WiFi-password-stealer - Simple Windows And Linux Keystroke Injection Tool That Exfiltrates Stored WiFi Data (SSID And Password)

Have you ever watched a film where a hacker would plug-in, seemingly ordinary, USB drive into a victim's computer and steal data from it? - A proper wet dream for some.

Disclaimer: All content in this project is intended for security research purpose only.

Introduction

During the summer of 2022, I decided to do exactly that, to build a device that will allow me to steal data from a victim's computer. So, how does one deploy malware and exfiltrate data? In the following text I will explain all of the necessary steps, theory and nuances when it comes to building your own keystroke injection tool. While this project/tutorial focuses on WiFi passwords, payload code could easily be altered to do something more nefarious. You are only limited by your imagination (and your technical skills).

Setup

After creating pico-ducky, you only need to copy the modified payload (adjusted for your SMTP details for Windows exploit and/or adjusted for the Linux password and a USB drive name) to the RPi Pico.

Prerequisites

• Physical access to victim's computer.

• Unlocked victim's computer.

• Victim's computer has to have an internet access in order to send the stolen data using SMTP for the exfiltration over a network medium.

• Knowledge of victim's computer password for the Linux exploit.

Requirements - What you'll need

• Raspberry Pi Pico (RPi Pico)
• Micro USB to USB Cable
• Jumper Wire (optional)
• pico-ducky - Transformed RPi Pico into a USB Rubber Ducky
• USB flash drive (for the exploit over physical medium only)

Note:

• It is possible to build this tool using Rubber Ducky, but keep in mind that RPi Pico costs about $4.00 and the Rubber Ducky costs $80.00.

• However, while pico-ducky is a good and budget-friedly solution, Rubber Ducky does offer things like stealthiness and usage of the lastest DuckyScript version.

• In order to use Ducky Script to write the payload on your RPi Pico you first need to convert it to a pico-ducky. Follow these simple steps in order to create pico-ducky.

Keystroke injection tool

Keystroke injection tool, once connected to a host machine, executes malicious commands by running code that mimics keystrokes entered by a user. While it looks like a USB drive, it acts like a keyboard that types in a preprogrammed payload. Tools like Rubber Ducky can type over 1,000 words per minute. Once created, anyone with physical access can deploy this payload with ease.

Keystroke injection

The payload uses STRING command processes keystroke for injection. It accepts one or more alphanumeric/punctuation characters and will type the remainder of the line exactly as-is into the target machine. The ENTER/SPACE will simulate a press of keyboard keys.

Delays

We use DELAY command to temporarily pause execution of the payload. This is useful when a payload needs to wait for an element such as a Command Line to load. Delay is useful when used at the very beginning when a new USB device is connected to a targeted computer. Initially, the computer must complete a set of actions before it can begin accepting input commands. In the case of HIDs setup time is very short. In most cases, it takes a fraction of a second, because the drivers are built-in. However, in some instances, a slower PC may take longer to recognize the pico-ducky. The general advice is to adjust the delay time according to your target.

Exfiltration

Data exfiltration is an unauthorized transfer of data from a computer/device. Once the data is collected, adversary can package it to avoid detection while sending data over the network, using encryption or compression. Two most common way of exfiltration are:

• Exfiltration over the network medium.

• This approach was used for the Windows exploit. The whole payload can be seen here.

• Exfiltration over a physical medium.

• This approach was used for the Linux exploit. The whole payload can be seen here.

Windows exploit

In order to use the Windows payload (payload1.dd), you don't need to connect any jumper wire between pins.

Sending stolen data over email

Once passwords have been exported to the .txt file, payload will send the data to the appointed email using Yahoo SMTP. For more detailed instructions visit a following link. Also, the payload template needs to be updated with your SMTP information, meaning that you need to update RECEIVER_EMAIL, SENDER_EMAIL and yours email PASSWORD. In addition, you could also update the body and the subject of the email.

 Note:

• After sending data over the email, the .txt file is deleted.

• You can also use some an SMTP from another email provider, but you should be mindful of SMTP server and port number you will write in the payload.

• Keep in mind that some networks could be blocking usage of an unknown SMTP at the firewall.

Linux exploit

In order to use the Linux payload (payload2.dd) you need to connect a jumper wire between GND and GPIO5 in order to comply with the code in code.py on your RPi Pico. For more information about how to setup multiple payloads on your RPi Pico visit this link.

Storing stolen data to USB flash drive

Once passwords have been exported from the computer, data will be saved to the appointed USB flash drive. In order for this payload to function properly, it needs to be updated with the correct name of your USB drive, meaning you will need to replace USBSTICK with the name of your USB drive in two places.

In addition, you will also need to update the Linux PASSWORD in the payload in three places. As stated above, in order for this exploit to be successful, you will need to know the victim's Linux machine password, which makes this attack less plausible.

Bash script

In order to run the wifi_passwords_print.sh script you will need to update the script with the correct name of your USB stick after which you can type in the following command in your terminal:

echo PASSWORD | sudo -S sh wifi_passwords_print.sh USBSTICK

where PASSWORD is your account's password and USBSTICK is the name for your USB device.

Quick overview of the payload

NetworkManager is based on the concept of connection profiles, and it uses plugins for reading/writing data. It uses .ini-style keyfile format and stores network configuration profiles. The keyfile is a plugin that supports all the connection types and capabilities that NetworkManager has. The files are located in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/. Based on the keyfile format, the payload uses the grep command with regex in order to extract data of interest. For file filtering, a modified positive lookbehind assertion was used ((?<=keyword)). While the positive lookbehind assertion will match at a certain position in the string, sc. at a position right after the keyword without making that text itself part of the match, the regex (?<=keyword).* will match any text after the keyword. This allows the payload to match the values after SSID and psk (pre-shared key) keywords.

For more information about NetworkManager here is some useful links:

• Manually creating NetworkManager profiles in keyfile format
• Description of keyfile settings plugin

Exfiltrated data formatting

Below is an example of the exfiltrated and formatted data from a victim's machine in a .txt file.

USB Mass Storage Device Problem

One of the advantages of Rubber Ducky over RPi Pico is that it doesn't show up as a USB mass storage device once plugged in. Once plugged into the computer, all the machine sees it as a USB keyboard. This isn't a default behavior for the RPi Pico. If you want to prevent your RPi Pico from showing up as a USB mass storage device when plugged in, you need to connect a jumper wire between pin 18 (GND) and pin 20 (GPIO15). For more details visit this link.

 Tip:

• Upload your payload to RPi Pico before you connect the pins.
• Don't solder the pins because you will probably want to change/update the payload at some point.

