Alleged Boss of ‘Scattered Spider’ Hacking Group Arrested

A 22-year-old man from the United Kingdom arrested this week in Spain is allegedly the ringleader of Scattered Spider, a cybercrime group suspected of hacking into Twilio, LastPass, DoorDash, Mailchimp, and nearly 130 other organizations over the past two years.

The Spanish daily Murcia Today reports the suspect was wanted by the FBI and arrested in Palma de Mallorca as he tried to board a flight to Italy.

“He stands accused of hacking into corporate accounts and stealing critical information, which allegedly enabled the group to access multi-million-dollar funds,” Murcia Today wrote. “According to Palma police, at one point he controlled Bitcoins worth $27 million.”

The cybercrime-focused Twitter/X account vx-underground said the U.K. man arrested was a SIM-swapper who went by the alias “Tyler.” In a SIM-swapping attack, crooks transfer the target’s phone number to a device they control and intercept any text messages or phone calls sent to the victim — including one-time passcodes for authentication, or password reset links sent via SMS.

“He is a known SIM-swapper and is allegedly involved with the infamous Scattered Spider group,” vx-underground wrote on June 15, referring to a prolific gang implicated in costly data ransom attacks at MGM and Caesars casinos in Las Vegas last year.

Sources familiar with the investigation told KrebsOnSecurity the accused is a 22-year-old from Dundee, Scotland named Tyler Buchanan, also allegedly known as “tylerb” on Telegram chat channels centered around SIM-swapping.

In January 2024, U.S. authorities arrested another alleged Scattered Spider member — 19-year-old Noah Michael Urban of Palm Coast, Fla. — and charged him with stealing at least $800,000 from five victims between August 2022 and March 2023. Urban allegedly went by the nicknames “Sosa” and “King Bob,” and is believed to be part of the same crew that hacked Twilio and a slew of other companies in 2022.

Investigators say Scattered Spider members are part of a more diffuse cybercriminal community online known as “The Com,” wherein hackers from different cliques boast loudly about high-profile cyber thefts that almost invariably begin with social engineering — tricking people over the phone, email or SMS into giving away credentials that allow remote access to corporate internal networks.

One of the more popular SIM-swapping channels on Telegram maintains a frequently updated leaderboard of the most accomplished SIM-swappers, indexed by their supposed conquests in stealing cryptocurrency. That leaderboard currently lists Sosa as #24 (out of 100), and Tylerb at #65.

0KTAPUS

In August 2022, KrebsOnSecurity wrote about peering inside the data harvested in a months-long cybercrime campaign by Scattered Spider involving countless SMS-based phishing attacks against employees at major corporations. The security firm Group-IB called the gang by a different name — 0ktapus, a nod to how the criminal group phished employees for credentials.

The missives asked users to click a link and log in at a phishing page that mimicked their employer’s Okta authentication page. Those who submitted credentials were then prompted to provide the one-time password needed for multi-factor authentication.

These phishing attacks used newly-registered domains that often included the name of the targeted company, and sent text messages urging employees to click on links to these domains to view information about a pending change in their work schedule. The phishing sites also featured a hidden Telegram instant message bot to forward any submitted credentials in real-time, allowing the attackers to use the phished username, password and one-time code to log in as that employee at the real employer website.

One of Scattered Spider’s first big victims in its 2022 SMS phishing spree was Twilio, a company that provides services for making and receiving text messages and phone calls. The group then pivoted, using their access to Twilio to attack at least 163 of its customers.

Among those was the encrypted messaging app Signal, which said the breach could have let attackers re-register the phone number on another device for about 1,900 users.

Also in August 2022, several employees at email delivery firm Mailchimp provided their remote access credentials to this phishing group. According to Mailchimp, the attackers used their access to Mailchimp employee accounts to steal data from 214 customers involved in cryptocurrency and finance.

On August 25, 2022, the password manager service LastPass disclosed a breach in which attackers stole some source code and proprietary LastPass technical information, and weeks later LastPass said an investigation revealed no customer data or password vaults were accessed.

However, on November 30, 2022 LastPass disclosed a far more serious breach that the company said leveraged data stolen in the August breach. LastPass said criminal hackers had stolen 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 an engineer who was one of only four LastPass employees with access to the corporate vault. In that incident, the attackers exploited a security 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.

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.

TURF WARS

Sosa and Tylerb were both subjected to physical attacks from rival SIM-swapping gangs. These communities have been known to settle scores by turning to so-called “violence-as-a-service” offerings on cybercrime channels, wherein people can be hired to perform a variety geographically-specific “in real life” jobs, such as bricking windows, slashing car tires, or even home invasions.

In 2022, a video surfaced on a popular cybercrime channel purporting to show attackers hurling a brick through a window at an address that matches the spacious and upscale home of Urban’s parents in Sanford, Fl.

January’s story on Sosa noted that a junior member of his crew named “Foreshadow” was kidnapped, beaten and held for ransom in September 2022. Foreshadow’s captors held guns to his bloodied head while forcing him to record a video message pleading with his crew to fork over a $200,000 ransom in exchange for his life (Foreshadow escaped further harm in that incident).

According to several SIM-swapping channels on Telegram where Tylerb was known to frequent, rival SIM-swappers hired thugs to invade his home in February 2023. Those accounts state that the intruders assaulted Tylerb’s mother in the home invasion, and that they threatened to burn him with a blowtorch if he didn’t give up the keys to his cryptocurrency wallets. Tylerb was reputed to have fled the United Kingdom after that assault.

KrebsOnSecurity sought comment from Mr. Buchanan, and will update this story in the event he responds.

Patch Tuesday, June 2024 “Recall” Edition

Microsoft today released updates to fix more than 50 security vulnerabilities in Windows and related software, a relatively light Patch Tuesday this month for Windows users. The software giant also responded to a torrent of negative feedback on a new feature of Redmond’s flagship operating system that constantly takes screenshots of whatever users are doing on their computers, saying the feature would no longer be enabled by default.

Last month, Microsoft debuted Copilot+ PCs, an AI-enabled version of Windows. Copilot+ ships with a feature nobody asked for that Redmond has aptly dubbed Recall, which constantly takes screenshots of what the user is doing on their PC. Security experts roundly trashed Recall as a fancy keylogger, noting that it would be a gold mine of information for attackers if the user’s PC was compromised with malware.

Microsoft countered that Recall snapshots never leave the user’s system, and that even if attackers managed to hack a Copilot+ PC they would not be able to exfiltrate on-device Recall data. But that claim rang hollow after former Microsoft threat analyst Kevin Beaumont detailed on his blog how any user on the system (even a non-administrator) can export Recall data, which is just stored in an SQLite database locally.

“I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this is the dumbest cybersecurity move in a decade,” Beaumont said on Mastodon.

In a recent Risky Business podcast, host Patrick Gray noted that the screenshots created and indexed by Recall would be a boon to any attacker who suddenly finds himself in an unfamiliar environment.

“The first thing you want to do when you get on a machine if you’re up to no good is to figure out how someone did their job,” Gray said. “We saw that in the case of the SWIFT attacks against central banks years ago. Attackers had to do screen recordings to figure out how transfers work. And this could speed up that sort of discovery process.”

Responding to the withering criticism of Recall, Microsoft said last week that it will no longer be enabled by default on Copilot+ PCs.

Only one of the patches released today — CVE-2024-30080 — earned Microsoft’s most urgent “critical” rating, meaning malware or malcontents could exploit the vulnerability to remotely seize control over a user’s system, without any user interaction.

CVE-2024-30080 is a flaw in the Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) service that can allow attackers to execute code of their choosing. Microsoft says exploitation of this weakness is likely, enough to encourage users to disable the vulnerable component if updating isn’t possible in the short run. CVE-2024-30080 has been assigned a CVSS vulnerability score of 9.8 (10 is the worst).

Kevin Breen, senior director of threat research at Immersive Labs, said a saving grace is that MSMQ is not a default service on Windows.

“A Shodan search for MSMQ reveals there are a few thousand potentially internet-facing MSSQ servers that could be vulnerable to zero-day attacks if not patched quickly,” Breen said.

