Monthly Archives: January 2018

A permissions flaw in Microsoft’s Azure AD Connect software could allow a rogue admin to escalate account privileges and gain unauthorized universal access within a company’s internal network.

Microsoft issued an advisory for the vulnerability. Affected are Office 365 customers running Microsoft’s Active Directory Domain Services in conjunction with Azure AD Connect software installed with the Express Settings, according to Preempt Security that first identified the vulnerability.

Microsoft didn’t release a patch to fix the bug, rather it made available a PowerShell script that adjusts the permissions of the Active Directory domain accounts to protect customers from the vulnerability. Microsoft also said future versions of affected software (after version 1.1.654.0) would not be impacted by this vulnerability.

“Before this release, the account was created with settings that allowed a user with password administrator rights the ability to change the password to a value know to them. This allowed you to sign in using this account, and this would constitute an elevation of privilege security breach. This release tightens the setting on the account that is created and removes this vulnerability,” Microsoft states.

The flaw allows trusted users with limited or temporary privileges within a domain, such as the ability to change passwords or add users to administrative groups, to escalate privileges, said Roman Blachman, CTO and co-founder of Preempt.

He said there are several scenarios where “stealthy admins” can elevate their access within a domain. One way is a rogue technical support operator (or “stealth admin”) could use their limited privilege of managing passwords to change the password of a domain administrator. They could then login as the domain administrator and configure their own profile with greater access to the company’s network.

“The flaw allows a support operator to replicate all of the domain passwords of every user and compromise any account in the domain and give themselves full administrator rights,” Blachman said. “So, this support operator could go from having limited access to making themselves a domain admin.”

In another attack scenario, a rogue admin with limited privileges of adding and removing users from administrative groups could simply add themselves to a group with more privileges.

To circumvent detection, Preempt said a stealthy admin would alternatively target the MSOnline (MSOL) PowerShell Module, part of Windows Azure Active Directory. “Such (service) accounts are often less monitored than full domain admins even though they have relatively high privileges,” researcher said.

“Imagine a help desk technician with permissions to reset non-admin passwords but no other domain admin privileges. Because the MSOL account is generated under the Built-in Users container, and the Built-in Account Operators group (e.g. helpdesk team) has permissions to reset passwords for the Built-in Users container, this gives the account operator full de facto access to domain passwords, as well as other elevated privileges (e.g. Domain Admin),” researcher wrote in a technical write up of the vulnerability posted.

Using the aforementioned technique, Blachman said, it is possible for an admin to escalate their privileges via the MSOL service account.

“Now the stealthy admin can log into Azure AD Connect and reconfigure the account so everything would work properly and no one would ever notice the changes to the account,” Blachman said. 

“Microsoft acknowledged the issue and has released a Microsoft Security Advisory 4056318 and a PowerShell script that addresses the flaw by adjusting the permissions of the Active Directory domain accounts to modify properties of the AD DS synchronization account (MSOL),” Preempt said.

via:  threatpost

Recently uncovered two huge processor vulnerabilities called Meltdown and Spectre have taken the whole world by storm, while vendors are rushing out to patch the vulnerabilities in its products.

The issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all operating systems (Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, macOS, FreeBSD, and more), smartphones and other computing devices made in the past 20 years.

What are Spectre and Meltdown?

We have explained both, Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) and Spectre (CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5715), exploitation techniques in our previous article.

In short, Spectre and Meltdown are the names of security vulnerabilities found in many processors from Intel, ARM and AMD that could allow attackers to steal your passwords, encryption keys and other private information.

Both attacks abuse ‘speculative execution’ to access privileged memory—including those allocated for the kernel—from a low privileged user process like a malicious app running on a device, allowing attackers to steal passwords, login keys, and other valuable information.

Protect Against Meltdown and Spectre CPU Flaws

Some, including US-CERT, have suggested the only true patch for these issues is for chips to be replaced, but this solution seems to be impractical for the general user and most companies.

Vendors have made significant progress in rolling out fixes and firmware updates. While the Meltdown flaw has already been patched by most companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google, Spectre is not easy to patch and will haunt people for quite some time.
Here’s the list of available patches from major tech manufacturers:

Windows OS (7/8/10) and Microsoft Edge/IE

Microsoft has already released an out-of-band security update (KB4056892) for Windows 10 to address the Meltdown issue and will be releasing patches for Windows 7 and Windows 8 on January 9th.

