Who Stole 3.6M Tax Records from South Carolina?

For nearly a dozen years, residents of South Carolina have been kept in the dark by state and federal investigators over who was responsible for hacking into the state’s revenue department in 2012 and stealing tax and bank account information for 3.6 million people. The answer may no longer be a mystery: KrebsOnSecurity found compelling clues suggesting the intrusion was carried out by the same Russian hacking crew that stole of millions of payment card records from big box retailers like Home Depot and Target in the years that followed.

Questions about who stole tax and financial data on roughly three quarters of all South Carolina residents came to the fore last week at the confirmation hearing of Mark Keel, who was appointed in 2011 by Gov. Nikki Haley to head the state’s law enforcement division. If approved, this would be Keel’s third six-year term in that role.

The Associated Press reports that Keel was careful not to release many details about the breach at his hearing, telling lawmakers he knows who did it but that he wasn’t ready to name anyone.

“I think the fact that we didn’t come up with a whole lot of people’s information that got breached is a testament to the work that people have done on this case,” Keel asserted.

A ten-year retrospective published in 2022 by The Post and Courier in Columbia, S.C. said investigators determined the breach began on Aug. 13, 2012, after a state IT contractor clicked a malicious link in an email. State officials said they found out about the hack from federal law enforcement on October 10, 2012.

KrebsOnSecurity examined posts across dozens of cybercrime forums around that time, and found only one instance of someone selling large volumes of tax data in the year surrounding the breach date.

On Oct. 7, 2012 — three days before South Carolina officials say they first learned of the intrusion — a notorious cybercriminal who goes by the handle “Rescator” advertised the sale of “a database of the tax department of one of the states.”

“Bank account information, SSN and all other information,” Rescator’s sales thread on the Russian-language crime forum Embargo read. “If you purchase the entire database, I will give you access to it.”

A week later, Rescator posted a similar offer on the exclusive Russian forum Mazafaka, saying he was selling information from a U.S. state tax database, without naming the state. Rescator said the data exposed included Social Security Number (SSN), employer, name, address, phone, taxable income, tax refund amount, and bank account number.

“There is a lot of information, I am ready to sell the entire database, with access to the database, and in parts,” Rescator told Mazafaka members. “There is also information on corporate taxpayers.”

On Oct. 26, 2012, the state announced the breach publicly. State officials said they were working with investigators from the U.S. Secret Service and digital forensics experts from Mandiant, which produced an incident report (PDF) that was later published by South Carolina Dept. of Revenue. KrebsOnSecurity sought comment from the Secret Service, South Carolina prosecutors, and Mr. Keel’s office. This story will be updated if any of them respond. Update: The Secret Service declined to comment.

On Nov. 18, 2012, Rescator told fellow denizens of the forum Verified he was selling a database of 65,000 records with bank account information from several smaller, regional financial institutions. Rescator’s sales thread on Verified listed more than a dozen database fields, including account number, name, address, phone, tax ID, date of birth, employer and occupation.

Asked to provide more context about the database for sale, Rescator told forum members the database included financial records related to tax filings of a U.S. state. Rescator added that there was a second database of around 80,000 corporations that included social security numbers, names and addresses, but no financial information.

The AP says South Carolina paid $12 million to Experian for identity theft protection and credit monitoring for its residents after the breach.

“At the time, it was one of the largest breaches in U.S. history but has since been surpassed greatly by hacks to Equifax, Yahoo, Home Depot, Target and PlayStation,” the AP’s Jeffrey Collins wrote.

As it happens, Rescator’s criminal hacking crew was directly responsible for the 2013 breach at Target and the 2014 hack of Home Depot. The Target intrusion saw Rescator’s cybercrime shops selling roughly 40 million stolen payment cards, and 56 million cards from Home Depot customers.

Who is Rescator? On Dec. 14, 2023, KrebsOnSecurity published the results of a 10-year investigation into the identity of Rescator, a.k.a. Mikhail Borisovich Shefel, a 36-year-old who lives in Moscow and who recently changed his last name to Lenin.