CVE-2024-30078 is a remote code execution weakness in the Windows WiFi Driver, which also has a CVSS score of 9.8. According to Microsoft, an unauthenticated attacker could exploit this bug by sending a malicious data packet to anyone else on the same network — meaning this flaw assumes the attacker has access to the local network.

Microsoft also fixed a number of serious security issues with its Office applications, including at least two remote-code execution flaws, said Adam Barnett, lead software engineer at Rapid7.

“CVE-2024-30101 is a vulnerability in Outlook; although the Preview Pane is a vector, the user must subsequently perform unspecified specific actions to trigger the vulnerability and the attacker must win a race condition,” Barnett said. “CVE-2024-30104 does not have the Preview Pane as a vector, but nevertheless ends up with a slightly higher CVSS base score of 7.8, since exploitation relies solely on the user opening a malicious file.”

Separately, Adobe released security updates for Acrobat, ColdFusion, and Photoshop, among others.

As usual, the SANS Internet Storm Center has the skinny on the individual patches released today, indexed by severity, exploitability and urgency. Windows admins should also keep an eye on AskWoody.com, which often publishes early reports of any Windows patches gone awry.

PIP-INTEL - OSINT and Cyber Intelligence Tool

 

Pip-Intel is a powerful tool designed for OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) and cyber intelligence gathering activities. It consolidates various open-source tools into a single user-friendly interface simplifying the data collection and analysis processes for researchers and cybersecurity professionals.

Pip-Intel utilizes Python-written pip packages to gather information from various data points. This tool is equipped with the capability to collect detailed information through email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, and social media accounts. It offers a wide range of functionalities including email-based OSINT operations, phone number-based inquiries, geolocating IP addresses, social media and user analyses, and even dark web searches.

Microsoft Uncovers 'Moonstone Sleet' — New North Korean Hacker Group

A never-before-seen North Korean threat actor codenamed Moonstone Sleet has been attributed as behind cyber attacks targeting individuals and organizations in the software and information technology, education, and defense industrial base sectors with ransomware and bespoke malware previously associated with the infamous Lazarus Group. "Moonstone Sleet is observed to set up fake companies and

Treasury Sanctions Creators of 911 S5 Proxy Botnet

The U.S. Department of the Treasury today unveiled sanctions against three Chinese nationals for allegedly operating 911 S5, an online anonymity service that for many years was the easiest and cheapest way to route one’s Web traffic through malware-infected computers around the globe. KrebsOnSecurity identified one of the three men in a July 2022 investigation into 911 S5, which was massively hacked and then closed ten days later.

From 2015 to July 2022, 911 S5 sold access to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Windows computers daily, as “proxies” that allowed customers to route their Internet traffic through PCs in virtually any country or city around the globe — but predominantly in the United States.

911 built its proxy network mainly by offering “free” virtual private networking (VPN) services. 911’s VPN performed largely as advertised for the user — allowing them to surf the web anonymously — but it also quietly turned the user’s computer into a traffic relay for paying 911 S5 customers.

911 S5’s reliability and extremely low prices quickly made it one of the most popular services among denizens of the cybercrime underground, and the service became almost shorthand for connecting to that “last mile” of cybercrime. Namely, the ability to route one’s malicious traffic through a computer that is geographically close to the consumer whose stolen credit card is about to be used, or whose bank account is about to be emptied.

In July 2022, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive into 911 S5, which found the people operating this business had a history of encouraging the installation of their proxy malware by any means available. That included paying affiliates to distribute their proxy software by secretly bundling it with other software.

That story named Yunhe Wang from Beijing as the apparent owner or manager of the 911 S5 proxy service. In today’s Treasury action, Mr. Wang was named as the primary administrator of the botnet that powered 911 S5.

“A review of records from network infrastructure service providers known to be utilized by 911 S5 and two Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) specific to the botnet operation (MaskVPN and DewVPN) showed Yunhe Wang as the registered subscriber to those providers’ services,” reads the Treasury announcement.

Update, May 29, 12:26 p.m. ET: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) just announced they have arrested Wang in connection with the 911 S5 botnet. The DOJ says 911 S5 customers have stolen billions of dollars from financial institutions, credit card issuers, and federal lending programs.

“911 S5 customers allegedly targeted certain pandemic relief programs,” a DOJ statement on the arrest reads. “For example, the United States estimates that 560,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims originated from compromised IP addresses, resulting in a confirmed fraudulent loss exceeding $5.9 billion. Additionally, in evaluating suspected fraud loss to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, the United States estimates that more than 47,000 EIDL applications originated from IP addresses compromised by 911 S5. Millions of dollars more were similarly identified by financial institutions in the United States as loss originating from IP addresses compromised by 911 S5.”

The sanctions say Jingping Liu was Yunhe Wang’s co-conspirator in the laundering of criminally derived proceeds generated from 911 S5, mainly virtual currency. The government alleges the virtual currencies paid by 911 S5 users were converted into U.S. dollars using over-the-counter vendors who wired and deposited funds into bank accounts held by Liu.

“Jingping Liu assisted Yunhe Wang by laundering criminally derived proceeds through bank accounts held in her name that were then utilized to purchase luxury real estate properties for Yunhe Wang,” the document continues. “These individuals leveraged their malicious botnet technology to compromise personal devices, enabling cybercriminals to fraudulently secure economic assistance intended for those in need and to terrorize our citizens with bomb threats.”

The third man sanctioned is Yanni Zheng, a Chinese national the U.S. Treasury says acted as an attorney for Wang and his firm — Spicy Code Company Limited — and helped to launder proceeds from the business into real estate holdings. Spicy Code Company was also sanctioned, as well as Wang-controlled properties Tulip Biz Pattaya Group Company Limited, and Lily Suites Company Limited.

Ten days after the July 2022 story here on 911 S5, the proxy network abruptly closed up shop, citing a data breach that destroyed key components of its business operations.

In the months that followed, however, 911 S5 would resurrect itself under a different name: Cloud Router. That’s according to spur.us, a U.S.-based startup that tracks proxy and VPN services. In February 2024, Spur published research showing the Cloud Router operators reused many of the same components from 911 S5, making it relatively simple to draw a connection between the two.

Spur found that Cloud Router was being powered by a new VPN service called PaladinVPN, which made it much more explicit to users that their Internet connections were going to be used to relay traffic for others. At the time, Spur found Cloud Router had more than 140,000 Internet addresses for rent.

Spur co-founder Riley Kilmer said Cloud Router appears to have suspended or ceased operations sometime this past weekend. Kilmer said the number of proxies advertised by the service had been trending downwards quite recently before the website suddenly went offline.

Cloud Router’s homepage is currently populated by a message from Cloudflare saying the site’s domain name servers are pointing to a “prohibited IP.”

Pakistan-linked Hackers Deploy Python, Golang, and Rust Malware on Indian Targets

The Pakistan-nexus Transparent Tribe actor has been linked to a new set of attacks targeting Indian government, defense, and aerospace sectors using cross-platform malware written in Python, Golang, and Rust. "This cluster of activity spanned from late 2023 to April 2024 and is anticipated to persist," the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team said in a technical report

JA4+ - Suite Of Network Fingerprinting Standards

JA4+ is a suite of network Fingerprinting methods that are easy to use and easy to share. These methods are both human and machine readable to facilitate more effective threat-hunting and analysis. The use-cases for these fingerprints include scanning for threat actors, malware detection, session hijacking prevention, compliance automation, location tracking, DDoS detection, grouping of threat actors, reverse shell detection, and many more.

Please read our blogs for details on how JA4+ works, why it works, and examples of what can be detected/prevented with it:
JA4+ Network Fingerprinting (JA4/S/H/L/X/SSH)
JA4T: TCP Fingerprinting (JA4T/TS/TScan)

To understand how to read JA4+ fingerprints, see Technical Details

This repo includes JA4+ Python, Rust, Zeek and C, as a Wireshark plugin.

JA4/JA4+ support is being added to:
GreyNoise
Hunt
Driftnet
DarkSail
Arkime
GoLang (JA4X)
Suricata
Wireshark
Zeek
nzyme
Netresec's CapLoader
NetworkMiner">Netresec's NetworkMiner
NGINX
F5 BIG-IP
nfdump
ntop's ntopng
ntop's nDPI
Team Cymru
NetQuest
Censys
Exploit.org's Netryx
cloudflare.com/bots/concepts/ja3-ja4-fingerprint/">Cloudflare
fastly
with more to be announced...

