A former U.S. NSA employee has been sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison for attempting to sell classified documents to Russia.

Jareh Sebastian Dalke (32), of Colorado Springs, is a former employee of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) who has been sentenced to nearly 22 years (262 months) in prison for attempting to transmit classified National Defense Information (NDI) to Russia.

Dalke pleaded guilty to six counts of attempting to transmit classified documents to a foreign agent while he was working at the NSA. The man served as an Information Systems Security Designer between June 6 to July 1, 2022, this job position gave him access to sensitive information.

He shared excerpts of three classified documents, classified as Top Secret//Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), with an individual he believed to be a Russian agent, who was actually an FBI online covert employee. These attempts occurred between August and September 2022, using an encrypted email account to demonstrate his willingness to share sensitive information.

Dalke demanded $85,000 in return for sharing all the classified information, he was aware of the importance of the documents for the Kremlin. He also told the undercover agent that he would share more files upon his return to Washington, D.C.

Dalke arranged to transfer additional classified information to a purported Russian agent at Union Station in downtown Denver. The former NSA employee used a laptop and followed the instructions provided by his contact. Four of the transferred files contained Top Secret National Defense Information (NDI). One file was a letter expressing Dalke’s eagerness to provide information and expressing anticipation of mutual benefit.

Dalke was arrested by the FBI on September 28, shortly after he transmitted the files. The former NSA employee revealed he leaked the classified documents to injure the United States and to benefit Russia.

“This defendant, who had sworn an oath to defend our country, believed he was selling classified national security information to a Russian agent, when in fact, he was outing himself to the FBI,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “This sentence demonstrates that that those who seek to betray our country will be held accountable for their crimes. I am grateful to the FBI Denver and Washington Field Offices for their extraordinary work on this case.”

“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. “Dalke believed he was passing classified information to an agent of the Russian government. The hard work of our FBI employees prevented that from happening and any potential harm to the United States.”

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, NSA)

A new malware named Cuttlefish targets enterprise-grade and small office/home office (SOHO) routers to harvest public cloud authentication data.

Researchers at Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs discovered a new malware family, named Cuttlefish, which targets enterprise-grade and small office/home office (SOHO) routers to harvest public cloud authentication data from internet traffic.

The malware creates a proxy or VPN tunnel on the compromised router to exfiltrate data, and then uses stolen credentials to access targeted resources. 

Cuttlefish has a modular structure, it was designed to primarily steal authentication data from web requests passing through the router from the local area network (LAN). The malicious code can also perform DNS and HTTP hijacking within private IP spaces. Additionally, it can interact with other devices on the LAN and transfer data or deploy new agents. The researchers observed similarities in code and build paths with a previously reported malware called HiatusRat, linked to China. Although there’s code overlap, no shared victimology has been observed, suggesting that these malware families operate concurrently.

“The Cuttlefish malware offers a zero-click approach to capturing data from users and devices behind the targeted network’s edge. Any data sent across network equipment infiltrated by this malware, is potentially exposed.” reads the Lumen’s Black Lotus researchers. “What makes this malware family so insidious is the ability to perform HTTP and DNS hijacking for connections to private IP addresses. Cuttlefish lies in wait, passively sniffing packets, acting only when triggered by a predefined ruleset.”

The malware has been active since at least July 27, 2023, with indications of earlier versions. The recent campaign spanned from October 2023 to April 2024. The experts noticed that the infection chain was distinct, with 99% of infections originating in Turkey, primarily from two major telecommunications providers. These providers comprised around 93% of infections, totaling 600 unique IP addresses. Other non-Turkish victims included IP addresses likely belonging to clients of global satellite phone providers and a potential US-based data center.

The researchers have yet to determine the initial access vector, however, they believe threat actors could have exploited known vulnerabilities or carried out brute-forcing credentials. Upon gaining access to the routers, the attackers deploy a bash script that gathers certain host-based data to send to the C2. The bash script also downloads and executes Cuttlefish.

The binary analyzed by the researchers is compiled for all major architectures used by SOHO operating systems. 

The malware passively monitors network packets for “credential markers,” including usernames, passwords, and authentication tokens. Cuttlefish primarily targets public cloud-based services such as Alicloud, AWS, Digital Ocean, CloudFlare, and BitBucket.