Mr. Keel’s assertion that somehow the efforts of South Carolina officials following the breach may have lessened its impact on citizens seems unlikely. The stolen tax and financial data appears to have been sold openly on cybercrime forums by one of the Russian underground’s most aggressive and successful hacking crews.

While there are no indications from reviewing forum posts that Rescator ever sold the data, his sales threads came at a time when the incidence of tax refund fraud was skyrocketing.

Tax-related identity theft occurs when someone uses a stolen identity and SSN to file a tax return in that person’s name claiming a fraudulent refund. Victims usually first learn of the crime after having their returns rejected because scammers beat them to it. Even those who are not required to file a return can be victims of refund fraud, as can those who are not actually owed a refund from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to a 2013 report from the Treasury Inspector General’s office, the IRS issued nearly $4 billion in bogus tax refunds in 2012, and more than $5.8 billion in 2013. The money largely was sent to people who stole SSNs and other information on U.S. citizens, and then filed fraudulent tax returns on those individuals claiming a large refund but at a different address.

It remains unclear why Shefel has never been officially implicated in the breaches at Target, Home Depot, or in South Carolina. It may be that Shefel has been indicted, and that those indictments remain sealed for some reason. Perhaps prosecutors were hoping Shefel would decide to leave Russia, at which point it would be easier to apprehend him if he believed no one was looking for him.

But all signs are that Shefel is deeply rooted in Russia, and has no plans to leave. In January 2024, authorities in Australia, the United States and the U.K. levied financial sanctions against 33-year-old Russian man Aleksandr Ermakov for allegedly stealing data on 10 million customers of the Australian health insurance giant Medibank.

A week after those sanctions were put in place, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive on Ermakov, which found that he co-ran a Moscow-based IT security consulting business along with Mikhail Shefel called Shtazi-IT.

A Google-translated version of Shtazi dot ru. Image: Archive.org.

‘Malicious Activity’ Hits the University of Cambridge’s Medical School

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Associated-Threat-Analyzer - Detects Malicious IPv4 Addresses And Domain Names Associated With Your Web Application Using Local Malicious Domain And IPv4 Lists

Associated-Threat-Analyzer detects malicious IPv4 addresses and domain names associated with your web application using local malicious domain and IPv4 lists.

Installation

From Git

git clone https://github.com/OsmanKandemir/associated-threat-analyzer.git
cd associated-threat-analyzer && pip3 install -r requirements.txt
python3 analyzer.py -d target-web.com

From Dockerfile

You can run this application on a container after build a Dockerfile.

Warning : If you want to run a Docker container, associated threat analyzer recommends to use your malicious IPs and domains lists, because maintainer may not be update a default malicious IP and domain lists on docker image.

docker build -t osmankandemir/threatanalyzer .
docker run osmankandemir/threatanalyzer -d target-web.com

From DockerHub

docker pull osmankandemir/threatanalyzer
docker run osmankandemir/threatanalyzer -d target-web.com

Usage

-d DOMAIN , --domain DOMAIN Input Target. --domain target-web1.com
-t DOMAINSFILE, --DomainsFile Malicious Domains List to Compare. -t SampleMaliciousDomains.txt
-i IPSFILE, --IPsFile Malicious IPs List to Compare. -i SampleMaliciousIPs.txt
-o JSON, --json JSON  JSON output. --json

DONE

• First-level depth scan your domain address.

TODO list

• Third-level or the more depth static files scanning for target web application.

Other linked github project. You can take a look.