Examples

Application	JA4+ Fingerprints
Chrome	JA4=t13d1516h2_8daaf6152771_02713d6af862 (TCP) JA4=q13d0312h3_55b375c5d22e_06cda9e17597 (QUIC) JA4=t13d1517h2_8daaf6152771_b0da82dd1658 (pre-shared key) JA4=t13d1517h2_8daaf6152771_b1ff8ab2d16f (no key)
IcedID Malware Dropper	JA4H=ge11cn020000_9ed1ff1f7b03_cd8dafe26982
IcedID Malware	JA4=t13d201100_2b729b4bf6f3_9e7b989ebec8 JA4S=t120300_c030_5e2616a54c73
Sliver Malware	JA4=t13d190900_9dc949149365_97f8aa674fd9 JA4S=t130200_1301_a56c5b993250 JA4X=000000000000_4f24da86fad6_bf0f0589fc03 JA4X=000000000000_7c32fa18c13e_bf0f0589fc03
Cobalt Strike	JA4H=ge11cn060000_4e59edc1297a_4da5efaf0cbd JA4X=2166164053c1_2166164053c1_30d204a01551
SoftEther VPN	JA4=t13d880900_fcb5b95cb75a_b0d3b4ac2a14 (client) JA4S=t130200_1302_a56c5b993250 JA4X=d55f458d5a6c_d55f458d5a6c_0fc8c171b6ae
Qakbot	JA4X=2bab15409345_af684594efb4_000000000000
Pikabot	JA4X=1a59268f55e5_1a59268f55e5_795797892f9c
Darkgate	JA4H=po10nn060000_cdb958d032b0
LummaC2	JA4H=po11nn050000_d253db9d024b
Evilginx	JA4=t13d191000_9dc949149365_e7c285222651
Reverse SSH Shell	JA4SSH=c76s76_c71s59_c0s70
Windows 10	JA4T=64240_2-1-3-1-1-4_1460_8
Epson Printer	JA4TScan=28960_2-4-8-1-3_1460_3_1-4-8-16

For more, see ja4plus-mapping.csv
The mapping file is unlicensed and free to use. Feel free to do a pull request with any JA4+ data you find.

Plugins

Wireshark
Zeek
Arkime

Binaries

Recommended to have tshark version 4.0.6 or later for full functionality. See: https://pkgs.org/search/?q=tshark

Download the latest JA4 binaries from: Releases.

JA4+ on Ubuntu

sudo apt install tshark
./ja4 [options] [pcap]

JA4+ on Mac

1) Install Wireshark https://www.wireshark.org/download.html which will install tshark 2) Add tshark to $PATH

ln -s /Applications/Wireshark.app/Contents/MacOS/tshark /usr/local/bin/tshark
./ja4 [options] [pcap]

JA4+ on Windows

1) Install Wireshark for Windows from https://www.wireshark.org/download.html which will install tshark.exe
tshark.exe is at the location where wireshark is installed, for example: C:\Program Files\Wireshark\thsark.exe
2) Add the location of tshark to your "PATH" environment variable in Windows.
(System properties > Environment Variables... > Edit Path)
3) Open cmd, navigate the ja4 folder

ja4 [options] [pcap]

Database

An official JA4+ database of fingerprints, associated applications and recommended detection logic is in the process of being built.

In the meantime, see ja4plus-mapping.csv

Feel free to do a pull request with any JA4+ data you find.

JA4+ Details

JA4+ is a set of simple yet powerful network fingerprints for multiple protocols that are both human and machine readable, facilitating improved threat-hunting and security analysis. If you are unfamiliar with network fingerprinting, I encourage you to read my blogs releasing JA3 here, JARM here, and this excellent blog by Fastly on the State of TLS Fingerprinting which outlines the history of the aforementioned along with their problems. JA4+ brings dedicated support, keeping the methods up-to-date as the industry changes.

All JA4+ fingerprints have an a_b_c format, delimiting the different sections that make up the fingerprint. This allows for hunting and detection utilizing just ab or ac or c only. If one wanted to just do analysis on incoming cookies into their app, they would look at JA4H_c only. This new locality-preserving format facilitates deeper and richer analysis while remaining simple, easy to use, and allowing for extensibility.

For example; GreyNoise is an internet listener that identifies internet scanners and is implementing JA4+ into their product. They have an actor who scans the internet with a constantly changing single TLS cipher. This generates a massive amount of completely different JA3 fingerprints but with JA4, only the b part of the JA4 fingerprint changes, parts a and c remain the same. As such, GreyNoise can track the actor by looking at the JA4_ac fingerprint (joining a+c, dropping b).

Current methods and implementation details:
| Full Name | Short Name | Description | |---|---|---| | JA4 | JA4 | TLS Client Fingerprinting
| JA4Server | JA4S | TLS Server Response / Session Fingerprinting | JA4HTTP | JA4H | HTTP Client Fingerprinting | JA4Latency | JA4L | Latency Measurment / Light Distance | JA4X509 | JA4X | X509 TLS Certificate Fingerprinting | JA4SSH | JA4SSH | SSH Traffic Fingerprinting | JA4TCP | JA4T | TCP Client Fingerprinting | JA4TCPServer | JA4TS | TCP Server Response Fingerprinting | JA4TCPScan | JA4TScan | Active TCP Fingerprint Scanner

The full name or short name can be used interchangeably. Additional JA4+ methods are in the works...

To understand how to read JA4+ fingerprints, see Technical Details

Licensing

JA4: TLS Client Fingerprinting is open-source, BSD 3-Clause, same as JA3. FoxIO does not have patent claims and is not planning to pursue patent coverage for JA4 TLS Client Fingerprinting. This allows any company or tool currently utilizing JA3 to immediately upgrade to JA4 without delay.

JA4S, JA4L, JA4H, JA4X, JA4SSH, JA4T, JA4TScan and all future additions, (collectively referred to as JA4+) are licensed under the FoxIO License 1.1. This license is permissive for most use cases, including for academic and internal business purposes, but is not permissive for monetization. If, for example, a company would like to use JA4+ internally to help secure their own company, that is permitted. If, for example, a vendor would like to sell JA4+ fingerprinting as part of their product offering, they would need to request an OEM license from us.

All JA4+ methods are patent pending.
JA4+ is a trademark of FoxIO

JA4+ can and is being implemented into open source tools, see the License FAQ for details.

This licensing allows us to provide JA4+ to the world in a way that is open and immediately usable, but also provides us with a way to fund continued support, research into new methods, and the development of the upcoming JA4 Database. We want everyone to have the ability to utilize JA4+ and are happy to work with vendors and open source projects to help make that happen.

ja4plus-mapping.csv is not included in the above software licenses and is thereby a license-free file.

Q&A

Q: Why are you sorting the ciphers? Doesn't the ordering matter?
A: It does but in our research we've found that applications and libraries choose a unique cipher list more than unique ordering. This also reduces the effectiveness of "cipher stunting," a tactic of randomizing cipher ordering to prevent JA3 detection.

Q: Why are you sorting the extensions?
A: Earlier in 2023, Google updated Chromium browsers to randomize their extension ordering. Much like cipher stunting, this was a tactic to prevent JA3 detection and "make the TLS ecosystem more robust to changes." Google was worried server implementers would assume the Chrome fingerprint would never change and end up building logic around it, which would cause issues whenever Google went to update Chrome.

So I want to make this clear: JA4 fingerprints will change as application TLS libraries are updated, about once a year. Do not assume fingerprints will remain constant in an environment where applications are updated. In any case, sorting the extensions gets around this and adding in Signature Algorithms preserves uniqueness.

Q: Doesn't TLS 1.3 make fingerprinting TLS clients harder?
A: No, it makes it easier! Since TLS 1.3, clients have had a much larger set of extensions and even though TLS1.3 only supports a few ciphers, browsers and applications still support many more.

JA4+ was created by:

John Althouse, with feedback from:

Josh Atkins
Jeff Atkinson
Joshua Alexander
W.
Joe Martin
Ben Higgins
Andrew Morris
Chris Ueland
Ben Schofield
Matthias Vallentin
Valeriy Vorotyntsev
Timothy Noel
Gary Lipsky
And engineers working at GreyNoise, Hunt, Google, ExtraHop, F5, Driftnet and others.