Payload Writer

When creating a functioning payload file, you can use the writer.py script, or you can manually change the template file. In order to run the script successfully you will need to pass, in addition to the script file name, a name of the OS (windows or linux) and the name of the payload file (e.q. payload1.dd). Below you can find an example how to run the writer script when creating a Windows payload.

python3 writer.py windows payload1.dd

Limitations/Drawbacks

• This pico-ducky currently works only on Windows OS.

• This attack requires physical access to an unlocked device in order to be successfully deployed.

• The Linux exploit is far less likely to be successful, because in order to succeed, you not only need physical access to an unlocked device, you also need to know the admins password for the Linux machine.

• Machine's firewall or network's firewall may prevent stolen data from being sent over the network medium.

• Payload delays could be inadequate due to varying speeds of different computers used to deploy an attack.

• The pico-ducky device isn't really stealthy, actually it's quite the opposite, it's really bulky especially if you solder the pins.

• Also, the pico-ducky device is noticeably slower compared to the Rubber Ducky running the same script.

• If the Caps Lock is ON, some of the payload code will not be executed and the exploit will fail.

• If the computer has a non-English Environment set, this exploit won't be successful.

• Currently, pico-ducky doesn't support DuckyScript 3.0, only DuckyScript 1.0 can be used. If you need the 3.0 version you will have to use the Rubber Ducky.

To-Do List

• Fix Caps Lock bug.
• Fix non-English Environment bug.
• Obfuscate the command prompt.
• Implement exfiltration over a physical medium.
• Create a payload for Linux.
• Encode/Encrypt exfiltrated data before sending it over email.
• Implement indicator of successfully completed exploit.
• Implement command history clean-up for Linux exploit.
• Enhance the Linux exploit in order to avoid usage of sudo.

KnowsMore - A Swiss Army Knife Tool For Pentesting Microsoft Active Directory (NTLM Hashes, BloodHound, NTDS And DCSync)

KnowsMore officially supports Python 3.8+.

Main features

• Import NTLM Hashes from .ntds output txt file (generated by CrackMapExec or secretsdump.py)
• Import NTLM Hashes from NTDS.dit and SYSTEM
• Import Cracked NTLM hashes from hashcat output file
• Import BloodHound ZIP or JSON file
• BloodHound importer (import JSON to Neo4J without BloodHound UI)
• Analyse the quality of password (length , lower case, upper case, digit, special and latin)
• Analyse similarity of password with company and user name
• Search for users, passwords and hashes
• Export all cracked credentials direct to BloodHound Neo4j Database as 'owned object'
• Other amazing features...

Getting stats

knowsmore --stats

This command will produce several statistics about the passwords like the output bellow

KnowsMore v0.1.4 by Helvio Junior
Active Directory, BloodHound, NTDS hashes and Password Cracks correlation tool
https://github.com/helviojunior/knowsmore

 [+] Startup parameters
     command line: knowsmore --stats 
     module: stats
     database file: knowsmore.db

 [+] start time 2023-01-11 03:59:20
[?] General Statistics
+-------+----------------+-------+
|   top | description    |   qty |
|-------+----------------+-------|
|     1 | Total Users    | 95369 |
|     2 | Unique Hashes  | 74299 |
|     3 | Cracked Hashes | 23177 |
|     4 | Cracked Users  | 35078 |
+-------+----------------+-------+

 [?] General Top 10 passwords
+-------+-------------+-------+
|   top | password    |   qty |
|-------+-------------+-------|
|     1 | password    |  1111 |
|     2 | 123456      |   824 |
|     3 | 123456789   |   815 |
|     4 | guest       |      553 |
|     5 | qwerty      |   329 |
|     6 | 12345678    |   277 |
|     7 | 111111      |   268 |
|     8 | 12345       |   202 |
|     9 | secret      |   170 |
|    10 | sec4us      |   165 |
+-------+-------------+-------+

 [?] Top 10 weak passwords by company name similarity
+-------+--------------+---------+----------------------+-------+
|   top | password     |   score |   company_similarity |   qty |
|-------+--------------+---------+----------------------+-------|
|     1 | company123   |    7024 |                   80 |  1111 |
|     2 | Company123   |    5209 |                   80 |   824 |
|     3 | company      |    3674 |                  100 |   553 |
|     4 | Company@10   |    2080 |                   80 |   329 |
|     5 | company10    |    1722 |                   86 |   268 |
|     6 | Company@2022 |    1242 |                   71 |   202 |
|     7 | Company@2024 |    1015 |                      71 |   165 |
|     8 | Company2022  |     978 |                   75 |   157 |
|     9 | Company10    |     745 |                   86 |   116 |
|    10 | Company21    |     707 |                   86 |   110 |
+-------+--------------+---------+----------------------+-------+

Installation

Simple

pip3 install --upgrade knowsmore

Note: If you face problem with dependency version Check the Virtual ENV file

Execution Flow

There is no an obligation order to import data, but to get better correlation data we suggest the following execution flow:

1. Create database file
2. Import BloodHound files
   1. Domains
   2. GPOs
   3. OUs
   4. Groups
   5. Computers
   6. Users
3. Import NTDS file
4. Import cracked hashes

Create database file

All data are stored in a SQLite Database

knowsmore --create-db

Importing BloodHound files

We can import all full BloodHound files into KnowsMore, correlate data, and sync it to Neo4J BloodHound Database. So you can use only KnowsMore to import JSON files directly into Neo4j database instead of use extremely slow BloodHound User Interface

# Bloodhound ZIP File
knowsmore --bloodhound --import-data ~/Desktop/client.zip

# Bloodhound JSON File
knowsmore --bloodhound --import-data ~/Desktop/20220912105336_users.json

Note: The KnowsMore is capable to import BloodHound ZIP File and JSON files, but we recommend to use ZIP file, because the KnowsMore will automatically order the files to better data correlation.

Sync data to Neo4j BloodHound database

# Bloodhound ZIP File
knowsmore --bloodhound --sync 10.10.10.10:7687 -d neo4j -u neo4j -p 12345678

Note: The KnowsMore implementation of bloodhount-importer was inpired from Fox-It BloodHound Import implementation. We implemented several changes to save all data in KnowsMore SQLite database and after that do an incremental sync to Neo4J database. With this strategy we have several benefits such as at least 10x faster them original BloodHound User interface.