Finds related domains and IPv4 addresses to do threat intelligence after Indicator-Intelligence v1.1.1 collects static files

https://github.com/OsmanKandemir/indicator-intelligence

Default Malicious IPs and Domains Sources

https://github.com/stamparm/blackbook

https://github.com/stamparm/ipsum

Development and Contribution

See; CONTRIBUTING.md

ThunderCloud - Cloud Exploit Framework

Cloud Exploit Framework

Usage

python3 tc.py -h

          _______ _                     _            _____ _                 _
         |__   __| |                   | |          / ____| |               | |
            | |  | |__  _   _ _ __   __| | ___ _ __| |    | | ___  _   _  __| |
            | |  | '_ \| | | | '_ \ / _` |/ _ \ '__| |    | |/ _ \| | | |/ _` |
            | |  | | | | |_| | | | | (_| |  __/ |  | |____| | (_) | |_| | (_| |
            \_/  |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__,_|\___|_|   \_____|_|\___/ \__,_|\__,_|


usage: tc.py [-h] [-ce COGNITO_ENDPOINT] [-reg REGION] [-accid AWS_ACCOUNT_ID] [-aws_key AWS_ACCESS_KEY] [-aws_secret AWS_SECRET_KEY] [-bdrole BACKDOOR_ROLE] [-sso SSO_URL] [-enum_roles ENUMERATE_ROLES] [-s3 S3_BUCKET_NAME]
             [-conn_string CONNECTION_STRING] [-blob BLOB] [-shared_access_key SHARED_ACCESS_KEY]

Attack modules of cloud AWS

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message    and exit
  -ce COGNITO_ENDPOINT, --cognito_endpoint COGNITO_ENDPOINT
                        to verify if cognito endpoint is vulnerable and to extract credentials
  -reg REGION, --region REGION
                        AWS region of the resource
  -accid AWS_ACCOUNT_ID, --aws_account_id AWS_ACCOUNT_ID
                        AWS account of the victim
  -aws_key AWS_ACCESS_KEY, --aws_access_key AWS_ACCESS_KEY
                        AWS access keys of the victim account
  -aws_secret AWS_SECRET_KEY, --aws_secret_key AWS_SECRET_KEY
                        AWS secret key of the victim account
  -bdrole BACKDOOR_ROLE, --backdoor_role BACKDOOR_ROLE
                        Name of the backdoor role in victim role
  -sso SSO_URL, --sso_url SSO_URL
                        AWS SSO URL to phish for AWS credentials
  -enum_roles ENUMERATE_ROLES, --enumerate_roles ENUMERATE_ROLES
                        To enumerate and assume account roles in victim AWS roles
  -s3 S3_BUCKET_NAME, --s3_bucket_name S3_BUCKET_NAME
                        Execute upload attack on S3 bucket
  -conn_string CONNECTION_STRING, --connection_string CONNECTION_STRING
Azure Shared Access key for readingservicebus/queues/blobs etc
  -blob BLOB, --blob BLOB
                        Azure blob enumeration
  -shared_access_key SHARED_ACCESS_KEY, --shared_access_key SHARED_ACCESS_KEY
                        Azure shared key
   

Requirements

* python 3
* pip
* git

Installation

 - get project `git clone https://github.com/Rnalter/ThunderCloud.git && cd ThunderCloud/`   
 - install [virtualenv](https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/latest/) `pip install virtualenv`
 - create a python 3.6 local enviroment `virtualenv -p python3.6 venv`  
 - activate the virtual enviroment `source venv/bin/activate` 
 - install project dependencies `pip install -r requirements.txt`
 - run the tool via `python tc.py --help`

Running ThunderCloud

Examples

python3 tc.py -sso <sso_url> --region <region>
python3 tc.py -ce <cognito_endpoint> --region <region>

Flaw in Diksha App Exposed the Data of Millions of Indian Students

TeamFiltration - Cross-Platform Framework For Enumerating, Spraying, Exfiltrating, And Backdooring O365 AAD Accounts

TeamFiltration is a cross-platform framework for enumerating, spraying, exfiltrating, and backdooring O365 AAD accounts. See the TeamFiltration wiki page for an introduction into how TeamFiltration works and the Quick Start Guide for how to get up and running!

This tool has been used internally since January 2021 and was publicly released in my talk "Taking a Dumb In The Cloud" during DefCON30.