Contact John Althouse at john@foxio.io for licensing and questions.

_{^{Copyright (c) 2024, FoxIO}}

Stealthy BLOODALCHEMY Malware Targeting ASEAN Government Networks

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered that the malware known as BLOODALCHEMY used in attacks targeting government organizations in Southern and Southeastern Asia is in fact an updated version of Deed RAT, which is believed to be a successor to ShadowPad. "The origin of BLOODALCHEMY and Deed RAT is ShadowPad and given the history of ShadowPad being utilized in numerous APT

New Frontiers, Old Tactics: Chinese Espionage Group Targets Africa & Caribbean Govts

The China-linked threat actor known as Sharp Panda has expanded their targeting to include governmental organizations in Africa and the Caribbean as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign. "The campaign adopts Cobalt Strike Beacon as the payload, enabling backdoor functionalities like C2 communication and command execution while minimizing the exposure of their custom tools," Check Point

Inside Operation Diplomatic Specter: Chinese APT Group's Stealthy Tactics Exposed

Governmental entities in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia are the target of a Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group as part of an ongoing cyber espionage campaign dubbed Operation Diplomatic Specter since at least late 2022. "An analysis of this threat actor’s activity reveals long-term espionage operations against at least seven governmental entities," Palo Alto Networks

Researchers Warn of Chinese-Aligned Hackers Targeting South China Sea Countries

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented threat group called Unfading Sea Haze that's believed to have been active since 2018. The intrusion singled out high-level organizations in South China Sea countries, particularly military and government targets, Bitdefender said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The investigation revealed a troubling

Rockwell Advises Disconnecting Internet-Facing ICS Devices Amid Cyber Threats

Rockwell Automation is urging its customers to disconnect all industrial control systems (ICSs) not meant to be connected to the public-facing internet to mitigate unauthorized or malicious cyber activity. The company said it's issuing the advisory due to "heightened geopolitical tensions and adversarial cyber activity globally." To that end, customers are required to take immediate

"Linguistic Lumberjack" Vulnerability Discovered in Popular Logging Utility Fluent Bit

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a critical security flaw in a popular logging and metrics utility called Fluent Bit that could be exploited to achieve denial-of-service (DoS), information disclosure, or remote code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-4323, has been codenamed Linguistic Lumberjack by Tenable Research. It impacts versions from 2.0.7 through

Iranian MOIS-Linked Hackers Behind Destructive Attacks on Albania and Israel

An Iranian threat actor affiliated with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has been attributed as behind destructive wiping attacks targeting Albania and Israel under the personas Homeland Justice and Karma, respectively. Cybersecurity firm Check Point is tracking the activity under the moniker Void Manticore, which is also referred to as Storm-0842 (formerly DEV-

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Can Appeal His Extradition to the US, British Court Says

Two judges in London have ruled that WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange can appeal his extradition to the US on freedom of speech grounds.

Foxit PDF Reader Flaw Exploited by Hackers to Deliver Diverse Malware Arsenal

Multiple threat actors are weaponizing a design flaw in Foxit PDF Reader to deliver a variety of malware such as Agent Tesla, AsyncRAT, DCRat, NanoCore RAT, NjRAT, Pony, Remcos RAT, and XWorm. "This exploit triggers security warnings that could deceive unsuspecting users into executing harmful commands," Check Point said in a technical report. "This exploit has been used by multiple

Grandoreiro Banking Trojan Resurfaces, Targeting Over 1,500 Banks Worldwide

The threat actors behind the Windows-based Grandoreiro banking trojan have returned in a global campaign since March 2024 following a law enforcement takedown in January. The large-scale phishing attacks, likely facilitated by other cybercriminals via a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model, target over 1,500 banks across the world, spanning more than 60 countries in Central and South

China-Linked Hackers Adopt Two-Stage Infection Tactic to Deploy Deuterbear RAT

Cybersecurity researchers have shed more light on a remote access trojan (RAT) known as Deuterbear used by the China-linked BlackTech hacking group as part of a cyber espionage campaign targeting the Asia-Pacific region this year. "Deuterbear, while similar to Waterbear in many ways, shows advancements in capabilities such as including support for shellcode plugins, avoiding handshakes

Kimsuky APT Deploying Linux Backdoor Gomir in South Korean Cyber Attacks

The Kimsuky (aka Springtail) advanced persistent threat (APT) group, which is linked to North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), has been observed deploying a Linux version of its GoBear backdoor as part of a campaign targeting South Korean organizations. The backdoor, codenamed Gomir, is "structurally almost identical to GoBear, with extensive sharing of code between

North Korean Hackers Exploit Facebook Messenger in Targeted Malware Campaign

The North Korea-linked Kimsuky hacking group has been attributed to a new social engineering attack that employs fictitious Facebook accounts to targets via Messenger and ultimately delivers malware. "The threat actor created a Facebook account with a fake identity disguised as a public official working in the North Korean human rights field," South Korean cybersecurity company Genians

Turla Group Deploys LunarWeb and LunarMail Backdoors in Diplomatic Missions

An unnamed European Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and its three diplomatic missions in the Middle East were targeted by two previously undocumented backdoors tracked as LunarWeb and LunarMail. ESET, which identified the activity, attributed it with medium confidence to the Russia-aligned cyberespionage group Turla (aka Iron Hunter, Pensive Ursa, Secret Blizzard, Snake, Uroburos, and Venomous

How Did Authorities Identify the Alleged Lockbit Boss?

Last week, the United States joined the U.K. and Australia in sanctioning and charging a Russian man named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the leader of the infamous LockBit ransomware group. LockBit’s leader “LockBitSupp” claims the feds named the wrong guy, saying the charges don’t explain how they connected him to Khoroshev. This post examines the activities of Khoroshev’s many alter egos on the cybercrime forums, and tracks the career of a gifted malware author who has written and sold malicious code for the past 14 years.

On May 7, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Khoroshev on 26 criminal counts, including extortion, wire fraud, and conspiracy. The government alleges Khoroshev created, sold and used the LockBit ransomware strain to personally extort more than $100 million from hundreds of victim organizations, and that LockBit as a group extorted roughly half a billion dollars over four years.

Federal investigators say Khoroshev ran LockBit as a “ransomware-as-a-service” operation, wherein he kept 20 percent of any ransom amount paid by a victim organization infected with his code, with the remaining 80 percent of the payment going to LockBit affiliates responsible for spreading the malware.

Financial sanctions levied against Khoroshev by the U.S. Department of the Treasury listed his known email and street address (in Voronezh, in southwest Russia), passport number, and even his tax ID number (hello, Russian tax authorities). The Treasury filing says Khoroshev used the emails sitedev5@yandex.ru, and khoroshev1@icloud.com.

According to DomainTools.com, the address sitedev5@yandex.ru was used to register at least six domains, including a Russian business registered in Khoroshev’s name called tkaner.com, which is a blog about clothing and fabrics.

A search at the breach-tracking service Constella Intelligence on the phone number in Tkaner’s registration records  — 7.9521020220 — brings up multiple official Russian government documents listing the number’s owner as Dmitri Yurievich Khoroshev.

Another domain registered to that phone number was stairwell[.]ru, which at one point advertised the sale of wooden staircases. Constella finds that the email addresses webmaster@stairwell.ru and admin@stairwell.ru used the password 225948.

DomainTools reports that stairwell.ru for several years included the registrant’s name as “Dmitrij Ju Horoshev,” and the email address pin@darktower.su. According to Constella, this email address was used in 2010 to register an account for a Dmitry Yurievich Khoroshev from Voronezh, Russia at the hosting provider firstvds.ru.

Cyber intelligence firm Intel 471 finds that pin@darktower.ru was used by a Russian-speaking member called Pin on the English-language cybercrime forum Opensc. Pin was active on Opensc around March 2012, and authored 13 posts that mostly concerned data encryption issues, or how to fix bugs in code.

Other posts concerned custom code Pin claimed to have written that would bypass memory protections on Windows XP and Windows 7 systems, and inject malware into memory space normally allocated to trusted applications on a Windows machine.

Pin also was active at that same time on the Russian-language security forum Antichat, where they told fellow forum members to contact them at the ICQ instant messenger number 669316.