But if you are running a third-party antivirus software then it is possible your system won’t install patches automatically. So, if you are having trouble installing the automatic security update, turn off your antivirus and use Windows Defender or Microsoft Security Essentials.

“The compatibility issue is caused when antivirus applications make unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory,” Microsoft noted in a blog post. “These calls may cause stop errors (also known as blue screen errors) that make the device unable to boot.”

Apple macOS, iOS, tvOS, and Safari Browser

Apple noted in its advisory, “All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time.”

To help defend against the Meltdown attacks, Apple has already released mitigations in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2, has planned to release mitigations in Safari to help defend against Spectre in the coming days.

Android OS

Android users running the most recent version of the mobile operating system released on January 5 as part of the Android January security patch update are protected, according to Google.

So, if you own a Google-branded phone, like Nexus or Pixel, your phone will either automatically download the update, or you’ll simply need to install it. However, other Android users have to wait for their device manufacturers to release a compatible security update.

The tech giant also noted that it’s unaware of any successful exploitation of either Meltdown or Spectre on ARM-based Android devices.

Firefox Web Browser

Mozilla has released Firefox version 57.0.4 which includes mitigations for both Meltdown and Spectre timing attacks. So users are advised to update their installations as soon as possible.

“Since this new class of attacks involves measuring precise time intervals, as a partial, short-term mitigation we are disabling or reducing the precision of several time sources in Firefox,” Mozilla software engineer Luke Wagner wrote in a blog post.

Google Chrome Web Browser

Google has scheduled the patches for Meltdown and Spectre exploits on January 23 with the release of Chrome 64, which will include mitigations to protect your desktop and smartphone from web-based attacks.

In the meantime, users can enable an experimental feature called “Site Isolation” that can offer some protection against the web-based exploits but might also cause performance problems.

“Site Isolation makes it harder for untrusted websites to access or steal information from your accounts on other websites. Websites typically cannot access each other’s data inside the browser, thanks to code that enforces the Same Origin Policy.” Google says.

Here’s how to turn on Site Isolation:

• Copy chrome://flags/#enable-site-per-process and paste it into the URL field at the top of your Chrome web browser, and then hit the Enter key.
  
• Look for Strict Site Isolation, then click the box labelled Enable.
  
• Once done, hit Relaunch Now to relaunch your Chrome browser.

Linux Distributions

The Linux kernel developers have also released patches for the Linux kernel with releases including versions 4.14.11, 4.9.74, 4.4.109, 3.16.52, 3.18.91 and 3.2.97, which can be downloaded from Kernel.org.

VMware and Citrix

A global leader in cloud computing and virtualization, VMware, has also released a list of its products affected by the two attacks and security updates for its ESXi, Workstation and Fusion products to patch against Meltdown attacks.

On the other hand, another popular cloud computing and virtualization vendor Citrix did not release any security patches to address the issue. Instead, the company guided its customers and recommended them to check for any update on relevant third-party software.

via: thehackernews

A researcher that goes by the handle “Siguza” released details of a local privilege escalation attack against macOS that dates back to 2002. A successful attack could give adversaries complete root access to targeted systems.

Siguza released details of the attack on Dec. 31 via Twitter, wishing followers a “Happy New Year” and linked to a technical write-up outlining the research.

The local privilege escalation (LPE) attack requires a pre-existing foothold on targeted systems. For that reason, LPEs are generally not considered critical vulnerabilities.

“An attacker needs to already have a presence on the system to take advantage of this vulnerability. This could be through infecting the target system via a remote vulnerability, such as a Safari bug, or could be through physical access, such as on a kiosk-type system,” said Jasiel Spelman, senior vulnerability researcher with Zero Day Initiative.

The most troubling thing about this vulnerability is that it has existed for years,  said Jason Haddix, head of trust and security at Bugcrowd. “We see this every so often where a bug has been latent in a system for years and no one has found it – or we hope no one has. It does go to show that automation, which Apple is no-doubt using, is not a catch-all solution for finding bugs.”

Apple did not return a request for comment for this story.