Importing NTDS file

Option 1

Note: Import hashes and clear-text passwords directly from NTDS.dit and SYSTEM registry

knowsmore --secrets-dump -target LOCAL -ntds ~/Desktop/ntds.dit -system ~/Desktop/SYSTEM

Option 2

Note: First use the secretsdump to extract ntds hashes with the command bellow

secretsdump.py -ntds ntds.dit -system system.reg -hashes lmhash:ntlmhash LOCAL -outputfile ~/Desktop/client_name

After that import

knowsmore --ntlm-hash --import-ntds ~/Desktop/client_name.ntds

Generating a custom wordlist

knowsmore --word-list -o "~/Desktop/Wordlist/my_custom_wordlist.txt" --batch --name company_name

Importing cracked hashes

Cracking hashes

First extract all hashes to a txt file

# Extract NTLM hashes to file
nowsmore --ntlm-hash --export-hashes "~/Desktop/ntlm_hash.txt"

# Or, extract NTLM hashes from NTDS file
cat ~/Desktop/client_name.ntds | cut -d ':' -f4 > ntlm_hashes.txt

In order to crack the hashes, I usually use hashcat with the command bellow

# Wordlist attack
hashcat -m 1000 -a 0 -O -o "~/Desktop/cracked.txt" --remove "~/Desktop/ntlm_hash.txt" "~/Desktop/Wordlist/*"

# Mask attack
hashcat -m 1000 -a 3 -O --increment --increment-min 4 -o "~/Desktop/cracked.txt" --remove "~/Desktop/ntlm_hash.txt" ?a?a?a?a?a?a?a?a

importing hashcat output file

knowsmore --ntlm-hash --company clientCompanyName --import-cracked ~/Desktop/cracked.txt

Note: Change clientCompanyName to name of your company

Wipe sensitive data

As the passwords and his hashes are extremely sensitive data, there is a module to replace the clear text passwords and respective hashes.

Note: This command will keep all generated statistics and imported user data.

knowsmore --wipe

BloodHound Mark as owned

One User

During the assessment you can find (in a several ways) users password, so you can add this to the Knowsmore database

knowsmore --user-pass --username administrator --password Sec4US@2023

# or adding the company name

knowsmore --user-pass --username administrator --password Sec4US@2023 --company sec4us

Integrate all credentials cracked to Neo4j Bloodhound database

knowsmore --bloodhound --mark-owned 10.10.10.10 -d neo4j -u neo4j -p 123456

To remote connection make sure that Neo4j database server is accepting remote connection. Change the line bellow at the config file /etc/neo4j/neo4j.conf and restart the service.

server.bolt.listen_address=0.0.0.0:7687

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Osx-Password-Dumper - A Tool To Dump Users'S .Plist On A Mac OS System And To Convert Them Into A Crackable Hash

  OSX Password Dumper Script

Overview

A bash script to retrieve user's .plist files on a macOS system and to convert the data inside it to a crackable hash format. (to use with John The Ripper or Hashcat)

Useful for CTFs/Pentesting/Red Teaming on macOS systems.

Prerequisites

• The script must be run as a root user (sudo)
• macOS environment (tested on a macOS VM Ventura beta 13.0 (22A5266r))

Usage

sudo ./osx_password_cracker.sh OUTPUT_FILE /path/to/save/.plist

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PassBreaker - Command-line Password Cracking Tool Developed In Python

PassBreaker is a command-line password cracking tool developed in Python. It allows you to perform various password cracking techniques such as wordlist-based attacks and brute force attacks. 

Features

• Wordlist-based password cracking
• Brute force password cracking
• Support for multiple hash algorithms
• Optional salt value
• Parallel processing option for faster cracking
• Password complexity evaluation
• Customizable minimum and maximum password length
• Customizable character set for brute force attacks

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/HalilDeniz/PassBreaker.git

2. Install the required dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

python passbreaker.py <password_hash> <wordlist_file> [--algorithm]

Replace <password_hash> with the target password hash and <wordlist_file> with the path to the wordlist file containing potential passwords.

Options

• --algorithm <algorithm>: Specify the hash algorithm to use (e.g., md5, sha256, sha512).
• -s, --salt <salt>: Specify a salt value to use.
• -p, --parallel: Enable parallel processing for faster cracking.
• -c, --complexity: Evaluate password complexity before cracking.
• -b, --brute-force: Perform a brute force attack.
• --min-length <min_length>: Set the minimum password length for brute force attacks.
• --max-length <max_length>: Set the maximum password length for brute force attacks.
• --character-set <character_set>: Set the character set to use for brute force attacks.

Elbette! İşte İngilizce olarak yazılmış başlık ve küçük bir bilgi ile daha fazla kullanım örneği:

Usage Examples

Wordlist-based Password Cracking

python passbreaker.py 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 passwords.txt --algorithm md5

This command attempts to crack the password with the hash value "5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99" using the MD5 algorithm and a wordlist from the "passwords.txt" file.

Brute Force Attack

python passbreaker.py 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 --brute-force --min-length 6 --max-length 8 --character-set abc123

This command performs a brute force attack to crack the password with the hash value "5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99" by trying all possible combinations of passwords with a length between 6 and 8 characters, using the character set "abc123".

Password Complexity Evaluation

python passbreaker.py 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 passwords.txt --algorithm sha256 --complexity

This command evaluates the complexity of passwords in the "passwords.txt" file and attempts to crack the password with the hash value "5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99" using the SHA-256 algorithm. It only tries passwords that meet the complexity requirements.

Using Salt Value

python passbreaker.py 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 passwords.txt --algorithm md5 --salt mysalt123

This command uses a specific salt value ("mysalt123") for the password cracking process. Salt is used to enhance the security of passwords.

Parallel Processing

python passbreaker.py 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 passwords.txt --algorithm sha512 --parallel

This command performs password cracking with parallel processing for faster cracking. It utilizes multiple processing cores, but it may consume more system resources.

These examples demonstrate different features and use cases of the "PassBreaker" password cracking tool. Users can customize the parameters based on their needs and goals.

Disclaimer

This tool is intended for educational and ethical purposes only. Misuse of this tool for any malicious activities is strictly prohibited. The developers assume no liability and are not responsible for any misuse or damage caused by this tool.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! To contribute to PassBreaker, follow these steps:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new branch for your feature or bug fix.
3. Make your changes and commit them.
4. Push your changes to your forked repository.
5. Open a pull request in the main repository.

Contact

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about PassBreaker, please feel free to contact me:

• LinkedIn: LinkedIn
• TryHackMe: TryHackMe
• Instagram: Instagram
• YouTube: YouTube
• Email: halildeniz313@gmail.com

License

PassBreaker is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

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Mass-Bruter - Mass Bruteforce Network Protocols

Mass bruteforce network protocols

Info

Simple personal script to quickly mass bruteforce common services in a large scale of network.
It will check for default credentials on ftp, ssh, mysql, mssql...etc.
This was made for authorized red team penetration testing purpose only.