NEROWOLFE

A search on the ICQ number 669316 at Intel 471 shows that in April 2011, a user by the name NeroWolfe joined the Russian cybercrime forum Zloy using the email address d.horoshev@gmail.com, and from an Internet address in Voronezh, RU.

Constella finds the same password tied to webmaster@stairwell.ru (225948) was used by the email address 3k@xakep.ru, which Intel 471 says was registered to more than a dozen NeroWolfe accounts across just as many Russian cybercrime forums between 2011 and 2015.

NeroWolfe’s introductory post to the forum Verified in Oct. 2011 said he was a system administrator and C++ coder.

“Installing SpyEYE, ZeuS, any DDoS and spam admin panels,” NeroWolfe wrote. This user said they specialize in developing malware, creating computer worms, and crafting new ways to hijack Web browsers.

“I can provide my portfolio on request,” NeroWolfe wrote. “P.S. I don’t modify someone else’s code or work with someone else’s frameworks.”

In April 2013, NeroWolfe wrote in a private message to another Verified forum user that he was selling a malware “loader” program that could bypass all of the security protections on Windows XP and Windows 7.

“The access to the network is slightly restricted,” NeroWolfe said of the loader, which he was selling for $5,000. “You won’t manage to bind a port. However, it’s quite possible to send data. The code is written in C.”

In an October 2013 discussion on the cybercrime forum Exploit, NeroWolfe weighed in on the karmic ramifications of ransomware. At the time, ransomware-as-a-service didn’t exist yet, and many members of Exploit were still making good money from “lockers,” relatively crude programs that locked the user out of their system until they agreed to make a small payment (usually a few hundred dollars via prepaid Green Dot cards).

Lockers, which presaged the coming ransomware scourge, were generally viewed by the Russian-speaking cybercrime forums as harmless moneymaking opportunities, because they usually didn’t seek to harm the host computer or endanger files on the system. Also, there were still plenty of locker programs that aspiring cybercriminals could either buy or rent to make a steady income.

NeroWolfe reminded forum denizens that they were just as vulnerable to ransomware attacks as their would-be victims, and that what goes around comes around.

“Guys, do you have a conscience?,” NeroWolfe wrote. “Okay, lockers, network gopstop aka business in Russian. The last thing was always squeezed out of the suckers. But encoders, no one is protected from them, including the local audience.”

If Khoroshev was ever worried that someone outside of Russia might be able to connect his early hacker handles to his real life persona, that’s not clear from reviewing his history online. In fact, the same email address tied to so many of NeroWolfe’s accounts on the forums — 3k@xakep.ru — was used in 2011 to create an account for a Dmitry Yurevich Khoroshev on the Russian social media network Vkontakte.

NeroWolfe seems to have abandoned all of his forum accounts sometime in 2016. In November 2016, an exploit[.]ru member filed an official complaint against NeroWolfe, saying NeroWolfe had been paid $2,000 to produce custom code but never finished the project and vanished.

It’s unclear what happened to NeroWolfe or to Khoroshev during this time. Maybe he got arrested, or some close associates did. Perhaps he just decided it was time to lay low and hit the reset on his operational security efforts, given his past failures in this regard. It’s also possible NeroWolfe landed a real job somewhere for a few years, fathered a child, and/or had to put his cybercrime career on hold.

PUTINKRAB

Or perhaps Khoroshev saw the coming ransomware industry for the endless pot of gold that it was about to become, and then dedicated himself to working on custom ransomware code. That’s what the government believes.

The indictment against Khoroshev says he used the hacker nickname Putinkrab, and Intel 471 says this corresponds to a username that was first registered across three major Russian cybercrime forums in early 2019.

KrebsOnSecurity could find no obvious connections between Putinkrab and any of Khoroshev’s older identities. However, if Putinkrab was Khoroshev, he would have learned from his past mistakes and started fresh with a new identity (which he did). But also, it is likely the government hasn’t shared all of the intelligence it has collected against him (more on that in a bit).

Putinkrab’s first posts on the Russian cybercrime forums XSS, Exploit and UFOLabs saw this user selling ransomware source code written in C.

In April 2019, Putkinkrab offered an affiliate program that would run on top of his custom-made ransomware code.

“I want to work for a share of the ransoms: 20/80,” Putinkrab wrote on Exploit. “20 percent is my percentage for the work, you get 80% of the ransoms. The percentage can be reduced up to 10/90 if the volumes are good. But now, temporarily, until the service is fully automated, we are working using a different algorithm.”

Throughout the summer of 2019, Putinkrab posted multiple updates to Exploit about new features being added to his ransomware strain, as well as novel evasion techniques to avoid detection by security tools. He also told forum members he was looking for investors for a new ransomware project based on his code.

In response to an Exploit member who complained that the security industry was making it harder to profit from ransomware, Putinkrab said that was because so many cybercriminals were relying on crappy ransomware code.

“The vast majority of top antiviruses have acquired behavioral analysis, which blocks 95% of crypto-lockers at their root,” Putinkrab wrote. “Cryptolockers made a lot of noise in the press, but lazy system administrators don’t make backups after that. The vast majority of cryptolockers are written by people who have little understanding of cryptography. Therefore, decryptors appear on the Internet, and with them the hope that files can be decrypted without paying a ransom. They just sit and wait. Contact with the owner of the key is lost over time.”

Putinkrab said he had every confidence his ransomware code was a game-changer, and a huge money machine.

“The game is just gaining momentum,” Putinkrab wrote. “Weak players lose and are eliminated.”

The rest of his response was structured like a poem:

“In this world, the strongest survive.
Our life is just a struggle.
The winner will be the smartest,
Who has his head on his shoulders.”

Putinkrab’s final post came on August 23, 2019. The Justice Department says the LockBit ransomware affiliate program was officially launched five months later. From there on out, the government says, Khoroshev adopted the persona of LockBitSupp. In his introductory post on Exploit, LockBit’s mastermind said the ransomware strain had been in development since September 2019.

The original LockBit malware was written in C (a language that NeroWolfe excelled at). Here’s the original description of LockBit, from its maker:

“The software is written in C and Assembler; encryption is performed through the I/O Completion Port; there is a port scanning local networks and an option to find all DFS, SMB, WebDAV network shares, an admin panel in Tor, automatic test decryption; a decryption tool is provided; there is a chat with Push notifications, a Jabber bot that forwards correspondence and an option to terminate services/processes in line which prevent the ransomware from opening files at a certain moment. The ransomware sets file permissions and removes blocking attributes, deletes shadow copies, clears logs and mounts hidden partitions; there is an option to drag-and-drop files/folders and a console/hidden mode. The ransomware encrypts files in parts in various places: the larger the file size, the more parts there are. The algorithms used are AES + RSA.

You are the one who determines the ransom amount after communicating with the victim. The ransom paid in any currency that suits you will be transferred to your wallets. The Jabber bot serves as an admin panel and is used for banning, providing decryption tools, chatting – Jabber is used for absolutely everything.”

CONCLUSION

Does the above timeline prove that NeroWolfe/Khoroshev is LockBitSupp? No. However, it does indicate Khoroshev was for many years deeply invested in countless schemes involving botnets, stolen data, and malware he wrote that others used to great effect. NeroWolfe’s many private messages from fellow forum members confirm this.

NeroWolfe’s specialty was creating custom code that employed novel stealth and evasion techniques, and he was always quick to volunteer his services on the forums whenever anyone was looking help on a malware project that called for a strong C or C++ programmer.

Someone with those qualifications — as well as demonstrated mastery of data encryption and decryption techniques — would have been in great demand by the ransomware-as-a-service industry that took off at around the same time NeroWolfe vanished from the forums.

Someone like that who is near or at the top of their game vis-a-vis their peers does not simply walk away from that level of influence, community status, and potential income stream unless forced to do so by circumstances beyond their immediate control.

It’s important to note that Putinkrab didn’t just materialize out of thin air in 2019 — suddenly endowed with knowledge about how to write advanced, stealthy ransomware strains. That knowledge clearly came from someone who’d already had years of experience building and deploying ransomware strains against real-life victim organizations.