Download

You can download the latest precompiled release for Linux, Windows and MacOSX X64

The releases are precompiled into a single application-dependent binary. The size go up, but you do not need DotNetCore or any other dependencies to run them.

Usage

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[�] TeamFiltration V0.3.3.7 PUBLIC, created by @Flangvik @TrustedSec
Usage:

   --outpath     Output path to store database and exfiltrated information (Needed for all modules)

   --config      Local path to your TeamFiltration.json configuration file, if not provided will load from the current path

   --exfil       Load the exfiltration module  

         --username            Override to target a given username that does not exist in the database
         --password            Override to target a given password that does not exist in the database
         --cookie-dump         Override to target a given account using it's refresk-cookie-collection

         --all                 Exfiltrate information from ALL SSO resources (Graph, OWA, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams)
         --aad                 Exfiltrate information from Graph API (domain users and groups)
         --teams               Exfiltrate information from Teams API (files, chatlogs, attachments, contactlist)
         --onedrive            Exfiltrate information from OneDrive/SharePoint API (accessible SharePoint files and the users entire OneDrive directory)
         --owa                 Exfiltrate information from the Outlook REST API (   The last 2k emails, both sent and received) 
               --owa-limit     Set the max amount of emails to exfiltrate, default is 2k.
         --jwt-tokens              Exfiltrate JSON formated JTW-tokens for SSO resources (MsGraph,AdGraph, Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams)

   --spray       Load the spraying module

         --aad-sso             Use SecureWorks recent Azure Active Directory password brute-forcing vuln for spraying
         --us-cloud            When spraying companies attached to US Tenants (https://login.microsoftonline.us/)
         --time-window         Defines a time windows where spraying should accour, in the military time format <12:00-19:00>
         --passwords           Path to a list of passwords, common weak-passwords will be generated if not supplied
         --seasons-only           Password generated for spraying will only be based on seasons
         --months-only         Password generated for spraying will only be based on months
         --common-only         Spray with the top 20 most common passwords
         --combo               Path to a combolist of username:password
         --exclude              Path to a list of emails to exclude from spraying

         --sleep-min           Minimum minutes to sleep between each full rotation of spraying default=60
         --sleep-max           Maximum minutes to sleep between each full rotation of spraying default=100
         --delay               Delay in seconds between each individual authentication attempt. default=0
         --push                Get Pushover notifications when valid credentials are found (requires pushover keys in config)
         --push-lo   cked         Get Pushover notifications when an sprayed account gets locked (requires pushover keys in config)
         --force               Force the spraying to proceed even if there is less the <sleep> time since the last attempt

   --enum        Load the enumeration module

         --domain              Domain to perfom enumeration against, names pulled from statistically-likely-usernames if not provided with --usernames
         --usernames           Path to a list of usernames to enumerate (emails)
         --dehashed            Use the dehashed submodule in order to enumerate emails from a basedomain
         --validate-msol       Validate that the given o365 accounts exists using the public GetCredentialType method (Very RateLimited - Slow 20 e/s)
         --validate-teams      Validate that the given o365 accounts exists using the Teams API method (Recommended - Super Fast 300 e/s)
         --validate-login      Validate that    the given o365 accounts by attemping to login (Noisy - triggers logins - Fast 100 e/s)

   --backdoor        Loads the interactive backdoor module

   --database        Loads the interactive database browser module

   --debug           Add burp as a proxy on 127.0.0.1:8080

   Examples:

        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --spray --sleep-min 120 --sleep-max 200 --push
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --spray --push-locked --months-only --exclude C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\Exclude_Emails.txt
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --spray --passwords C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\Generic\Passwords.txt --time-window 13:00-22:00
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --exfil --all 
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --exfil --aad     
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --exfil --teams --owa --owa-limit 5000
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --debug --exfil --onedrive
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --enum --validate-teams
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --enum --validate-msol --usernames C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\OSINT\Usernames.txt
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --backdoor
        --outpath C:\Clients\2021\FooBar\TFOutput --config myCustomConfig.json --database

Credits

• GitHub - KoenZomers/OneDriveAPI: API in .NET to communicate with OneDrive Personal and OneDrive for Business
• Research into Undocumented Behavior of Azure AD Refresh Tokens
• WS API Gateway management tool for creating on the fly HTTP pass-through proxies for unique IP rotation
• Credits to [Ryan] (https://twitter.com/detectdotdev) for validating and discussing my observations / questions!
• The entire TrustedSec team for helping me polish this tool!

