10 Assumptions About macOS Security That Put Your Business At Risk

Macs are great, aren’t they? I have many. Aside from the two provided by my employer, I have five working Macs of my own, ranging from 2009 to 2021. I also run macOS on a number of virtual machines for research purposes. In fact, give me a few minutes and I could spin you up an instance of any version of macOS from 10.5.8 Leopard (circa 2008!) right through to the latest beta of macOS 12 Monterey. Yep, I’m an Apple nerd, a Mac geek, a macOS enthusiast, and I’ve spent over a decade now learning how Macs and macOS work. I’m also a Mac security researcher and having a catalogue of older versions of macOS is part of my arsenal of tools when it comes to understanding how to keep Macs and Mac users safe.

Most of my work nowadays revolves around identifying, tracking, and understanding Mac malware in the enterprise, and in the course of my work I inevitably come across more than my fair share of infected Macs. The users of these Macs are more often than not surprised to learn that their Mac got a dose of some nasty adware or malware.

Few ever know how the malware got on their device. Most thought that they didn’t need to take any special security precautions when using a Mac. Some said that not having to run AV products was precisely the reason why they chose a Mac and ditched their previous Windows machine. All had no idea how to remove the infection, or verify that the Mac was indeed healthy after they had tried. Often, IT teams trained and tasked with ironing out problems with Windows devices are equally uncertain.

In this post, I will share with you what I have told those users and many others about macOS security. I will debunk some widely held myths about how to use and administrate Macs safely, and I will explain how you can ensure those in your organization are not the next unfortunate Mac users to begin dangerously searching the internet for a solution to a problem they barely knew they had.

1. I don’t Need to Update My System

Many people believe that older versions of macOS are just as safe to run as the latest versions. While currently macOS Monterey, Big Sur and Catalina are still receiving critical security updates, anything older than that is certainly riddled with vulnerabilities.

But a bigger concern is devices that get the shiny upgrades but don’t keep up with the mundane updates. From a security perspective, point updates  (e.g., from Monterey 12.1 to 12.2 and so on) are far more important than OS upgrades, at least so long as you’re not more than N-2 (more than two major upgrades behind the current OS). If you’re still running Catalina or Big Sur, the only safe versions of those OSs are the most recent ones: 10.15.7 + the January 26 Security Update, and 11.6.3, respectively. At the time of writing, Monterey is on 12.2.

The reason point updates are far more critical is that unlike major OS upgrades, which are timed for marketing reasons and are generally built to add new (and sometimes buggy!) features, point updates are typically focused on fixing bugs and security vulnerabilities, including vulnerabilities known to be actively exploited in the wild. For example, in the recent 12.2 update, Apple patched CVE-2022-22587, of which they said they were “aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited”. That update also addressed twelve other CVEs including:

  • CVE-2022-22586 – AMD Kernel: A malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges
  • CVE-2022-22584 – ColorSync: Processing a maliciously crafted file may lead to arbitrary code execution
  • CVE-2022-22591 – Intel Graphics Driver: A malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges

Recently, I walked into an Apple Reseller store and noted with some surprise that, next to the Mac that was running the point-of-sale software, other staff were using what appeared to be a vintage 2012 MacBook Pro. How did I know? Because the last year Apple made a MacBook with an internal CD drive was 2012, and I could see the tell-tale slot on the side of the machine as I waited to make my purchase.

It’s a testament to the longevity of Apple hardware that in 2022 a business can still use a 2012 machine for productive tasks, but it’s also a potential problem. The mid-2012 MBP was released with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion! The latest version of macOS that a mid-2012 MacBook Pro could run is Big Sur. I sure hope they updated to that 11.6.3 release the other week!

Apple doesn’t release point updates on a schedule like Microsoft’s “Patch Tuesday”. They release them when there’s something urgent that needs fixing, and typically that’s a security vulnerability. The bedrock of all computer security is to stay up to date with software updates. Make sure your users are updating!

2. Mac Malware is Rare

The amount of malware that is targeted at Windows machines is truly staggering. It’s no wonder that every year a not-insignificant number of computer buyers turn to Macs for relief from the constant security headaches associated with Windows. While the amount of malware targeted at Macs is a small percentage of that, a small percentage of a large number can still be a large number. Relative to Windows, Mac malware is far less common, but it’s a long way from ‘rare’.

Last year, we saw 10 new targeted macOS malware families emerge, along with the continued expansion of adware delivery platforms like Shlayer, Bundlore, Surfbuyer, Pirrit, WizardUpdate and Adload.

In 2021, Craig Federighi – Apple’s VP of Software Engineering – said that he’d “had a couple of family members who have gotten some malware on their Macs”. In comments that surprised many Mac users but absolutely no security researchers, Federighi further noted that “Each week, Apple identifies a couple of pieces of malware on its own or with help of third parties” and that Apple was fighting “an endless game of whack-a-mole” and facing a “significantly larger malware problem” now than in the past.