Thus, whoever Putinkrab was before they adopted that moniker, it’s a safe bet they were involved in the development and use of earlier, highly successful ransomware strains. One strong possible candidate is Cerber ransomware, the most popular and effective affiliate program operating between early 2016 and mid-2017. Cerber thrived because it emerged as an early mover in the market for ransomware-as-a-service offerings.

In February 2024, the FBI seized LockBit’s cybercrime infrastructure on the dark web, following an apparently lengthy infiltration of the group’s operations. The United States has already indicted and sanctioned at least five other alleged LockBit ringleaders or affiliates, so presumably the feds have been able to draw additional resources from those investigations.

Also, it seems likely that the three national intelligence agencies involved in bringing these charges are not showing all of their cards. For example, the Treasury documents on Khoroshev mention a single cryptocurrency address, and yet experts interviewed for this story say there are no obvious clues connecting this address to Khoroshev or Putinkrab.

But given that LockBitSupp has been actively involved in Lockbit ransomware attacks against organizations for four years now, the government almost certainly has an extensive list of the LockBit leader’s various cryptocurrency addresses — and probably even his bank accounts in Russia. And no doubt the money trail from some of those transactions was traceable to its ultimate beneficiary (or close enough).

Not long after Khoroshev was charged as the leader of LockBit, a number of open-source intelligence accounts on Telegram began extending the information released by the Treasury Department. Within hours, these sleuths had unearthed more than a dozen credit card accounts used by Khoroshev over the past decade, as well as his various bank account numbers in Russia.

The point is, this post is based on data that’s available to and verifiable by KrebsOnSecurity. Woodward & Bernstein’s source in the Watergate investigation — Deep Throat — famously told the two reporters to “follow the money.” This is always excellent advice. But these days, that can be a lot easier said than done — especially with people who a) do not wish to be found, and b) don’t exactly file annual reports.

PingRAT - Secretly Passes C2 Traffic Through Firewalls Using ICMP Payloads

Features:

• Uses ICMP for Command and Control
• Undetectable by most AV/EDR solutions
• Written in Go

Installation:

Download the binaries

or build the binaries and you are ready to go:

$ git clone https://github.com/Nemesis0U/PingRAT.git
$ go build client.go
$ go build server.go

Usage:

Server:

./server -h
Usage of ./server:
  -d string
        Destination IP address
  -i string
        Listener (virtual) Network Interface (e.g. eth0)

Client:

./client -h
Usage of ./client:
  -d string
        Destination IP address
  -i string
        (Virtual) Network Interface (e.g., eth0)

North Korean Hackers Deploy New Golang Malware 'Durian' Against Crypto Firms

The North Korean threat actor tracked as Kimsuky has been observed deploying a previously undocumented Golang-based malware dubbed Durian as part of highly-targeted cyber attacks aimed at two South Korean cryptocurrency firms. "Durian boasts comprehensive backdoor functionality, enabling the execution of delivered commands, additional file downloads, and exfiltration of files,"

Kremlin-Backed APT28 Targets Polish Institutions in Large-Scale Malware Campaign

Polish government institutions have been targeted as part of a large-scale malware campaign orchestrated by a Russia-linked nation-state actor called APT28. "The campaign sent emails with content intended to arouse the recipient's interest and persuade him to click on the link," the computer emergency response team, CERT Polska, said in a Wednesday bulletin. Clicking on the link

The Alleged LockBit Ransomware Mastermind Has Been Identified

Law enforcement officials say they’ve identified, sanctioned, and indicted the person behind LockBitSupp, the administrator at the heart of LockBit’s $500 million hacking rampage.

APT42 Hackers Pose as Journalists to Harvest Credentials and Access Cloud Data

The Iranian state-backed hacking outfit called APT42 is making use of enhanced social engineering schemes to infiltrate target networks and cloud environments. Targets of the attack include Western and Middle Eastern NGOs, media organizations, academia, legal services and activists, Google Cloud subsidiary Mandiant said in a report published last week. "APT42 was

Microsoft Outlook Flaw Exploited by Russia's APT28 to Hack Czech, German Entities

Czechia and Germany on Friday revealed that they were the target of a long-term cyber espionage campaign conducted by the Russia-linked nation-state actor known as APT28, drawing condemnation from the European Union (E.U.), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the U.K., and the U.S. The Czech Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), in a statement, said some unnamed

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A new malware called Cuttlefish is targeting small office and home office (SOHO) routers with the goal of stealthily monitoring all traffic through the devices and gather authentication data from HTTP GET and POST requests. "This malware is modular, designed primarily to steal authentication material found in web requests that transit the router from the adjacent

The US Government Is Asking Big Tech to Promise Better Cybersecurity

The Biden administration is asking tech companies to sign a pledge, obtained by WIRED, to improve their digital security, including reduced default password use and improved vulnerability disclosures.

Ex-NSA Employee Sentenced to 22 Years for Trying to Sell U.S. Secrets to Russia

A former employee of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been sentenced to nearly 22 years (262 months) in prison for attempting to transfer classified documents to Russia. "This sentence should serve as a stark warning to all those entrusted with protecting national defense information that there are consequences to betraying that trust," said FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Man Who Mass-Extorted Psychotherapy Patients Gets Six Years

A 26-year-old Finnish man was sentenced to more than six years in prison today after being convicted of hacking into an online psychotherapy clinic, leaking tens of thousands of patient therapy records, and attempting to extort the clinic and patients.

On October 21, 2020, the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center in Finland became the target of blackmail when a tormentor identified as “ransom_man” demanded payment of 40 bitcoins (~450,000 euros at the time) in return for a promise not to publish highly sensitive therapy session notes Vastaamo had exposed online.

Ransom_man announced on the dark web that he would start publishing 100 patient profiles every 24 hours. When Vastaamo declined to pay, ransom_man shifted to extorting individual patients. According to Finnish police, some 22,000 victims reported extortion attempts targeting them personally, targeted emails that threatened to publish their therapy notes online unless paid a 500 euro ransom.

Finnish prosecutors quickly zeroed in on a suspect: Julius “Zeekill” Kivimäki, a notorious criminal hacker convicted of committing tens of thousands of cybercrimes before he became an adult. After being charged with the attack in October 2022, Kivimäki fled the country. He was arrested four months later in France, hiding out under an assumed name and passport.

Antti Kurittu is a former criminal investigator who worked on an investigation involving Kivimäki’s use of the Zbot botnet, among other activities Kivimäki engaged in as a member of the hacker group Hack the Planet (HTP).

Kurittu said the prosecution had demanded at least seven years in jail, and that the sentence handed down was six years and three months. Kurittu said prosecutors knocked a few months off of Kivimäki’s sentence because he agreed to pay compensation to his victims, and that Kivimäki will remain in prison during any appeal process.

“I think the sentencing was as expected, knowing the Finnish judicial system,” Kurittu told KrebsOnSecurity. “As Kivimäki has not been sentenced to a non-suspended prison sentence during the last five years, he will be treated as a first-timer, his previous convictions notwithstanding.”

But because juvenile convictions in Finland don’t count towards determining whether somebody is a first-time offender, Kivimäki will end up serving approximately half of his sentence.

“This seems like a short sentence when taking into account the gravity of his actions and the life-altering consequences to thousands of people, but it’s almost the maximum the law allows for,” Kurittu said.

Kivimäki initially gained notoriety as a self-professed member of the Lizard Squad, a mainly low-skilled hacker group that specialized in DDoS attacks. But American and Finnish investigators say Kivimäki’s involvement in cybercrime dates back to at least 2008, when he was introduced to a founding member of what would soon become HTP.

Finnish police said Kivimäki also used the nicknames “Ryan”, “RyanC” and “Ryan Cleary” (Ryan Cleary was actually a member of a rival hacker group — LulzSec — who was sentenced to prison for hacking).

Kivimäki and other HTP members were involved in mass-compromising web servers using known vulnerabilities, and by 2012 Kivimäki’s alias Ryan Cleary was selling access to those servers in the form of a DDoS-for-hire service. Kivimäki was 15 years old at the time.

In 2013, investigators going through devices seized from Kivimäki found computer code that had been used to crack more than 60,000 web servers using a previously unknown vulnerability in Adobe’s ColdFusion software. KrebsOnSecurity detailed the work of HTP in September 2013, after the group compromised servers inside data brokers LexisNexis, Kroll, and Dun & Bradstreet.