The vulnerability identified by Siguza allows for compromise of the IOHIDFamily macOS kernel driver from a process with low privileges. The IOHIDFamily is a kernel extension that provides an interface for human interface devices, such as keyboards and mice, which can be implemented by vendors, describes ZDI.

“This particular code path is only supposed to be used by a privileged process known as WindowServer, however part of this attack involves breaking the assumption that WindowServer will interact with this particular component within IOHIDFamily,” Spelman said.

An attacker wanting to exploit the vulnerability has several options, depending on the level of access already gained on the targeted system.

“Even in the most extreme case, where an attacker must first compromise an unprivileged process, evidence of the attack may be visible to the user. Specifically, in order to trigger this bug, the user must logout, either forcibly by the attacker, or manually by the user while the attacker’s code waits for an opportune moment. If successful, the attacker will be able to escalate to have kernel privileges,” ZDI wrote.

Spelman said this type of vulnerability, where data from userland is trusted, has existed for years. “The assumption that was made, and unfortunately not enforced, was that only a trusted process would be able to access the vulnerable code path. The researcher managed to break that assumption through the use of the forced logout,” he said.

Siguza stated via Twitter he declined to first share his research of the macOS exploit with Apple and opted instead to post it online for maximum exposure to the problem.

“My primary goal was to get the write-up out for people to read. I wouldn’t sell to blackhats because I don’t wanna help their cause. I would’ve submitted to Apple if their bug bounty included macOS, or if the vuln was remotely exploitable,” Siguza said in a tweet.

A patch for the bug is expected by Apple later this month as part of a cumulative update, say experts.

via:  threatpost

An American health care system is notifying 29,000 patients of a privacy breach that might have exposed their medical records.

On 29 December 2017, SSM Health published a statement about a security incident it had learned about two months earlier. The not-for-profit organization, which employs 1,600 physicians and 33,000 other individuals in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Missouri, launched an investigation to determine what had happened. Its analysis revealed that a former employee at a customer care call center had inappropriately accessed protected health information (PHI), specifically medical records belonging to a small number of patients who had a controlled substance prescription and a primary care physician in St. Louis.

The statement clarifies that the employee had access to PHI, including demographic and clinical information, in order to perform the duties of his job.

It’s believed the event, which classifies as a privacy breach under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), first started on 13 February of 2017.

SSM Health is currently in the process of notifying all 29,000 patients whose information the former employee might have accessed. Those victims can take advantage of identity theft protection services offered to them by SSM Health at no cost. Additionally, while it works with the Office for Civil Rights and local law enforcement to better understand what happened, the provider is taking steps to better secure its systems and monitor employee access.

Scott Didion, system privacy officer at SSM Health, has apologized to all those whom the incident might have affected:

We take very seriously our role of safeguarding our patients’ personal information, and we deeply regret any inconvenience or concern this situation may have caused our patients.

In an age of insider threats and other digital security risks, it’s important that companies take the necessary steps to maintain the security and integrity of their electronic medical record (EMR) systems. Learn how Tripwire can help in that regard here.

via:  tripwire

A school district in North Carolina intends to spend $314,000 on rebuilding more than a dozen servers affected by a malware attack.

On 27 December 2017, the board for Rockingham County School District held an emergency meeting and voted 7-1 to approve a 12-month, $314,000 service contract with Georgia-based technology solutions provider ProLogic ITS. The contract, which is currently pending review, will give 10 Level 3 and 4 engineers at ProLogic the necessary funding to rebuild 20 servers after the school district suffered a malware attack. It will also cover virus mitigation services offered by the provider, including on-site imaging for 12 servers and 3,000 client systems.

Greensboro News & Record reports that the monies, which will come out of the school’s unrestricted fund balance of approximately $5 million, will cover a total of 1,200 onsite repair hours. It’s estimated the cleanup won’t take longer than a month.

According to WMFY, the malware infection occurred on 11 December 2017 when employees at Bethany Elementary, Western Rockingham Middle School, and the district’s Central Office opened an “incorrect invoice” email that appeared to come from Rockingham County School District’s antivirus provider. The emailed used that lure to trick the employees to click on a Microsoft Word document containing Emotet, a trojan which injects itself into the networking stack and software modules of an infected machine. From those locations, the malware can steal financial and personal information, perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on other systems, and distribute additional banking trojans.

