Reader Security Issue Found
McAfee has discovered a vulnerability in Adobe’s Reader program that allows people to track the usage of a PDF file.
“Recently, we detected some unusual PDF samples,” McAfee’s Haifei Li said in a blog post. “After some investigation, we successfully identified that the samples are exploiting an unpatched security issue in every version of Adobe Reader.”
The affected versions of Adobe Reader also include the latest “sandboxed” Reader XI (11.0.2).
McAfee said that the issue is not a “serious problem” because it doesn’t enable code execution, however it does permit the sender to see when and where a PDF file has been opened.
This vulnerability could only be dangerous if hackers exploited it to collect sensitive information such as IP address, internet service provider (ISP), or even the victim’s computing routine to eventually launch an advanced persistent threat (APT).
McAfee said that it is unsure who is exploiting this issue or why, but have found the PDFs to be delivered by an “email tracking service” provider.
The vulnerability works when a specific PDF JavaScript API is called with the first parameter having a UNC-located resource.
“Adobe Reader will access that UNC resource. However, this action is normally blocked and creates a warning dialog,” Li said. “The danger is that if the second parameter is provided with a special value, it changes the API’s behavior. In this situation, if the UNC resource exists, we see the warning dialog.
“However, if the UNC resource does not exist, the warning dialog will not appear even though the TCP traffic has already gone.”
McAfee said that it has reported the issue to Adobe and is waiting for their confirmation and a future patch. Adobe wasn’t immediately available for comment at the time of writing.
“In addition, our analysis suggests that more information could be collected by calling various PDF Javascript APIs. For example, the document’s location on the system could be obtained by calling the Javascript “this.path” value,” Li added.
Is Twitter Home To Malware?
May 1, 2013 by admin
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Security outfit Trusteer has recently identified an active configuration of TorRAT targeting Twitter users. The malware launches a Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) attack through the browser of infected PCs, gaining access to the victim’s Twitter account to create malicious tweets.
Dana Tamir, Enterprise Security Director for Trusteer the malware, which has been used as a financial malware to gain access to user credentials and target their financial transactions, now has a new goal: to spread malware using the online social networking service. At this time the attack is targeting the Dutch market. But since Twitter is used by millions of users around the world, this type of attack can be used to target any market and any industry.
The attack is carried out by injecting Javascript code into the victim’s Twitter account page. The malware collects the user’s authentication token, which enables it to make authorized calls to Twitter’s APIs, and then posts new, malicious tweets on behalf of the victim.
Tamir said that the attack is particularly difficult to defend against because it uses a new sophisticated approach to spear-phishing. Twitter users follow accounts that they trust. Because the malware creates malicious tweets and sends them through a compromised account of a trusted person or organization being followed, the tweets seem to be genuine. The fact that the tweets include shortened URLs is not concerning: Twitter limits the number of characters in a message, so followers expect to get interesting news bits in the form of a short text message followed by a shortened URL. However, a shortened URL can be used to disguises the underlying URL address, so that followers have no way of knowing if the link is suspicious.
Is Android Safer Than iOS?
The general consensus is that iOS apps tend to be somewhat safer than their Android counterparts. Apple goes to great lengths to have apps vetted and as a result far fewer iOS apps end up with malware or security issues.
However, a new report fresh out of Appthority claims iOS apps have their fair share of issues and in some respects then can pose an even greater security risk than Android apps. The report covered the top 50 apps from the Apple App Store and Google Play and found that iOS apps exhibited riskier behaviour.
“The majority of iOS apps track for location (60%), share data with advertising or analytics networks (60%) and have access to the user’s contact list (54%). A small percentage of iOS apps also had access to the user’s calendar (14%),” the report found.
However, Android fans shouldn’t be too happy since their platform is not far behind. Half of them share data with ad networks or analytics companies, while 42 percent tracked location. Slightly better, but nothing to be proud about.
One of the most worrying findings is that both Android and iOS apps don’t do much to prevent personal data from leaking from our devices. Not a single iOS app analyzed in the study used encryption to send and receive data, and neither did 92 percent of Android apps.
So while it might seem that Android is a somewhat better platform for users with privacy concerns, both Google and Apple are pants at that sort of thing.
Windows 7 Infection Rate Soaring
Windows 7′s malware infection rate soared by as much as 182% this year, Microsoft said on Tuesday.
But even with that dramatic increase, Windows 7 remained two to three times less likely to fall to hacker attack than the aged Windows XP.
Data from Microsoft’s newest twice-yearly security report showed that in the second quarter of 2012, Windows 7 was between 33% and 182% more likely to be infected by malware than in the second quarter of 2011.
The infection rate for Windows RTM, or “release to manufacturing,” the original version launched in Oct. 2009, was 33% higher this year for the 32-bit edition (x86), 59% higher for the 64-bit (x64) OS.
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) — the upgrade that shipped in Feb. 2011 — saw even larger infection increases: 172% for x86, 182% for x64.
Microsoft blamed several factors for the boost in successful malware attacks, including less savvy users.
“This may be caused in part by increasing acceptance and usage of the newest consumer version of Windows,” said Microsoft in its latest Security Intelligence Report. “Early adopters are often technology enthusiasts who have a higher level of technical expertise than the mainstream computing population. As the Windows 7 install base has grown, new users are likely to possess a lower degree of security awareness than the early adopters and be less aware of safe online practices.”
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.
1 In 5 U.S. PCs Have No Antivirus Protection
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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.
Powerful “Flame” Virus Found In Iran
Security experts have uncovered a highly sophisticated computer virus in Iran and other Middle Eastern states that they believe was deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage.
Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran’s nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that claimed responsibility for discovering the virus.
Kaspersky researchers said on Monday they have yet to determine whether Flame had a specific mission like Stuxnet, and declined to say who they think built it.
Iran has accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.
Cyber security experts said the discovery publicly demonstrates what experts privy to classified information have long known: that nations have been using pieces of malicious computer code as weapons to promote their security interests for several years.
A cyber security agency in Iran said on its English website that Flame bore a “close relation” to Stuxnet, the notorious computer worm that attacked that country’s nuclear program in 2010 and is the first publicly known example of a cyber weapon.
Iran’s National Computer Emergency Response Team also said Flame might be linked to recent cyber attacks that officials in Tehran have said were responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.