How it works

1. Use masscan(faster than nmap) to find alive hosts with common ports from network segment.
2. Parse ips and ports from masscan result.
3. Craft and run hydra commands to automatically bruteforce supported network services on devices.

Requirements

• Kali linux or any preferred linux distribution
• Python 3.10+

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/opabravo/mass-bruter
cd mass-bruter

# Install required tools for the script
apt update && apt install seclists masscan hydra

How To Use

Private ip range : 10.0.0.0/8, 192.168.0.0/16, 172.16.0.0/12

Save masscan results under ./result/masscan/, with the format masscan_<name>.<ext>

Ex: masscan_192.168.0.0-16.txt

Example command:

masscan -p 3306,1433,21,22,23,445,3389,5900,6379,27017,5432,5984,11211,9200,1521 172.16.0.0/12 | tee ./result/masscan/masscan_test.txt

Example Resume Command:

masscan --resume paused.conf | tee -a ./result/masscan/masscan_test.txt

Command Options

┌──(root㉿root)-[~/mass-bruter]
└─# python3 mass_bruteforce.py
Usage:  [OPTIONS]

  Mass Bruteforce Script

Options:
  -q, --quick           Quick mode (Only brute telnet, ssh, ftp , mysql,
                        mssql, postgres, oracle)
  -a, --all             Brute all services(Very Slow)
  -s, --show            Show result with successful login
  -f, --file-path PATH  The directory or file that contains masscan result
                        [default: ./result/masscan/]
  --help                Show this message and exit.

Quick Bruteforce Example:

python3 mass_bruteforce.py -q -f ~/masscan_script.txt

Fetch cracked credentials:

python3 mass_bruteforce.py -s

Todo

• Migrate with dpl4hydra
• Optimize the code and functions
• MultiProcessing

Any contributions are welcomed!

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Experts Fear Crooks are Cracking Keys Stolen in LastPass Breach

In November 2022, the password manager service LastPass disclosed a breach in which hackers stole password vaults containing both encrypted and plaintext data for more than 25 million users. Since then, a steady trickle of six-figure cryptocurrency heists targeting security-conscious people throughout the tech industry has led some security experts to conclude that crooks likely have succeeded at cracking open some of the stolen LastPass vaults.

Taylor Monahan is lead product manager of MetaMask, a popular software cryptocurrency wallet used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. Since late December 2022, Monahan and other researchers have identified a highly reliable set of clues that they say connect recent thefts targeting more than 150 people. Collectively, these individuals have been robbed of more than $35 million worth of crypto.

Monahan said virtually all of the victims she has assisted were longtime cryptocurrency investors, and security-minded individuals. Importantly, none appeared to have suffered the sorts of attacks that typically preface a high-dollar crypto heist, such as the compromise of one’s email and/or mobile phone accounts.

“The victim profile remains the most striking thing,” Monahan wrote. “They truly all are reasonably secure. They are also deeply integrated into this ecosystem, [including] employees of reputable crypto orgs, VCs [venture capitalists], people who built DeFi protocols, deploy contracts, run full nodes.”

Monahan has been documenting the crypto thefts via Twitter/X since March 2023, frequently expressing frustration in the search for a common cause among the victims. Then on Aug. 28, Monahan said she’d concluded that the common thread among nearly every victim was that they’d previously used LastPass to store their “seed phrase,” the private key needed to unlock access to their cryptocurrency investments.

MetaMask owner Taylor Monahan on Twitter. Image: twitter.com/tayvano_

Armed with your secret seed phrase, anyone can instantly access all of the cryptocurrency holdings tied to that cryptographic key, and move the funds to anywhere they like.

Which is why the best practice for many cybersecurity enthusiasts has long been to store their seed phrases either in some type of encrypted container — such as a password manager — or else inside an offline, special-purpose hardware encryption device, such as a Trezor or Ledger wallet.

“The seed phrase is literally the money,” said Nick Bax, director of analytics at Unciphered, a cryptocurrency wallet recovery company. “If you have my seed phrase, you can copy and paste that into your wallet, and then you can see all my accounts. And you can transfer my funds.”

Bax said he closely reviewed the massive trove of cryptocurrency theft data that Taylor Monahan and others have collected and linked together.

“It’s one of the broadest and most complex cryptocurrency investigations I’ve ever seen,” Bax said. “I ran my own analysis on top of their data and reached the same conclusion that Taylor reported. The threat actor moved stolen funds from multiple victims to the same blockchain addresses, making it possible to strongly link those victims.”

Bax, Monahan and others interviewed for this story say they’ve identified a unique signature that links the theft of more than $35 million in crypto from more than 150 confirmed victims, with roughly two to five high-dollar heists happening each month since December 2022.

KrebsOnSecurity has reviewed this signature but is not publishing it at the request of Monahan and other researchers, who say doing so could cause the attackers to alter their operations in ways that make their criminal activity more difficult to track.

But the researchers have published findings about the dramatic similarities in the ways that victim funds were stolen and laundered through specific cryptocurrency exchanges. They also learned the attackers frequently grouped together victims by sending their cryptocurrencies to the same destination crypto wallet.

A graphic published by @tayvano_ on Twitter depicting the movement of stolen cryptocurrencies from victims who used LastPass to store their crypto seed phrases.

By identifying points of overlap in these destination addresses, the researchers were then able to track down and interview new victims. For example, the researchers said their methodology identified a recent multi-million dollar crypto heist victim as an employee at Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm that works closely with law enforcement agencies to help track down cybercriminals and money launderers.

Chainalysis confirmed that the employee had suffered a high-dollar cryptocurrency heist late last month, but otherwise declined to comment for this story.

Bax said the only obvious commonality between the victims who agreed to be interviewed was that they had stored the seed phrases for their cryptocurrency wallets in LastPass.

“On top of the overlapping indicators of compromise, there are more circumstantial behavioral patterns and tradecraft which are also consistent between different thefts and support the conclusion,” Bax told KrebsOnSecuirty. “I’m confident enough that this is a real problem that I’ve been urging my friends and family who use LastPass to change all of their passwords and migrate any crypto that may have been exposed, despite knowing full well how tedious that is.”

LastPass declined to answer questions about the research highlighted in this story, citing an ongoing law enforcement investigation and pending litigation against the company in response to its 2022 data breach.

“Last year’s incident remains the subject of an ongoing investigation by law enforcement and is also the subject of pending litigation,” LastPass said in a written statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity. “Since last year’s attack on LastPass, we have remained in contact with law enforcement and continue to do so.”