Tech Scout’s Kent Meeker is familiar with Emotet and says the malware is difficult to remove from an infected server. As he told WMFY in a separate article:

So if you click on something that you shouldn’t or didn’t know about it can immediately load that onto your system, and if you don’t have the right virus protection, or malware protection, it will get right through and just kind of live on the machine. It may lay dormant for a while before it activates itself, and starts doing crazy stuff. This seems like something that probably, hopefully should have been caught and now this is the repercussions of that. They are going to have to go in and rebuild all of these machines, all of these servers to get rid of it because once it is embedded in the system, it is really rough getting it out. Now, I think they are just doing everything they can to get rid of it. It is not a small deal, but it is rectifiable. It always is.

Three days after the infection occurred, the school’s administrative office received reports of machines not being able to connect to the school’s network. This prompted officials on 19 December to order that teachers and staff leave their computers behind during the winter break. The school district then worked to try to clean up the virus over the holidays.

Rockingham County School District’s administration has said the malware attack didn’t expose any data.

Kacey Sensenich, CTO at the district, rearticulated those thoughts for Greensboro News & Record:

There is no concern when it comes to financial data in Rockingham County Schools. That is all secure. None of that was compromised. The worst thing that we’ve had happen is it was able to grab people’s email and their login information and then re-spam out. We asked people to change their password. …As far as data, personnel records, all those horror stories you have, at this time we have no evidence of that [being compromised] and the security team is helping validate for us.

The $314,000 contract will cover the costs of rebuilding 20 of the school district’s severs. Even so, Rockingham will need to also pay for the replacement of teacher devices affected by the malware. Superintendent Dr. Rodney Shotwell says that amount could be as much as $834,000.

News of this attack follows several months after ransomware attackers demanded $19,000 from a California school district for a decryption key that would unlock its encrypted data.

via:  tripwire

An American health care system is notifying 29,000 patients of a privacy breach that might have exposed their medical records.

On 29 December 2017, SSM Health published a statement about a security incident it had learned about two months earlier. The not-for-profit organization, which employs 1,600 physicians and 33,000 other individuals in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Missouri, launched an investigation to determine what had happened. Its analysis revealed that a former employee at a customer care call center had inappropriately accessed protected health information (PHI), specifically medical records belonging to a small number of patients who had a controlled substance prescription and a primary care physician in St. Louis.

The statement clarifies that the employee had access to PHI, including demographic and clinical information, in order to perform the duties of his job.

It’s believed the event, which classifies as a privacy breach under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), first started on 13 February of 2017.

SSM Health is currently in the process of notifying all 29,000 patients whose information the former employee might have accessed. Those victims can take advantage of identity theft protection services offered to them by SSM Health at no cost. Additionally, while it works with the Office for Civil Rights and local law enforcement to better understand what happened, the provider is taking steps to better secure its systems and monitor employee access.

Scott Didion, system privacy officer at SSM Health, has apologized to all those whom the incident might have affected:

We take very seriously our role of safeguarding our patients’ personal information, and we deeply regret any inconvenience or concern this situation may have caused our patients.

In an age of insider threats and other digital security risks, it’s important that companies take the necessary steps to maintain the security and integrity of their electronic medical record (EMR) systems.

via:  tripwire

Finally, a browser is doing something to protect users from drive-by crypto-miners.

Norwegian browser maker Opera has launched the beta version of Opera 50, the first popular browser to integrate a built-in cryptocurrency-mining blocker.

The feature offers a new defense against the rise of cryptojacking or browser-based cryptocurrency miners that use a site visitor’s CPU without gaining the owner’s consent.

Crooks are increasingly hiding JavaScript miners on compromised websites and some have taken to deploying sneaky pop-under windows to continue using a CPU even after the victim has left the site, while groups using fake tech support scams have started integrating JavaScript miners into their bogus security-warning browser lockscreens.

“Your CPU suddenly working at 100 percent capacity, the fan is going crazy for seemingly no reason, and your battery quickly depleting might all be signs that someone is using your computer to mine for cryptocurrency,” said Opera.

NoCoin blocks in-browser cryptominers

Image: Liam Tung/ZDNet

Opera’s cryptocurrency mining protection is part of Opera’s built-in ad blocker. The company has tried to differentiate itself with a range of novel features, such as the ad-blocker and a built-in VPN.