The Black Lotus Labs report highlights that targeted services are used for storing sensitive data. This approach enables threat actors to potentially copy data from cloud resources lacking the logging or controls commonly present in traditional network perimeters.

The malware store the stolen data in the log, then when the log file of filtered traffic reaches a specified size, Cuttlefish compresses it using gzip and uploads it to the C2 server using a computed uuid and a predefined value of “tid”.

Cuttlefish redirects DNS requests for private IP addresses to a specified DNS server and manipulates HTTP requests to reroute traffic to an infrastructure under the control of its operators using HTTP 302 error codes. This capability suggests that Cuttlefish can hijack internal or site-to-site traffic, enabling access to secured resources not exposed on the Internet.

“Cuttlefish represents the latest evolution in passive eavesdropping malware for edge networking equipment, allowing an actor to adapt and overcome the TLS configurations adopted by more modern enterprises.” concludes the report. “We also believe these innovations are the next generation in malware capabilities; the ability to eavesdrop and perform DNS and HTTP hijacking has seldom been observed – the few publicly identified campaigns include ZuoRat, VPNFilter, Attor, and Plead. However, this is the first instance where we have seen rules specifically designed to seek out private IP connections to hijack.”

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, malware)

A flaw in the R programming language enables the execution of arbitrary code when parsing specially crafted RDS and RDX files.

A vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-27322 (CVSS v3: 8.8), in the R programming language could allow arbitrary code execution upon deserializing specially crafted R Data Serialization (RDS) or R package files (RDX).

R is an open-source programming language widely used for statistical computing and graphics. It was initially developed by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in the early 1990s. Since then, it has gained popularity among statisticians and data miners for its powerful features and extensive libraries for data manipulation, visualization, and statistical analysis.

The R programming language has also become increasingly popular in the AI/ML field because it allows to manage large datasets.

The vulnerability was reported by researchers at HiddenLayer, the experts pointed out that the attack vector is very effective because RDS files or R packages are often shared between developers and data scientists.

“Our team discovered that it is possible to craft a malicious RDS file that will execute arbitrary code when loaded and referenced. This vulnerability, assigned CVE-2024-27322, involves the use of promise objects and lazy evaluation in R.” reads the analysis published by HiddenLayer.

The R programming language has its serialization format, used for serializing objects with ‘saveRDS’ and deserializing them with ‘readRDS’. This format is also utilized when saving and loading R packages.

The vulnerability ties how R handles serialization (‘saveRDS’) and deserialization (‘readRDS’) and involves the use of promise objects and lazy evaluation in R.

“Lazy evaluation is a strategy that allows for symbols to be evaluated only when needed, i.e., when they are accessed.” continues the analysis. “The above is achieved by creating a promise object that has both a symbol and an expression attached to it. Once the symbol ‘y’ is accessed, the expression assigning the value of ‘x’ to ‘y’ is run. The key here is that ‘y’ is not assigned the value 1 because ‘y’ is not assigned to ‘x’ until it is accessed. While we were not successful in gaining code execution within the deserialization code itself, we thought that since we could create all of the needed objects, it might be possible to create a promise that would be evaluated once someone tried to use whatever had been deserialized.”

Attackers can put promise objects containing arbitrary code in the metadata of an RDS file in the form of expressions that will be evaluated during deserialization leading to the execution of the embedded code.

Possible attack scenarios see threat actors tricking victims into executing malicious files or distributing a malware-laced package through widely used repositories and waiting victims download them.

“Given the widespread usage of R and the readRDS function, the implications of this are far-reaching. Having followed our responsible disclosure process, we have worked closely with the team at R who have worked quickly to patch this vulnerability within the most recent release – R v4.4.0. In addition, HiddenLayer’s AISec Platform will provide additional protection from this vulnerability in its Q2 product release.” concludes the report.