Their statement continues:

“We have shared various technical information, Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), and threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) with our law enforcement contacts as well as our internal and external threat intelligence and forensic partners in an effort to try and help identify the parties responsible. In the meantime, we encourage any security researchers to share any useful information they believe they may have with our Threat Intelligence team by contacting securitydisclosure@lastpass.com.”

THE LASTPASS BREACH(ES)

On August 25, 2022, LastPass CEO Karim Toubba wrote to users that the company had detected unusual activity in its software development environment, and that the intruders stole some source code and proprietary LastPass technical information. On Sept. 15, 2022, LastPass said an investigation into the August breach determined the attacker did not access any customer data or password vaults.

But on Nov. 30, 2022, LastPass notified customers about another, far more serious security incident that the company said leveraged data stolen in the August breach. LastPass disclosed that criminal hackers had compromised encrypted copies of some password vaults, as well as other personal information.

In February 2023, LastPass disclosed that the intrusion involved a highly complex, targeted attack against a DevOps engineer who was one of only four LastPass employees with access to the corporate vault.

“This was accomplished by targeting the DevOps engineer’s home computer and exploiting a vulnerable third-party media software package, which enabled remote code execution capability and allowed the threat actor to implant keylogger malware,” LastPass officials wrote. “The threat actor was able to capture the employee’s master password as it was entered, after the employee authenticated with MFA, and gain access to the DevOps engineer’s LastPass corporate vault.”

Dan Goodin at Ars Technica reported and then confirmed that the attackers exploited a known vulnerability in a Plex media server that the employee was running on his home network, and succeeded in installing malicious software that stole passwords and other authentication credentials. The vulnerability exploited by the intruders was patched back in 2020, but the employee never updated his Plex software.

As it happens, Plex announced its own data breach one day before LastPass disclosed its initial August intrusion. On August 24, 2022, Plex’s security team urged users to reset their passwords, saying an intruder had accessed customer emails, usernames and encrypted passwords.

OFFLINE ATTACKS

A basic functionality of LastPass is that it will pick and remember lengthy, complex passwords for each of your websites or online services. To automatically populate the appropriate credentials at any website going forward, you simply authenticate to LastPass using your master password.

LastPass has always emphasized that if you lose this master password, that’s too bad because they don’t store it and their encryption is so strong that even they can’t help you recover it.

But experts say all bets are off when cybercrooks can get their hands on the encrypted vault data itself — as opposed to having to interact with LastPass via its website. These so-called “offline” attacks allow the bad guys to conduct unlimited and unfettered “brute force” password cracking attempts against the encrypted data using powerful computers that can each try millions of password guesses per second.

“It does leave things vulnerable to brute force when the vaults are stolen en masse, especially if info about the vault HOLDER is available,” said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at University of California, Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and lecturer at UC Davis. “So you just crunch and crunch and crunch with GPUs, with a priority list of vaults you target.”

How hard would it be for well-resourced criminals to crack the master passwords securing LastPass user vaults? Perhaps the best answer to this question comes from Wladimir Palant, a security researcher and the original developer behind the Adblock Plus browser plugin.

In a December 2022 blog post, Palant explained that the crackability of a LastPass master password depends largely on two things: The complexity of the master password, and the default settings for LastPass users, which appear to have varied quite a bit based on when those users began patronizing the service.

LastPass says that since 2018 it has required a twelve-character minimum for master passwords, which the company said “greatly minimizes the ability for successful brute force password guessing.”

But Palant said while LastPass indeed improved its master password defaults in 2018, it did not force all existing customers who had master passwords of lesser lengths to pick new credentials that would satisfy the 12-character minimum.

“If you are a LastPass customer, chances are that you are completely unaware of this requirement,” Palant wrote. “That’s because LastPass didn’t ask existing customers to change their master password. I had my test account since 2018, and even today I can log in with my eight-character password without any warnings or prompts to change it.”

Palant believes LastPass also failed to upgrade many older, original customers to more secure encryption protections that were offered to newer customers over the years. One important setting in LastPass is the number of “iterations,” or how many times your master password is run through the company’s encryption routines. The more iterations, the longer it takes an offline attacker to crack your master password.

Palant noted last year that for many older LastPass users, the initial default setting for iterations was anywhere from “1” to “500.” By 2013, new LastPass customers were given 5,000 iterations by default. In February 2018, LastPass changed the default to 100,100 iterations. And very recently, it upped that again to 600,000.

Palant said the 2018 change was in response to a security bug report he filed about some users having dangerously low iterations in their LastPass settings.

“Worse yet, for reasons that are beyond me, LastPass didn’t complete this migration,” Palant wrote. “My test account is still at 5,000 iterations, as are the accounts of many other users who checked their LastPass settings. LastPass would know how many users are affected, but they aren’t telling that. In fact, it’s painfully obvious that LastPass never bothered updating users’ security settings. Not when they changed the default from 1 to 500 iterations. Not when they changed it from 500 to 5,000. Only my persistence made them consider it for their latest change. And they still failed implementing it consistently.”

A chart on Palant’s blog post offers an idea of how increasing password iterations dramatically increases the costs and time needed by the attackers to crack someone’s master password. Palant said it would take a single GPU about a year to crack a password of average complexity with 500 iterations, and about 10 years to crack the same password run through 5,000 iterations.

Image: palant.info

However, these numbers radically come down when a determined adversary also has other large-scale computational assets at their disposal, such as a bitcoin mining operation that can coordinate the password-cracking activity across multiple powerful systems simultaneously.

Weaver said a password or passphrase with average complexity — such as “Correct Horse Battery Staple” is only secure against online attacks, and that its roughly 40 bits of randomness or “entropy” means a graphics card can blow through it in no time.

“An Nvidia 3090 can do roughly 4 million [password guesses] per second with 1000 iterations, but that would go down to 8 thousand per second with 500,000 iterations, which is why iteration count matters so much,” Weaver said. “So a combination of ‘not THAT strong of a password’ and ‘old vault’ and ‘low iteration count’ would make it theoretically crackable but real work, but the work is worth it given the targets.”

Reached by KrebsOnSecurity, Palant said he never received a response from LastPass about why the company apparently failed to migrate some number of customers to more secure account settings.

“I know exactly as much as everyone else,” Palant wrote in reply. “LastPass published some additional information in March. This finally answered the questions about the timeline of their breach – meaning which users are affected. It also made obvious that business customers are very much at risk here, Federated Login Services being highly compromised in this breach (LastPass downplaying as usual of course).”