To enable the mining protection, users need to go to Settings or Preferences. The NoCoin (Cryptocurrency) setting can be found in Recommended lists of ad filters in the Block ads page.

“With NoCoin turned on, pages embedded with cryptocurrency mining scripts will be blocked in a similar way our mechanism blocks ads,” said Opera desktop QA Kornelia Mielczarczyk.

In the beta at least, the NoCoin option is enabled by default. The feature works by blocking cryptocurrency mining scripts.

More to Check out:

Windows security: Cryptocurrency miner malware is enslaving PCs with EternalBlue

500 million PCs are being used for stealth cryptocurrency mining online

Android security: Coin miners show up in apps and sites to wear out your CPU

via:  zdnet

Pavel Lerner, a prominent Russian blockchain expert and known managing director of one of the major crypto-exchanges EXMO, has allegedly been kidnapped by “unknown” criminals in the Ukranian capital of Kiev.

According to Ukraine-based web publication Strana, Lerner, 40-year-old citizen of Russia, was kidnapped on December 26 when he was leaving his office in the center of town (located on the Stepan Bandera Avenue).

Unknown kidnappers in dark clothes and balaclavas dragged Lerner in their black Mercedes-Benz Vito brand (state number AA 2063 MT) car and drove away in an unknown direction.

The information comes from an anonymous source in Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, though multiple investigations are currently underway to find out why and by whom Lerner was kidnapped.

Lerner is a recognized IT specialist in Ukraine who led a number of startups related to blockchain technology development and mining operations.

Lerner is also the managing director of EXMO, a major UK-based cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2013 and well-known with Russians for accepting ruble payments.

Law enforcers in Kiev have begun an investigation and are currently conducting search operation, working out all possible leads in the case which is described as the kidnapping.

EXMO’s representatives confirmed media reports in a statement to a local crypto journal BitNovosti and appealed for any information that could lead to the finding of Lerner.

Unknown kidnappers in dark clothes and balaclavas dragged Lerner in their black Mercedes-Benz Vito brand (state number AA 2063 MT) car and drove away in an unknown direction.

The information comes from an anonymous source in Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, though multiple investigations are currently underway to find out why and by whom Lerner was kidnapped.

Lerner is a recognized IT specialist in Ukraine who led a number of startups related to blockchain technology development and mining operations.

Lerner is also the managing director of EXMO, a major UK-based cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2013 and well-known with Russians for accepting ruble payments.

Law enforcers in Kiev have begun an investigation and are currently conducting search operation, working out all possible leads in the case which is described as the kidnapping.

EXMO’s representatives confirmed media reports in a statement to a local crypto journal BitNovosti and appealed for any information that could lead to the finding of Lerner.

via:  thehackernews

Wishing you all a very ‘belated’ Merry Christmas. This holiday season Santa has a very special gift for all PlayStation gamers.
Developer SpecterDev finally released a fully-functional much-awaited kernel exploit for PlayStation 4 (firmware 4.05) —almost two months after Team Fail0verflow revealed the technical details of it.

Now available on Github, dubbed “namedobj,” the kernel exploit for the PlayStation 4 on 4.05FW allows users to run arbitrary code on the gaming console, enabling jailbreaking and kernel-level modifications to the system.
Although PS4 kernel exploit does not include Jailbreak code, others can develop a full jailbreak exploit using it.
Jailbreaking allows users to run custom code on the console and install mods, cheats, third-party applications, and games that are typically not possible because of the anti-piracy mechanisms implicated on the Sony PlayStation.
“This release, however, does not contain any code related to defeating anti-piracy mechanisms or running homebrew,” SpecterDev said.
“This exploit does include a loader that listens for payloads on port 9020 and will execute them upon received.”

It should be noted that for some users it may not work as smooth as it sounds.

“This exploit is actually incredibly stable at around 95% in my tests. WebKit very rarely crashes and the same is true with kernel. I’ve built in a patch so the kernel exploit will only run once on the system. You can still make additional patches via payloads,” SpecterDev warned.

PS4 gamers who are running firmware version lower than 4.05 can simply update their console to take advantage of this exploit.
Of course, Sony would not be happy with the launch of PlayStation 4 kernel exploit and would be trying hard to eliminate any vulnerability for the most recent version of PS4 firmware.

via:  thehackernews