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, R programming language)

A forensic analysis of a graph dataset containing transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain has revealed clusters associated with illicit activity and money laundering, including detecting criminal proceeds sent to a crypto exchange and previously unknown wallets belonging to a Russian darknet market. The findings come from Elliptic in collaboration with researchers from the&

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a previously undocumented malware targeting Android devices that uses compromised WordPress sites as relays for its actual command-and-control (C2) servers for detection evasion. The malware, codenamed Wpeeper, is an ELF binary that leverages the HTTPS protocol to secure its C2 communications. "Wpeeper is a typical backdoor Trojan for Android

There’s a natural human desire to avoid threatening scenarios. The irony, of course, is if you hope to attain any semblance of security, you’ve got to remain prepared to confront those very same threats. As a decision-maker for your organization, you know this well. But no matter how many experts or trusted cybersecurity tools your organization has a standing guard,

The authors behind the resurfaced ZLoader malware have added a feature that was originally present in the Zeus banking trojan that it's based on, indicating that it's being actively developed. "The latest version, 2.4.1.0, introduces a feature to prevent execution on machines that differ from the original infection," Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Santiago

The China-linked threat actors Muddling Meerkat are manipulating DNS to probe networks globally since 2019.

Infoblox researchers observed China-linked threat actors Muddling Meerkat using sophisticated DNS activities since 2019 to bypass traditional security measures and probe networks worldwide.

The experts noticed a spike in activity observed in September 2023.

The threat actors appear to have the capability to control China’s Great Firewall and were observed utilizing a novel technique involving fake DNS MX records.

Attackers used “super-aged” domains, usually registered before the year 2000, to avoid DNS blocklists and blending in with old malware at the same time

The attackers manipulate MX (Mail Exchange) records by injecting fake responses through China’s Great Firewall. However, the Infoblox researchers have yet to discover the motivation behind the attacks.

“The GFW can be described as an “operator on the side,” meaning that it does not alter DNS responses directly but injects its own answers, entering into a race condition with any response from the original intended destination. When the GFW response is received by the requester first, it can poison their DNS cache.” reads the analysis published by Infoblox. “The GFW creates a lot of noise and misleading data that can hinder investigations into anomalous behavior in DNS. I have personally gone hunting down numerous trails only to conclude: oh, it’s just the GFW.”

The experts noticed that a cluster of activities linked to a threat actor tracked as “ExploderBot” included most demonstrably damaging DNS DDoS attacks, ceased in May 2018. However, low-volume attacks resembling Slow Drip DDoS attacks have persisted since then. These attacks involve queries for random subdomains of target domains, propagated through open resolvers. Despite their lower volumes, these attacks share similar behavioral patterns to DNS DDoS attacks.

Muddling Meerkat’s operations also used MX record queries for random subdomains of target domains, rather than the base domain itself. This scenario is unusual as it typically occurs when a user intends to send email to a subdomain, which is not common in normal DNS activity. The researchers noticed that many of the target domains lack functional mail servers, making these queries even more mysterious.

“The data we have suggests that the operations are performed in independent “stages;” some include MX queries for target domains, and others include a broader set of queries for random subdomains. The DNS event data containing MX records from the GFW often occurs on separate dates from those where we see MX queries at open resolvers.” concludes the report. “Because the domain names are the same across the stages and the queries are consistent across domain names, both over a multi-year period, these stages surely must be related, but we did not draw a conclusion about how they are related or why the actor would use such staged approaches.”

The report also includes indicators of compromise (IoCs) recommendations to neutralize these activities..

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, DNS)

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.

Finnish hacker was sentenced to more than six years in prison for hacking into an online psychotherapy clinic and attempted extortion.

A popular 26-year-old Finnish hacker Aleksanteri Kivimäki was sentenced to more than six years in prison for hacking into the online psychotherapy clinic Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center, exposing tens of thousands of patient therapy records, and trying to extort the clinic and its clients.

The man was arrested near Paris on February 2023, where he was living under a false identity. Kivimäki was deported to Finland and his trial concluded in March 2024.

In October 2020, the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center was the victim of an extortion attempt. Threat actors hacked the clinic and stole a database containing information of some 33,000 clients. A threat actor that goes online with moniker “ransom_man” demanded 40 bitcoin (approximately 450,000 euros at the time) to avoid leaking sensitive therapy information stolen for the clinic, which refused to pay.

“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.” reads the post published by Brian Krebs. “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.”

The hacker demanded a ransom of 200 euros or 500 euros to each patient, and about 20 clients paid it.

The man was found guilty of several offenses, which included aggravated data breach, 21,000 counts of aggravated blackmail attempts, and 9,200 counts of aggravated dissemination.

Kivimäki denied all charges and may appeal, according to his lawyer. Prosecutors aimed for the maximum sentence of seven years, given the nature of the crimes.

Kivimäki was involved in multiple criminal cases in the past, he was a member of the hacker group Hack the Planet (HTP).