Palant said upon logging into his LastPass account a few days ago, he found his master password was still set at 5,000 iterations.

INTERVIEW WITH A VICTIM

KrebsOnSecurity interviewed one of the victims tracked down by Monahan, a software engineer and startup founder who recently was robbed of approximately $3.4 million worth of different cryptocurrencies. The victim agreed to tell his story in exchange for anonymity because he is still trying to claw back his losses. We’ll refer to him here as “Connor” (not his real name).

Connor said he began using LastPass roughly a decade ago, and that he also stored the seed phrase for his primary cryptocurrency wallet inside of LastPass. Connor chose to protect his LastPass password vault with an eight character master password that included numbers and symbols (~50 bits of entropy).

“I thought at the time that the bigger risk was losing a piece of paper with my seed phrase on it,” Connor said. “I had it in a bank security deposit box before that, but then I started thinking, ‘Hey, the bank might close or burn down and I could lose my seed phrase.'”

Those seed phrases sat in his LastPass vault for years. Then, early on the morning of Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023, Connor was awoken by a service he’d set up to monitor his cryptocurrency addresses for any unusual activity: Someone was draining funds from his accounts, and fast.

Like other victims interviewed for this story, Connor didn’t suffer the usual indignities that typically presage a cryptocurrency robbery, such as account takeovers of his email inbox or mobile phone number.

Connor said he doesn’t know the number of iterations his master password was given originally, or what it was set at when the LastPass user vault data was stolen last year. But he said he recently logged into his LastPass account and the system forced him to upgrade to the new 600,000 iterations setting.

“Because I set up my LastPass account so early, I’m pretty sure I had whatever weak settings or iterations it originally had,” he said.

Connor said he’s kicking himself because he recently started the process of migrating his cryptocurrency to a new wallet protected by a new seed phrase. But he never finished that migration process. And then he got hacked.

“I’d set up a brand new wallet with new keys,” he said. “I had that ready to go two months ago, but have been procrastinating moving things to the new wallet.”

Connor has been exceedingly lucky in regaining access to some of his stolen millions in cryptocurrency. The Internet is swimming with con artists masquerading as legitimate cryptocurrency recovery experts. To make matters worse, because time is so critical in these crypto heists, many victims turn to the first quasi-believable expert who offers help.

Instead, several friends steered Connor to Flashbots.net, a cryptocurrency recovery firm that employs several custom techniques to help clients claw back stolen funds — particularly those on the Ethereum blockchain.

According to Connor, Flashbots helped rescue approximately $1.5 million worth of the $3.4 million in cryptocurrency value that was suddenly swept out of his account roughly a week ago. Lucky for him, Connor had some of his assets tied up in a type of digital loan that allowed him to borrow against his various cryptocurrency assets.

Without giving away too many details about how they clawed back the funds, here’s a high level summary: When the crooks who stole Connor’s seed phrase sought to extract value from these loans, they were borrowing the maximum amount of credit that he hadn’t already used. But Connor said that left open an avenue for some of that value to be recaptured, basically by repaying the loan in many small, rapid chunks.

WHAT SHOULD LASTPASS USERS DO?

According to MetaMask’s Monahan, users who stored any important passwords with LastPass — particularly those related to cryptocurrency accounts — should change those credentials immediately, and migrate any crypto holdings to new offline hardware wallets.

“Really the ONLY thing you need to read is this,” Monahan pleaded to her 70,000 followers on Twitter/X: “PLEASE DON’T KEEP ALL YOUR ASSETS IN A SINGLE KEY OR SECRET PHRASE FOR YEARS. THE END. Split up your assets. Get a hw [hardware] wallet. Migrate. Now.”

If you also had passwords tied to banking or retirement accounts, or even just important email accounts — now would be a good time to change those credentials as well.

I’ve never been comfortable recommending password managers, because I’ve never seriously used them myself. Something about putting all your eggs in one basket. Heck, I’m so old-fashioned that most of my important passwords are written down and tucked away in safe places.

But I recognize this antiquated approach to password management is not for everyone. Connor says he now uses 1Password, a competing password manager that recently earned the best overall marks from Wired and The New York Times.

1Password says that three things are needed to decrypt your information: The encrypted data itself, your account password, and your Secret Key. Only you know your account password, and your Secret Key is generated locally during setup.

“The two are combined on-device to encrypt your vault data and are never sent to 1Password,” explains a 1Password blog post ‘What If 1Password Gets Hacked?‘ “Only the encrypted vault data lives on our servers, so neither 1Password nor an attacker who somehow manages to guess or steal your account password would be able to access your vaults – or what’s inside them.

Weaver said that Secret Key adds an extra level of randomness to all user master passwords that LastPass didn’t have.

“With LastPass, the idea is the user’s password vault is encrypted with a cryptographic hash (H) of the user’s passphrase,” Weaver said. “The problem is a hash of the user’s passphrase is remarkably weak on older LastPass vaults with master passwords that do not have many iterations. 1Password uses H(random-key||password) to generate the password, and it is why you have the QR code business when adding a new device.”

Weaver said LastPass deserves blame for not having upgraded iteration counts for all users a long time ago, and called the latest forced upgrades “a stunning indictment of the negligence on the part of LastPass.”

“That they never even notified all those with iteration counts of less than 100,000 — who are really vulnerable to brute force even with 8-character random passwords or ‘correct horse battery staple’ type passphrases — is outright negligence,” Weaver said. “I would personally advocate that nobody ever uses LastPass again: Not because they were hacked. Not because they had an architecture (unlike 1Password) that makes such hacking a problem. But because of their consistent refusal to address how they screwed up and take proactive efforts to protect their customers.”

Bax and Monahan both acknowledged that their research alone can probably never conclusively tie dozens of high-dollar crypto heists over the past year to the LastPass breach. But Bax says at this point he doesn’t see any other possible explanation.

“Some might say it’s dangerous to assert a strong connection here, but I’d say it’s dangerous to assert there isn’t one,” he said. “I was arguing with my fiance about this last night. She’s waiting for LastPass to tell her to change everything. Meanwhile, I’m telling her to do it now.”

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Browser-password-stealer - Get All The Saved Passwords, Credit Cards And Bookmarks From Chromium Based Browsers Supports Chromium 80 And Above!

This python program gets all the saved passwords, credit cards and bookmarks from chromium based browsers supports chromium 80 and above!

