So, here we go. Real-life uses for vulnerabilities.
Below is an example of just ONE "drop-zone" server in the
United States, which has "600 financial companies and banks".
Several gigs of data.
How do these things work?
They get installed by the use of a web vulnerability, an email attachment
of network scanning, utilizing several vulnerabilitie.
One drop zone, and all this noise gets made. I am very happy to hear that
the UK police (which are good people) are doing something about this,
however, banks, eCommerce sites, dating sites, etc. all get attacked by
these things, by the users being infected.
These trojan horses use rootkit technology, with a hook, using man in the
middle attacks to bypass the SSL encryption, and steal any HTTPS
credentials they come across.
These things are so wide-spread, this news item made me raise my eye-brow,
at first.
So, knowing full-well security is out of our hands, and relies on the
security of our users. Knowing full-well that the same technology can be
used to bypass 2-factor authentication, how do organizations handle their
own security, if they are to have clients?
The point is, though, that this is a well planned operation, with new
samples being released with new vulnerabilities to exploit,
constantly. This should not be considered a "one time cease" or a "lost
laptop containing private data".
This is what vulnerabilities are about - the damage and operations they
are used for.
Gadi.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:24:20 GMT
From: Fergie <fergdawg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: funsec@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [funsec] Haxdoor: UK Police Count 8,
500 Victims in Data Theft (So Far)
Via InfoWorld.
[snip]
British electronic-crime detectives are investigating a massive data
theft operation that stole sensitive information from 8,500 people in
the U.K. and others in some 60 countries, officials said Tuesday.
In total, cybercriminals targeted 600 financial companies and banks,
according to U.K. authorities, who have worked over the past week to
identify and notify victims.
Through intelligence sources, U.K. police were given several gigabytes
of data -- around 130,00 files -- that came from a server in the U.S.,
said Charlie McMurdie, detective chief inspector for the Specialist
Crime Directorate e-Crime Unit of the London Metropolitan Police. Most
of the data related to financial information, she said.
The data was collected by a malicious software program nicknamed
Haxdoor that infected victims' computers. Some 2,300 machines were
located in the U.K. McMurdie said.
[snip]
More:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/24/HNukdatatheft_1.html
- ferg
--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
Engineering Architecture for the Internet
fergdawg(at)netzero.net
ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