Kivimäki is also known as a member of the notorious hacker group Lizard Squad.

In 2013, investigators discovered malicious code on devices seized from Kivimäki, which was used by HTP to compromise over 60,000 servers exploiting an Adobe ColdFusion zero-day. This exploit was reported by Brian Krebs in September 2013, after the hackers breached the servers of LexisNexis, Kroll, and Dun & Bradstreet.

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Finnish Hacker)

The US government’s cybersecurity agency CISA published a series of guidelines to protect critical infrastructure against AI-based attacks.

CISA collaborated with Sector Risk Management Agencies (SRMAs) and regulatory agencies to conduct sector-specific assessments of AI risks to U.S. critical infrastructure, as mandated by Executive Order 14110 Section 4.3(a)(i). The analysis categorized AI risks into three categories:

• Attacks Using AI;
• Attacks Targeting AI Systems;
• Failures in AI Design and Implementation.

AI risk management for critical infrastructure is an ongoing process throughout the AI lifecycle.

These guidelines integrate the AI Risk Management Framework into enterprise risk management programs for critical infrastructure. The AI RMF Core consists of the Govern, Map, Measure, and Manage functions.

The Govern function within the AI RMF establishes an organizational approach to AI Risk Management within existing Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). Recommended actions for addressing risks throughout the AI lifecycle are integrated into the Map, Measure, and Manage functions. These guidelines improve AI safety and security risk management practices proposed by the NIST AI RMF.

CISA highlights that the risks are context-dependent, this implies that critical infrastructure operators should consider sector-specific and context-specific factors when assessing and mitigating AI risks. Specific sectors may need to define their own tailored guidelines for managing AI risk. Stakeholders may focus on different aspects of the AI lifecycle depending on their sector or role, whether they are involved in the design, development, procurement, deployment, operation, management, maintenance, or retirement of AI systems.

“Critical infrastructure owners and operators can foster a culture of risk management by aligning AI safety and security priorities with their own organizational principles and strategic priorities. This organizational approach follows a “secure by design” philosophy where leaders prioritize and take ownership of safety and security outcomes and build organizational structures that make security a top priority.” read the guidelines.

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered multiple campaigns targeting Docker Hub by planting millions of malicious "imageless" containers over the past five years, once again underscoring how open-source registries could pave the way for supply chain attacks. "Over four million of the repositories in Docker Hub are imageless and have no content except for the repository

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.

The U.S. government has unveiled new security guidelines aimed at bolstering critical infrastructure against artificial intelligence (AI)-related threats. "These guidelines are informed by the whole-of-government effort to assess AI risks across all sixteen critical infrastructure sectors, and address threats both to and from, and involving AI systems," the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)&

The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) orders smart device manufacturers to ban default passwords starting from April 29, 2024.

The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is urging manufacturers of smart devices to comply with new legislation that bans default passwords.

The law, known as the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure act (or PSTI act), will be effective on April 29, 2024.

“From 29 April 2024, manufacturers of consumer ‘smart’ devices must comply with new UK law.” reads the announcement published by NCSC. “The law, known as the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure act (or PSTI act), will help consumers to choose smart devices that have been designed to provide ongoing protection against cyber attacks.”

The U.K. is the first country in the world to ban default credentia from IoT devices.

The law prohibits manufacturers from supplying devices with default passwords, which are easily accessible online and can be shared.

The law applies to the following products:

• Smart speakers, smart TVs, and streaming devices
• Smart doorbells, baby monitors, and security cameras
• Cellular tablets, smartphones, and game consoles
• Wearable fitness trackers (including smart watches)
• Smart domestic appliances (such as light bulbs, plugs, kettles, thermostats, ovens, fridges, cleaners, and washing machines)

Threat actors could use them to access a local network or launch cyber attacks.

Manufacturers are obliged to designate a contact point for reporting security issues and must specify the minimum duration for which the device will receive crucial security updates.

The NCSC clarified that the PSTI act also applies to organizations importing or retailing products for the UK market, including most smart devices manufactured outside the UK. Manufacturers that don’t comply with the act will be punished with fines of up to £10 million or 4% of qualifying worldwide revenue.

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, smart device manufacturers)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined the largest U.S. wireless carriers $200 million for sharing customers’ real-time location data without consent.