Modules Required

To install all the required modules use the following code:
pip install -r requirements.txt

Supported browsers

Chromium Based Browsers

✔ Amigo
✔ Torch
✔ Kometa
✔ Orbitum
✔ Cent-browser
✔ 7star
✔ Sputnik
✔ Vivaldi
✔ Google-chrome-sxs
✔ Google-chrome
✔ Epic-privacy-browser
✔ Microsoft-edge
✔ Uran
✔ Yandex
✔ Brave
✔ Iridium

Install Required Python Packages

pip install -r requirements.txt

How to Use

Just run this chromium_based_browsers.py the code will create a folder based on the browser name and stores the saved passwords, credit cards and bookmarks in that folder.

10 Back-to-School Tech Tips for Kids, Teens and College Students

Farewell, summer. Hello, back-to-school season! While the chill may not be in the air yet, parents may be feeling the slight shiver of unease as their kids, tweens, teens, and young adults return to school and become re-entangled with the technology they use for their education and budding social lives. 

Before they hop on the bus or zoom off to college, alert your children to the following 10 online cybersecurity best practices to ensure a safe school year online. 

1. Keep Track of Mobile Devices

It sounds obvious but impart the importance to your kids of keeping their eyes on their devices at all times. Lost cellphones and laptops are not only expensive to replace but you lose control of the valuable personally identifiable information (PII) they contain. Protect all devices with unique, hard-to-guess passwords. Even better, enable biometric passwords, such as fingerprint or face ID. These are the hardest passwords to crack and can keep the information inside lost or stolen devices safe. 

2. Don’t Share Passwords

Streaming services host the most buzzworthy shows. All their friends may be raving about the latest episodes of a zombie thriller or sci-fi visual masterpiece, but alas: Your family doesn’t have a subscription to the streaming service. Cash-conscious college students especially may attempt to save money on streaming by sharing passwords to various platforms. Alert your children to the dangers of doing so. Sharing a password with a trusted best friend might not seem like a cyberthreat, but if they share it with a friend who then shares it with someone else who may not be so trustworthy, you just handed the keys to a criminal to walk right in and help themselves to your PII stored on the streaming service’s dashboard.     

Once the cybercriminal has your streaming service password, they may then attempt to use it to break into other sensitive online accounts. Criminals bank on people reusing the same passwords across various accounts. So, make sure that your children always keep their passwords to themselves and have unique passwords for every account. If they’re having a difficult time remembering dozens of passwords, sign them up for a password manager that can store passwords securely. 

3. Keep Some Details a Mystery on Social Media

Walk down any city or suburban street, and you’re likely to see at least one Gen Zer filming themselves doing the latest dance trend or taking carefully posed pictures with their friends to share on social media. According to one survey, 76% of Gen Zers use Instagram and 71% are on social media for three hours or more every day.1 And while they’re on social media, your children are likely posting details about their day. Some details – like what they ate for breakfast – are innocent. But when kids start posting pictures or details about where they go to school, where they practice sports, and geotagging their home addresses, this opens them up to identity fraud or stalking.  

Encourage your children to keep some personal details to themselves, especially their full names, full birthdates, address, and where they go to school. For their social media handles, suggest they go by a nickname and omit their birthyear. Also, it’s best practice to keep social media accounts set to private. If they have aspirations to become the internet’s next biggest influencer or video star, they can create a public account that’s sparse on the personal details. 

4. Say No to Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a major concern for school-age children and their parents. According to McAfee’s “Life Behind the Screens of Parents, Tweens, and Teens,” 57% of parents worry about cyberbullying and 47% of children are similarly uneasy about it. Globally, children as young as 10 years old have experienced cyberbullying.  

Remind your children that they should report any online interaction that makes them uncomfortable to an adult, whether that’s a teacher, a guidance counsellor, or a family member. Breaks from social media platforms are healthy, so consider having the whole family join in on a family-wide social media vacation. Instead of everyone scrolling on their phones on a weeknight, replace that time with a game night instead. 

5. Learning and Failing Is Always Better Than Cheating

ChatGPT is all the rage, and procrastinators are rejoicing. Now, instead of spending hours writing essays, students can ask artificial intelligence to compose it for them. ChatGPT is just the latest tool corner-cutters are adding to their toolbelt. Now that most kids, tweens, and teens have cellphones in their pockets, that means they also basically have cheating devices under their desks. 

To deter cheating, parents should consider lessening the pressure upon their kids to receive a good grade at any cost. School is all about learning, and the more a student cheats, the less they learn. Lessons often build off previous units, so if a student cheats on one test, future learning is built upon a shaky foundation of previous knowledge. Also, students should be careful about using AI as a background research tool, as it isn’t always accurate. 

6. Phishing

Phishing happens to just about everyone with an email address, social media account, or mobile phone. Cybercriminals impersonate businesses, authority figures, or people in dire straits to gain financially from unsuspecting targets. While an adult who carefully reads their online correspondences can often pick out a phisher from a legitimate sender, tweens and teens who rush through messages and don’t notice the tell-tale signs could fall for a phisher and give up their valuable PII.  

Pass these rules onto your students to help them avoid falling for phishing scams: 

• Never share your passwords with anyone. 
• Never write down your Social Security Number or routing number or share it via email. 
• Be careful of electronic correspondences that inspire strong feelings like excitement, anger, stress, or sadness and require “urgent” responses.  
• Beware of messages with typos, grammar mistakes, or choppy writing (which is characteristic of AI-written messages). 

7. Social Engineering

Social engineering is similar to phishing in that it is a scheme where a cybercriminal ekes valuable PII from people on social media and uses it to impersonate them elsewhere or gain financially. Social engineers peruse public profiles and create scams targeted specifically to their target’s interests and background. For instance, if they see a person loves their dog, the criminal may fabricate a dog rescue fundraiser to steal their credit card information. 

It’s important to alert your children (and remind your college-age young adults) to be on the lookout for people online who do not have pure intentions. It’s safest to deal with any stranger online with a hefty dose of skepticism. If their heartstrings are truly tugged by a story they see online, they should consider researching and donating their money or time to a well-known organization that does similar work. 

8. Fake News

With an election on the horizon, there will probably be an uptick in false new reports. Fake news spreaders are likely to employ AI art, deepfake, and ChatGPT-written “news” articles to support their sensationalist claims. Alert your students – especially teens and young adults who may be interested in politics – to be on the lookout for fake news. Impart the importance of not sharing fake news with their online followings, even if they’re poking fun at how ridiculous the report is. All it takes is for one person to believe it, spread it to their network, and the fake news proponents slowly gather their own following. Fake news turns dangerous when it incites a mob mentality. 

To identify fake news, first, read the report. Does it sound completely outlandish? Are the accompanying images hard to believe? Then, see if any other news outlet has reported a similar story. Genuine news is rarely isolated to one outlet.   