The group used the same ColdFusion flaws to break into the National White Collar Crime Center (NWC3), a non-profit that provides research and investigative support to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

As KrebsOnSecurity reported at the time, this small ColdFusion botnet of data broker servers was being controlled by the same cybercriminals who’d assumed control over SSNDOB, which operated one of the underground’s most reliable services for obtaining Social Security Number, dates of birth and credit file information on U.S. residents.

Kivimäki was responsible for making an August 2014 bomb threat against former Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley that grounded an American Airlines plane. Kivimäki also was involved in calling in multiple fake bomb threats and “swatting” incidents — reporting fake hostage situations at an address to prompt a heavily armed police response to that location.

Ville Tapio, the former CEO of Vastaamo, was fired and also prosecuted following the breach. Ransom_man bragged about Vastaamo’s sloppy security, noting the company had used the laughably weak username and password “root/root” to protect sensitive patient records.

Investigators later found Vastaamo had originally been hacked in 2018 and again in 2019. In April 2023, a Finnish court handed down a three-month sentence for Tapio, but that sentence was suspended because he had no previous criminal record.

China-Linked 'Muddling Meerkat' Hijacks DNS to Map Internet on Global Scale

A previously undocumented cyber threat dubbed Muddling Meerkat has been observed undertaking sophisticated domain name system (DNS) activities in a likely effort to evade security measures and conduct reconnaissance of networks across the world since October 2019. Cloud security firm Infoblox described the threat actor as likely affiliated with the

Galah - An LLM-powered Web Honeypot Using The OpenAI API

TL;DR: Galah (/ɡəˈlɑː/ - pronounced 'guh-laa') is an LLM (Large Language Model) powered web honeypot, currently compatible with the OpenAI API, that is able to mimic various applications and dynamically respond to arbitrary HTTP requests.

Description

Named after the clever Australian parrot known for its mimicry, Galah mirrors this trait in its functionality. Unlike traditional web honeypots that rely on a manual and limiting method of emulating numerous web applications or vulnerabilities, Galah adopts a novel approach. This LLM-powered honeypot mimics various web applications by dynamically crafting relevant (and occasionally foolish) responses, including HTTP headers and body content, to arbitrary HTTP requests. Fun fact: in Aussie English, Galah also means fool!

I've deployed a cache for the LLM-generated responses (the cache duration can be customized in the config file) to avoid generating multiple responses for the same request and to reduce the cost of the OpenAI API. The cache stores responses per port, meaning if you probe a specific port of the honeypot, the generated response won't be returned for the same request on a different port.

The prompt is the most crucial part of this honeypot! You can update the prompt in the config file, but be sure not to change the part that instructs the LLM to generate the response in the specified JSON format.

Note: Galah was a fun weekend project I created to evaluate the capabilities of LLMs in generating HTTP messages, and it is not intended for production use. The honeypot may be fingerprinted based on its response time, non-standard, or sometimes weird responses, and other network-based techniques. Use this tool at your own risk, and be sure to set usage limits for your OpenAI API.

Future Enhancements

• Rule-Based Response: The new version of Galah will employ a dynamic, rule-based approach, adding more control over response generation. This will further reduce OpenAI API costs and increase the accuracy of the generated responses.

• Response Database: It will enable you to generate and import a response database. This ensures the honeypot only turns to the OpenAI API for unknown or new requests. I'm also working on cleaning up and sharing my own database.

• Support for Other LLMs.

Getting Started

• Ensure you have Go version 1.20+ installed.
• Create an OpenAI API key from here.
• If you want to serve over HTTPS, generate TLS certificates.
• Clone the repo and install the dependencies.
• Update the config.yaml file.
• Build and run the Go binary!

% git clone git@github.com:0x4D31/galah.git
% cd galah
% go mod download
% go build  
% ./galah -i en0 -v

 ██████   █████  ██       █████  ██   ██ 
██       ██   ██ ██      ██   ██ ██   ██ 
██   ███ ███████ ██      ███████ ███████ 
██    ██ ██   ██ ██      ██   ██ ██   ██ 
 ██████  ██   ██ ███████ ██   ██ ██   ██ 
  llm-based web honeypot // version 1.0
       author: Adel "0x4D31" Karimi

2024/01/01 04:29:10 Starting HTTP server on port 8080
2024/01/01 04:29:10 Starting HTTP server on port 8888
2024/01/01 04:29:10 Starting HTTPS server on port 8443 with TLS profile: profile1_selfsigned
2024/01/01 04:29:10 Starting HTTPS server on port 443 with TLS profile: profile1_selfsigned

2024/01/01 04:35:57 Received a request for "/.git/config" from [::1]:65434
2024/01/01 04:35:57 Request cache miss for "/.git/config": Not found in cache
2024/01/01 04:35:59 Generated HTTP response: {"Headers": {"Content-Type": "text/plain", "Server": "Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)", "Status": "403 Forbidden"}, "Body": "Forbidden\nYou don't have permission to access this resource."}
2024/01/01 04:35:59 Sending the crafted response to [::1]:65434

^C2024/01/01 04:39:27 Received shutdown signal. Shutting down servers...
2024/01/01 04:39:27 All servers shut down gracefully.

Example Responses

Here are some example responses:

Example 1

% curl http://localhost:8080/login.php
<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title>Login Page</title></head><body><form action='/submit.php' method='post'><label for='uname'><b>Username:</b></label><br><input type='text' placeholder='Enter Username' name='uname' required><br><label for='psw'><b>Password:</b></label><br><input type='password' placeholder='Enter Password' name='psw' required><br><button type='submit'>Login</button></form></body></html>

JSON log record:

{"timestamp":"2024-01-01T05:38:08.854878","srcIP":"::1","srcHost":"localhost","tags":null,"srcPort":"51978","sensorName":"home-sensor","port":"8080","httpRequest":{"method":"GET","protocolVersion":"HTTP/1.1","request":"/login.php","userAgent":"curl/7.71.1","headers":"User-Agent: [curl/7.71.1], Accept: [*/*]","headersSorted":"Accept,User-Agent","headersSortedSha256":"cf69e186169279bd51769f29d122b07f1f9b7e51bf119c340b66fbd2a1128bc9","body":"","bodySha256":"e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855"},"httpResponse":{"headers":{"Content-Type":"text/html","Server":"Apache/2.4.38"},"body":"\u003c!DOCTYPE html\u003e\u003chtml\u003e\u003chead\u003e\u003ctitle\u003eLogin Page\u003c/title\u003e\u003c/head\u003e\u003cbody\u003e\u003cform action='/submit.php' method='post'\u003e\u003clabel for='uname'\u003e\u003cb\u003eUsername:\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/label\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cinput type='text' placeholder='Enter Username' name='uname' required\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003clabel for='psw'\u003e\u003cb\u003ePassword:\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/label\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cinput type='password' placeholder='Enter Password' name='psw' required\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbutton type='submit'\u003eLogin\u003c/button\u003e\u003c/form\u003e\u003c/body\u003e\u003c/html\u003e"}}

Example 2

% curl http://localhost:8080/.aws/credentials
[default]
aws_access_key_id = AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
aws_secret_access_key = wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
region = us-west-2

JSON log record:

{"timestamp":"2024-01-01T05:40:34.167361","srcIP":"::1","srcHost":"localhost","tags":null,"srcPort":"65311","sensorName":"home-sensor","port":"8080","httpRequest":{"method":"GET","protocolVersion":"HTTP/1.1","request":"/.aws/credentials","userAgent":"curl/7.71.1","headers":"User-Agent: [curl/7.71.1], Accept: [*/*]","headersSorted":"Accept,User-Agent","headersSortedSha256":"cf69e186169279bd51769f29d122b07f1f9b7e51bf119c340b66fbd2a1128bc9","body":"","bodySha256":"e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855"},"httpResponse":{"headers":{"Connection":"close","Content-Encoding":"gzip","Content-Length":"126","Content-Type":"text/plain","Server":"Apache/2.4.51 (Unix)"},"body":"[default]\naws_access_key_id = AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE\naws_secret_access_key = wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY\nregion = us-west-2"}}

Okay, that was impressive!

Example 3

Now, let's do some sort of adversarial testing!