The FCC has fined four major U.S. wireless carriers nearly $200 million for unlawfully selling access to real-time location data of their customers without consent. The fines come as a result of the Notices of Apparent Liability (NAL) issued by the FCC against AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon in February 2020.

T-Mobile is facing a proposed fine exceeding $91 million, while AT&T is looking at one over $57 million. Verizon, on the other hand, faces a proposed fine exceeding $48 million, and Sprint faces a proposed fine of more than $12 million due to the actions taken by the FCC.

“The Federal Communications Commission today proposed fines against the nation’s four largest wireless carriers for apparently selling access to their customers’ location information without taking reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access to that information.” reads the announcement published by FCC. “As a result, T-Mobile faces a proposed fine of more than $91 million; AT&T faces a proposed fine of more than $57 million; Verizon faces a proposed fine of more than $48 million; and Sprint faces a proposed fine of more than $12 million. The FCC also admonished these carriers for apparently disclosing their customers’ location information, without their authorization, to a third party.”

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau launched an investigation after Missouri Sheriff Cory Hutcheson misused a “location-finding service” provided by Securus, a communications service provider for correctional facilities, to access the location data of wireless carrier customers without their consent from 2014 to 2017. Hutcheson allegedly provided irrelevant documents, such as health insurance and auto insurance policies, along with pages from sheriff training manuals, as evidence of authorization to access the data.

FCC added that the carriers continued to sell access to the customers’ location information and did not sufficiently guard it from further unauthorized access even after discovering irregular procedures.

All four carriers condemned the FCC’s decision and announced they would appeal it.

The Communications Act mandates that telecommunications carriers safeguard the confidentiality of specific customer data, including location information, about telecommunications services. Carriers must adopt reasonable measures to prevent unauthorized access to customer data. Furthermore, carriers or their representatives must typically secure explicit consent from customers before utilizing, disclosing, or permitting access to such data. Carriers bear responsibility for the actions of their representatives in this regard.

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Federal Communications Commission)

The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is calling on manufacturers of smart devices to comply with new legislation that prohibits them from using default passwords, effective April 29, 2024. "The law, known as the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure act (or PSTI act), will help consumers to choose smart devices that have been designed to

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today levied fines totaling nearly $200 million against the four major carriers — including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information without consent.

The fines mark the culmination of a more than four-year investigation into the actions of the major carriers. In February 2020, the FCC put all four wireless providers on notice that their practices of sharing access to customer location data were likely violating the law.

The FCC said it found the carriers each sold access to its customers’ location information to ‘aggregators,’ who then resold access to the information to third-party location-based service providers.

“In doing so, each carrier attempted to offload its obligations to obtain customer consent onto downstream recipients of location information, which in many instances meant that no valid customer consent was obtained,” an FCC statement on the action reads. “This initial failure was compounded when, after becoming aware that their safeguards were ineffective, the carriers continued to sell access to location information without taking reasonable measures to protect it from unauthorized access.”

The FCC’s findings against AT&T, for example, show that AT&T sold customer location data directly or indirectly to at least 88 third-party entities. The FCC found Verizon sold access to customer location data (indirectly or directly) to 67 third-party entities. Location data for Sprint customers found its way to 86 third-party entities, and to 75 third-parties in the case of T-Mobile customers.

The commission said it took action after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter to the FCC detailing how a company called Securus Technologies had been selling location data on customers of virtually any major mobile provider to law enforcement officials.

That same month, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that LocationSmart — a data aggregation firm working with the major wireless carriers — had a free, unsecured demo of its service online that anyone could abuse to find the near-exact location of virtually any mobile phone in North America.

The carriers promised to “wind down” location data sharing agreements with third-party companies. But in 2019, reporting at Vice.com showed that little had changed, detailing how reporters were able to locate a test phone after paying $300 to a bounty hunter who simply bought the data through a little-known third-party service.

Sen. Wyden said no one who signed up for a cell plan thought they were giving permission for their phone company to sell a detailed record of their movements to anyone with a credit card.

“I applaud the FCC for following through on my investigation and holding these companies accountable for putting customers’ lives and privacy at risk,” Wyden said in a statement today.

The FCC fined Sprint and T-Mobile $12 million and $80 million respectively. AT&T was fined more than $57 million, while Verizon received a $47 million penalty. Still, these fines represent a tiny fraction of each carrier’s annual revenues. For example, $47 million is less than one percent of Verizon’s total wireless service revenue in 2023, which was nearly $77 billion.