Parents with students who have a budding interest in current events should share a few vetted online news sources that are well-established and revered for their trustworthiness. 

9. Browse Safely

In a quest for free shows, movies, video games, and knockoff software, students are likely to land on at least one risky website. Downloading free media onto a device from a risky site can turn costly very quickly, as malware often lurks on files. Once the malware infects a device, it can hijack the device’s computing power for the cybercriminal’s other endeavors or the malware could log keystrokes and steal passwords and other sensitive information. 

With the threat of malware swirling, it’s key to share safe downloading best practices with your student. A safe browsing extension, like McAfee Web Advisor, alerts you when you’re entering a risky site where malware and other shifty online schemes may be hiding. 

10. Stay Secure on Unsecure Public Wi-Fi

Dorms, university libraries, campus cafes, and class buildings all likely have their own Wi-Fi networks. While school networks may include some protection from outside cybercriminals, networks that you share with hundreds or thousands of people are susceptible to digital eavesdropping.   

To protect connected devices and the important information they house, connect to a virtual private network (VPN) whenever you’re not 100% certain of a Wi-Fi’s safety. VPNs are quick and easy to connect to, and they don’t slow down your device.  

Create a Family Device Agreement  

Dealing with technology is an issue that parents have always faced. While it used to be as simple as limiting TV time, they now deal with monitoring many forms of technology. From eyes glued to smartphones all day to hours spent playing video games, kids are immersed in technology.

Safe technology use doesn’t come as second nature — it needs to be taught. As a parent, the issues of when to get your child a phone, too much screen time and online harassment are top of mind. To address these concerns, it’s important to set boundaries and teach safe technology use. One way to do this is by creating a family media agreement or contract.

Family device agreements help teach proper technology use and set expectations. They allow you to start an open conversation with your kids and encourage them to be part of the decision making. By creating a family device agreement, your kids will know their boundaries and have concrete consequences for breaking them.

In today’s parenting, you may want to consider creating a McAfee Family Device Agreement. The most important thing is to have an agreement that is suitable for your kids’ ages and maturity and one that works for your family’s schedule. There’s no point making your kids sign an agreement that limits their time on Instagram when they’re probably quite happy visiting only the online sites that you have ‘bookmarked’ for them. 

Gear Up for a Safe School Year 

While diligence and good cyber habits can lessen the impact of many of these 10 threats, a cybersecurity protection service gives parents and their students valuable peace of mind that their devices and online privacy are safe. McAfee+ Ultimate Family Plan is the all-in-one device, privacy, and identity protection service that allows the whole family to live confidently online.  

1Morning Consult, “Gen Z Is Extremely Online”  

The post 10 Back-to-School Tech Tips for Kids, Teens and College Students appeared first on McAfee Blog.

World Wide Web Day: How to Protect Your Family Online

The first of August marks the celebration of World Wide Web Day – a day dedicated to the global network that powers our online activity, creating a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips. The World Wide Web (WWW) has revolutionized the way we communicate, learn, and explore, becoming an integral part of our daily lives. With the importance of the internet only growing stronger, it’s only fitting to honor the World Wide Web with a special day of commemoration. But with the internet comes risks, and it’s important to make sure your family is protected from potential threats. Here are some tips and tricks to keep your family safe online. 

1. Phishing Scam Protection

Phishing scams are a type of fraud that involves sending emails or other messages that appear to be from a legitimate source. The goal of these messages is to trick users into providing personal information such as passwords, credit card numbers, and bank account details. To protect against phishing scams, teach your family to:  

• Be suspicious of any emails or messages that look suspicious, even if they appear to come from a legitimate source.
• Verify the source of any email or message before responding.
• Never provide any personal information in response to an email or message.

2. Identity Scam Protection

Identity theft is a crime in which someone uses another person’s personal information to commit fraud or other crimes. Teach your family to protect against identity theft by:  

• Being aware of what personal information they share online.
• Using secure passwords for all accounts.
• Regularly monitoring their credit reports.

3. VPN Protection

A virtual private network (VPN) is a type of technology that provides a secure connection to a private network over the internet. A VPN can help protect your family’s online activity by encrypting the data and hiding your online activity from others. To ensure your family’s online safety, teach them to:  

• Use a reliable VPN service.
• Always connect to a VPN when accessing public Wi-Fi networks.
• Be aware of the country or region in which their VPN service is located.

4. Password Protection

Strong passwords are an important part of online security. Teach your family to create strong passwords and to never share them with anyone. Additionally, use a password manager to store and manage your family’s passwords. A password manager can help by:  

• Generating secure passwords.
• Encrypting and storing passwords in a secure, central location.
• Automatically filling in passwords on websites.

To conclude, celebrations on World Wide Web Day allow us to give thanks for the incredible world of knowledge, commerce, entertainment, communication, and innovation that the internet has provided, and continues to provide for us all. By following these tips and tricks, your family can stay safe online and enjoy all the benefits of the internet. Happy World Wide Web Day! 

The WWW has enabled us to achieve so many things that were simply impossible before. From the ability to catch up with friends and family across the globe to finding information about virtually any topic, the power of the internet is remarkable. In fact, the World Wide Web has significantly enriched our lives in countless ways. 

Did you know that the first-ever image posted on the World Wide Web was a photo of Les Horribles Cernettes, a parody pop band founded by employees at CERN? It was uploaded in 1992 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who used a NeXT computer as the first-ever web server. And although we use the term “surfing the net” regularly, do you know who actually coined the phrase? A librarian by the name of Jean Armour Polly wrote an article titled “Surfing the Internet” in the Wilson Library Bulletin at the University of Minnesota in 1992. 

There are many other remarkable facts about the World Wide Web, including its growth over the years. By the start of the year 1993, there were only 50 servers worldwide, but that number had grown to over 500 by October of the same year. Advances in data compression enabled media streaming to happen over the web, which was previously impractical due to high bandwidth requirements for uncompressed media. Although the number of websites online was still small in comparison to today’s figure, notable sites such as Yahoo! Directory and Yahoo! Search were launched in 1994 and 1995, respectively, marking the beginning of web commerce. 

On World Wide Web Day, you can celebrate by exploring the capabilities of the internet and discovering how it has changed over the years. Many organizations worldwide host events featuring conversations and interviews with technology leaders, entrepreneurs, and creators. There are also different talks, activities, and discussions online that you can join, allowing you to delve deeper into the history and potential of the World Wide Web. You could even consider running an event at your local business to market the day and celebrate what WWW has done for us all! 

The post World Wide Web Day: How to Protect Your Family Online appeared first on McAfee Blog.

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