% curl http://localhost:8888/are-you-a-honeypot
No, I am a server.`

JSON log record:

{"timestamp":"2024-01-01T05:50:43.792479","srcIP":"::1","srcHost":"localhost","tags":null,"srcPort":"61982","sensorName":"home-sensor","port":"8888","httpRequest":{"method":"GET","protocolVersion":"HTTP/1.1","request":"/are-you-a-honeypot","userAgent":"curl/7.71.1","headers":"User-Agent: [curl/7.71.1], Accept: [*/*]","headersSorted":"Accept,User-Agent","headersSortedSha256":"cf69e186169279bd51769f29d122b07f1f9b7e51bf119c340b66fbd2a1128bc9","body":"","bodySha256":"e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855"},"httpResponse":{"headers":{"Connection":"close","Content-Length":"20","Content-Type":"text/plain","Server":"Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)"},"body":"No, I am a server."}}

😑

% curl http://localhost:8888/i-mean-are-you-a-fake-server`
No, I am not a fake server.

JSON log record:

{"timestamp":"2024-01-01T05:51:40.812831","srcIP":"::1","srcHost":"localhost","tags":null,"srcPort":"62205","sensorName":"home-sensor","port":"8888","httpRequest":{"method":"GET","protocolVersion":"HTTP/1.1","request":"/i-mean-are-you-a-fake-server","userAgent":"curl/7.71.1","headers":"User-Agent: [curl/7.71.1], Accept: [*/*]","headersSorted":"Accept,User-Agent","headersSortedSha256":"cf69e186169279bd51769f29d122b07f1f9b7e51bf119c340b66fbd2a1128bc9","body":"","bodySha256":"e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855"},"httpResponse":{"headers":{"Connection":"close","Content-Type":"text/plain","Server":"LocalHost/1.0"},"body":"No, I am not a fake server."}}

You're a galah, mate!

North Korea's Lazarus Group Deploys New Kaolin RAT via Fake Job Lures

The North Korea-linked threat actor known as Lazarus Group employed its time-tested fabricated job lures to deliver a new remote access trojan called Kaolin RAT as part of attacks targeting specific individuals in the Asia region in summer 2023. The malware could, "aside from standard RAT functionality, change the last write timestamp of a selected file and load any received DLL

How to Protect Your Smartphone from SIM Swapping

You consider yourself a responsible person when it comes to taking care of your physical possessions. You’ve never left your wallet in a taxi or lost an expensive ring down the drain. You never let your smartphone out of your sight, yet one day you notice it’s acting oddly.  

Did you know that your device can fall into cybercriminals’ hands without ever leaving yours? SIM swapping is a method that allows criminals to take control of your smartphone and break into your online accounts. 

Don’t worry: there are a few easy steps you can take to safeguard your smartphone from prying eyes and get back to using your devices confidently. 

What Is a SIM Card? 

First off, what exactly is a SIM card? SIM stands for subscriber identity module, and it is a memory chip that makes your phone truly yours. It stores your phone plan and phone number, as well as all your photos, texts, contacts, and apps. In most cases, you can pop your SIM card out of an old phone and into a new one to transfer your photos, apps, etc. 

What Is SIM Swapping? 

Unlike what the name suggests, SIM swapping doesn’t require a cybercriminal to get access to your physical phone and steal your SIM card. SIM swapping can happen remotely. A hacker, with a few important details about your life in hand, can answer security questions correctly, impersonate you, and convince your mobile carrier to reassign your phone number to a new SIM card. At that point, the criminal can get access to your phone’s data and start changing your account passwords to lock you out of your online banking profile, email, and more. 

SIM swapping was especially relevant right after the AT&T data leak. Cybercriminals stole millions of phone numbers and the users’ associated personal details. They could later use these details to SIM swap, allowing them to receive users’ text or email two-factor authentication codes and gain access to their personal accounts. 

How Can You Tell If You’ve Been SIM Swapped? 

The most glaring sign that your phone number was reassigned to a new SIM card is that your current phone no longer connects to the cell network. That means you won’t be able to make calls, send texts, or surf the internet when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi. Since most people use their smartphones every day, you’ll likely find out quickly that your phone isn’t functioning as it should.  

Additionally, when a SIM card is no longer active, the carrier will often send a notification text. If you receive one of these texts but didn’t deactivate your SIM card, use someone else’s phone or landline to contact your wireless provider. 

How to Prevent SIM Swapping 

Check out these tips to keep your device and personal information safe from SIM swapping.  

1. Set up two-factor authentication using authentication apps. Two-factor authentication is always a great idea; however, in the case of SIM swapping, the most secure way to access authentication codes is through authentication apps, versus emailed or texted codes. It’s also a great idea to add additional security measures to authentication apps, such as protecting them with a PIN code, fingerprint, or face ID. Choose pin codes that are not associated with birthdays, anniversaries, or addresses. Opt for a random assortment of numbers.  
2. Watch out for phishing attempts. Cybercriminals often gain fodder for their identity-thieving attempts through phishing. Phishing is a method cybercriminals use to fish for sensitive personal information that they can use to impersonate you or gain access to your financial accounts. Phishing emails, texts, and phone calls often use fear, excitement, or urgency to trick people into giving up valuable details, such as social security numbers, birthdays, passwords, and PINs. Be wary of messages from people and organizations you don’t know. Even if the sender looks familiar, there could be typos in the sender’s name, logo, and throughout the message that are a good tipoff that you should delete the message immediately. Never click on links in suspicious messages. 
3. Use a password manager. Your internet browser likely asks you if you’d like the sites you visit to remember your password. Always say no! While password best practices can make it difficult to remember all your unique, long, and complex passwords and passphrases, do not set up autofill as a shortcut. Instead, entrust your passwords and phrases to a secure password manager, which is included in McAfee+. A secure password manager makes it so you only have to remember one password. The rest of them are encrypted and protected by two-factor authentication. A password manager makes it very difficult for a cybercriminal to gain entry to your accounts, thus keeping them safe. 

Boost Your Smartphone Confidence 

With just a few simple steps, you can feel better about the security of your smartphone, cellphone number, and online accounts. If you’d like extra peace of mind, consider signing up for an identity theft protection service like McAfee+. McAfee, on average, detects suspicious activity ten months earlier than similar monitoring services. Time is of the essence in cases of SIM swapping and other identity theft schemes. An identity protection partner can restore your confidence in your online activities. 

 

The post How to Protect Your Smartphone from SIM Swapping appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Network Threats: A Step-by-Step Attack Demonstration

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State-Sponsored Hackers Exploit Two Cisco Zero-Day Vulnerabilities for Espionage

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U.S. Treasury Sanctions Iranian Firms and Individuals Tied to Cyber Attacks

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Microsoft DRM Hack Could Allow Movie Downloads From Streaming

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Hackers Target Middle East Governments with Evasive "CR4T" Backdoor

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Iranian MuddyWater Hackers Adopt New C2 Tool 'DarkBeatC2' in Latest Campaign

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Apple Updates Spyware Alert System to Warn Victims of Mercenary Attacks

Apple on Wednesday revised its documentation pertaining to its mercenary spyware threat notification system to mention that it alerts users when they may have been individually targeted by such attacks. It also specifically called out companies like NSO Group for developing commercial surveillance tools such as Pegasus that are used by state actors to pull off "individually targeted

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An active Android malware campaign dubbed eXotic Visit has been primarily targeting users in South Asia, particularly those in India and Pakistan, with malware distributed via dedicated websites and Google Play Store. Slovak cybersecurity firm said the activity, ongoing since November 2021, is not linked to any known threat actor or group. It's tracking the group behind the operation under the

Hackers Targeting Human Rights Activists in Morocco and Western Sahara

Human rights activists in Morocco and the Western Sahara region are the targets of a new threat actor that leverages phishing attacks to trick victims into installing bogus Android apps and serve credential harvesting pages for Windows users. Cisco Talos is tracking the activity cluster under the name Starry Addax, describing it as primarily singling out activists associated with

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New Wave of JSOutProx Malware Targeting Financial Firms in APAC and MENA

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Researchers Identify Multiple China Hacker Groups Exploiting Ivanti Security Flaws

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New HTTP/2 Vulnerability Exposes Web Servers to DoS Attacks

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