The fine amounts vary because they were calculated based in part on the number of days that the carriers continued sharing customer location data after being notified that doing so was illegal (the agency also considered the number of active third-party location data sharing agreements). The FCC notes that AT&T and Verizon each took more than 320 days from the publication of the Times story to wind down their data sharing agreements; T-Mobile took 275 days; Sprint kept sharing customer location data for 386 days.

Update, 6:25 p.m. ET: Clarified that the FCC launched its investigation at the request of Sen. Wyden.

Last Week in Security is a summary of the interesting cybersecurity news, techniques, tools and exploits from the past week. This post covers 2024-04-22 to 2024-04-29.

News

• Trusted Signing is in Public Preview - Code sign your payloads with Microsoft? Note that your company will need "3 years of tax history" to use the service.
• Multi-tenant organization capabilities now available in Microsoft 365 - This is AD forests for Entra ID with the ability to connect single tenants together. Let the games begin!
• HashiCorp joins IBM to accelerate multi-cloud automation - HashiCorp joins IBM. This comes on the heels of their license changes for Terraform and Vault. 🤔
• FTC Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers, Failed to Stop Hackers from Taking Control of Users' Cameras - The FTC charged Ring with privacy violations, including unauthorized employee access to customer videos and inadequate security measures, leading to a proposed order requiring Ring to improve privacy protocols and pay $5.8 million in refunds. Consider using home assistant and Frigate NVR to keep all your security camera footage local.
• FTC Announces Rule Banning Noncompetes - This likely affects many technology workers in the US.
• Google Lays off the Python Team? - It seems they are moving the Python team to Germany? Unclear what the motivations were for these actions.
• How G.M. Tricked Millions of Drivers Into Being Spied On (Including Me) - Another blatant privacy violation that will probably go unpunished.

Techniques and Write-ups

• Hello: I'm your Domain Admin and I want to authenticate against you - A method for exploiting default Distributed COM permissions on DCs to intercept and relay the authentication of users, leading to privilege escalation and RCE (maybe) by leveraging "SilverPotato."
• ETW-ByeBye: Disabling ETW-TI Without PPL - A vulnerability that allows disabling ETW-TI (Event Tracing for Windows Threat Intelligence) logging without Protected Process Light (PPL) requirements, using SeDebug or SeTcb privileges on certain Windows versions. PoC code and detection guidance is provided. Note: this only works on Windows 10, Windows 11 patched this bug.
• JA4T: TCP Fingerprinting - JA4 scanner released. Certainly worth adding to your recon worfklow and automation.
• NetNTLM is still a thing? - Yes. Yes it is. This post gives a good recap of how you can still relay NetNTLM via various methods. Details some less common techniques like leveraging HTTP.SYS for setting up a listener without admin privileges, bypassing the Windows firewall, and using SSH for port forwarding to relay. You aren't checking emails or doing day to day activities with a highly privileged account, right?
• Adversaries sometimes compute gradients. Other times, they rob you. This blog post discusses the concept of an "adversary flywheel," which involves attackers using data science to adapt and optimize their methods based on defensive responses, enhancing their ability to exploit security vulnerabilities efficiently.
• Not the Access You Asked For: How Azure Storage Account Read/Write Permissions Can Be Abused for Privilege Escalation and Lateral Movement This post discusses unexpected techniques that allow an Azure user with Storage Account permissions to abuse them for privilege escalation and lateral movement. Grab the tool: Find-SensitiveAzStorageAccounts.
• Loading DLLs Reflections - Simple article discussing reflective DLL loading to load a DLL into memory without it being written to disk.
• Nemesis 1.0.0 - "...from host modeling, to a streamlined installation process, dashboard improvements, and more!"
• Offensive SaaS Security - Exfiltrating Cleartext Credentials via LogonUserW Hooking - This post details a technique exploiting IAM providers like Azure AD, Okta, and OneLogin using LogonUserW hooking to capture cleartext credentials and insert backdoors in authentication flows.
• Arbitrary 1-click Azure tenant takeover via MS application - Blog post on how reply URLs in Azure Applications can be used as a vector for phishing. The impact of this can range from data leaks to complete tenant takeover; just by luring a victim into clicking on a link. Another disappointing bug bounty case unfortunately.
• Laundering C2 Traffic by FuzzySecurity Good recap of using high-reputation services as your C2 channel.
• Exploiting the NT Kernel in 24H2: New Bugs in Old Code & Side Channels Against KASLR - The kernel address space layout randomization (KASLR) cat and mouse game heats up with a bypass for the new Windows 11 24H2 hardened kernel.
• So I Became a Node: Exploiting Bootstrap Tokens in Azure Kubernetes Service - What can you do if you retrieve a Kubernetes bootstrap token from an AKS pod? This post explore the bootstrap tokens, how they work, and how to exploit them.
• CVE-2024-21111 - Local Privilege Escalation in Oracle VirtualBox - An arbitrary file move vulnerability in the VirtualBox system service service can facilitate privilege escalation on a Windows host.
• How to Crack the Perfect Egg - Some great password cracking methodology.