The Uber Data Breach Conviction Shows Security Execs What Not to Do

Careless Errors in Hundreds of Apps Could Expose Troves of Data

Chisel-Strike - A .NET XOR Encrypted Cobalt Strike Aggressor Implementation For Chisel To Utilize Faster Proxy And Advanced Socks5 Capabilities

A .NET XOR encrypted cobalt strike aggressor implementation for chisel to utilize faster proxy and advanced socks5 capabilities.

Why write this?

In my experience I found socks4/socks4a proxies quite slow in comparison to its socks5 counterparts and a lack of implementation of socks5 in most C2 frameworks. There is a C# wrapper around the go version of chisel called SharpChisel. This wrapper has a few issues and isn't maintained to the latest version of chisel. It didn’t allow using shellcode with donut, reflectio n methods or execute-assembly. I found a fix for this using the SharpChisel-NG project.

Since the SharpChisel assembly is around 16.7 MB, execute-assembly(has a hidden size limitation of 1 MB) and similar in memory methods wouldn’t work. To maintain most of the execution in memory I incorporated the NetLoader project by Flangvik which is executed via execute-assembly to reflectively host and load a XOR encrypted version of SharpChisel with base64 arguments in memory.

As an alternative, it is also possible to implement similar C# proxies like SharpSocks by replacing the appropriate chisel binaries in the project.

Setup

Note: If using a Windows teamserver skip steps 2 and 3.

1. Clone/download the repository: git clone https://github.com/m3rcer/Chisel-Strike.git

2. Make all binaries executable:

• cd Chisel-Strike

• chmod +x -R chisel-modules

• chmod +x -R tools

3. Install Mingw-w64 and mono:

• sudo apt-get install mingw-w64

• sudo apt install mono-complete

4. Import ChiselStrike.cna in cobalt strike using the Script Manager

Recompile binaries from the src folder if needed.

Usage

chisel can be executed on both the teamserver (windows/linux) and the beacon. With either acting as the server/client. A normal execution flow would be to setup a chisel server on the teamserver and create a client on the beacon connecting back to the teamserver.

Commands

1. chisel <client/server> <command>: Run Chisel on a beacon

2. chisel-tms <client/server> <command>: Run Chisel on your teamserver

3. chisel-enc: XOR Encrypt SharpChisel.exe with a password of choice

4. chisel-jobs: List active chisel jobs on the teamserver and beacon

5. chisel-kill: Kill active chisel jobs on a beacon

6. chisel-tms-kill: Kill active chisel jobs on teamserver

Example

OPSEC

NetLoader can easily be obfuscated and used to bypass defender using projects like NimCrypt2 and the like.

Yet SharpChisel.exe drops a dll on disk due to the use of Costura/Fody packages at a location similar to: C:\Users\m3rcer\AppData\Local\Temp\Costura\CB9433C24E75EC539BF34CD1AA12B236\64\main.dll which is detected by defender. It is advised to obfuscate chisel dll's using projects like gobfuscate in the SharpChisel-NG project and re-build new SharpChisel-NG binaries as shown here.

TODO

• Figure a way to avoid SharpChisel dropping main.dll on disk / Create a new C# wrapper for chisel.

• Create a method to parse command output for the chisel-tms command.

Credits

• Flangvik and Arno0x for the NetLoader project.

• shantanu561993 for the C# wrapper implementation of chisel: SharpChisel

• latortuga71 for the load-assembly fix: SharpChisel-NG

New 'Retbleed' Speculative Execution Attack Affects AMD and Intel CPUs