Tools and Exploits

• GoogleRecaptchaBypass - Solve Google reCAPTCHA in less than 5 seconds! 🚀
• ASPJinjaObfuscator - Heavily obfuscated ASP web shell generation tool.
• ja4tscan - JA4TScan is an active TCP server fingerprinting tool.
• tiny-gpu - A minimal GPU design in Verilog to learn how GPUs work from the ground up.
• AutoAppDomainHijack - Automated .NET AppDomain hijack payload generation.
• ReadWriteDriverSample - Sample driver + user component to demonstrate writing into arbitrary process memory from Kernel via CR3 manipulation (opposed to the usual KeStackAttachProcess API).
• PartyLoader - Threadless shellcode injection tool.
• 24h2-nt-exploit - Exploit targeting NT kernel in 24H2 Windows Insider Preview.

New to Me and Miscellaneous

This section is for news, techniques, write-ups, tools, and off-topic items that weren't released last week but are new to me. Perhaps you missed them too!

• ics-forensics-tools - Microsoft ICSpector (ICS Forensics Tools framework) is an open-source forensics framework that enables the analysis of Industrial PLC metadata and project files.
• Evidence Collection Environment - This environment is intended to be useful for when you have multiple investigators or external parties adding data for evaluation. Some key features (hopefully) implemented in this setup leverage the Azure Storage legal hold, Azure Storage analytics logging for validation of access by which parties, Azure Key Vault logging with the logs going to a Log Analytics workspace in the resource group.
• DLHell - Local & remote Windows DLL Proxying.
• MS-DOS - The original sources of MS-DOS 1.25, 2.0, and 4.0 for reference purposes.
• cdncheck - A utility to detect various technology for a given IP address.
• CloudInject - This is a simple tool which can be used to inject a DLL into third-party AD connectors to harvest credentials.

Techniques, tools, and exploits linked in this post are not reviewed for quality or safety. Do your own research and testing.

Google announced they have prevented 2.28 million policy-violating apps from being published in the official Google Play.

Google announced that in 2023, they have prevented 2.28 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play. This amazing result was possible thanks to the introduction of enhanced security features, policy updates, and advanced machine learning and app review processes.

Additionally, Google Play strengthened its developer onboarding and review procedures, requesting a more accurate identification during account setup. These efforts resulted in the ban of 333,000 accounts for confirmed malware and repeated severe policy breaches.

Google also rejected or remediated approximately 200K app submissions to ensure proper use of sensitive permissions such as background location or SMS access. Google has closely worked with SDK providers to protect users’ privacy and prevent sensitive data access and sharing. Over 31 SDKs have enhanced their posture impacting 790K+ apps.

“We also significantly expanded the Google Play SDK Index, which now covers the SDKs used in almost 6 million apps across the Android ecosystem.” states Google. “This valuable resource helps developers make better SDK choices, boosts app quality and minimizes integration risks.”

Google continues to work on improving the Android environment. In November, 2023, it moved the App Defense Alliance (ADA) under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, with Meta, Microsoft, and Google as founding steering members. The Alliance encourages widespread adoption of best practices and guidelines for app security across the industry, while also developing countermeasures to address emerging security threats.

Google enhanced Google Play Protect’s security capabilities to provide stronger protection for users installing apps from outside the Play Store. The company implemented real-time scanning at the code-level to detect new malicious apps. The company revealed that this measure has already identified over 5 million new malicious apps outside of the Play Store, enhancing Android users’ global security.

Pierluigi Paganini

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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Google Play)