Listen to Craig. Funnily enough, he knows what he’s talking about! Take the threat of macOS malware seriously.

3. Adware Isn’t Dangerous

To those that hold this view, my first reaction is: define ‘Dangerous’.

Adware is code running on your machine, often without your knowledge or consent, that fingerprints your device and collects PII about you, exfiltrates it to unknown 3rd parties and installs persistence agents, makes itself difficult to remove, and – as the name suggests – serves up unwanted adverts while you’re browsing by hijacking your searches.

Adware like Adload and Shlayer typically contact obscure URLs and download unwanted software in the background without informing the user.

Some adware is akin to spyware, and some adware developers take such extreme measures to avoid detection by security software or analysis by security professionals that they could legitimately go into business teaching malware authors a few new tricks. So, what’s your definition of ‘dangerous’?

Any 3rd party code that runs on your machines without the user’s and/or the company’s express and explicit permissions should be considered a danger to the business. From that perspective, adware is just a kind of malware and should be treated as so.

4. Apple Is All The Security You Need

Apple has worked hard to establish the reputation of “the safe Mac”, but the gap between the marketing message and the reality is increasingly clear to see. It’s not that Apple doesn’t take security seriously – it really does, and we are always pleased to support Apple’s product security team by sharing intelligence when we can. The problem is that Apple’s security technologies on macOS are easily defeated, and it’s worth exploring for a moment why that is the case.

Unlike iOS and Apple mobile devices, macOS and the Mac provide – and we hope always will provide – an environment where device owners are able to customize and use their computers in all sorts of novel, interesting and creative ways. The use case for a powerful computing platform is utterly different from that of a mobile device, and for that reason there is only so much Apple can do with security without falling into the trap that Microsoft has fallen into of becoming an after-sales vendor to shore up the security of its own OS.

With the Mac, Apple tread lightly. Gatekeeper, Codesigning and Notarization provide barriers to entry but they do not keep out professional adware and malware authors. On-device protection like XProtect and MRT.app also help clean up some of the main discovered malware and adware variants, but there are many that they do not. XProtect is an old-fashioned file scanning technology that needs to be updated (something Apple does silently in the background, more or less once a month or so) after new malware has already struck some hapless victims.

Crucially, it’s simple for malware authors to inspect XProtect on their own machines and see how the signatures are catching their work. MRT.app is a little more obtuse to inspect, but regardless of how well Apple tries to obfuscate their signatures, there’s always a simple test available to a malware author: test your malware on your Mac and if it’s removed or blocked, adjust it till it isn’t.

Malware authors always have direct access to the very software that Apple is using to block or remove malware. In part, notarization was supposed to help Apple get around this, but threat actors soon discovered that the automated malware service could be beaten, and the game of ‘whack-a-mole’, as Mr Federighi rightly described it, goes on.

If you want to help your Macs stay secure, get some additional security!

5. I’d Know If My Mac Was Infected

One of the most overlooked weaknesses of the Mac is the paucity of end user tools it provides both for security and administration purposes. The once useful Console.app is now a no-go zone for anyone other than the most masochistic of Mac diehards; the Terminal provides some useful but obscure command line tools for examining things like running processes, listing open files and ports and gathering certain kinds of system and user data.

But – and it’s a big but – none of these provide users or admins with any actual way to look at, track or identify malicious changes. None of the native tools allow a user to see what process was responsible for changing which file(s), executing which binaries, or changing what system data.

Deep-dive IR and digital forensics investigations can, sometimes, recreate certain historical chains of events, but these require expertise, time and money.

In short, the question that no Mac user can really answer without adding some 3rd party software is: how would I know if my Mac was infected by some backdoor such as SysJoker or spyware like DazzleSpy or XcodeSpy?

For businesses, the only sensible choice is a security solution that offers deep visibility as well as advanced protection and detection.

6. My Data Is Safe On My Mac

Data privacy has become increasingly important, and increasingly targeted, in recent years as almost all of us have moved some or all of our most sensitive data onto our devices.

In line with this trend, Apple has made a number of changes to macOS to try and protect PII and other data on our Macs, but the results have been less than stellar. In the first instance, all Apple’s user privacy protections are bypassed by any app that requests, and is granted by the user, Full Disk Access (FDA). Apple’s default assumption is that user’s won’t grant that permission without understanding the risks, but that’s an assumption that is fatally flawed. Many common apps request this permission to function properly, and users are more interested in having the apps work than making detailed inquiries of developers about how that permission will be used or could be abused.

One app that has Full Disk Access regardless of the user’s preference is Apple’s own Finder. This allows a sneaky backdoor via automation that only requires a consent click (rather than a password authorization) to get past the users.

Further, in many enterprise settings, administrators will require the Terminal to have Full Disk Access. Unfortunately, there’s no granularity here, so when one user grants FDA to the Terminal, it’s now available to all users (and all processes).

As we’ve noted before, this isn’t an accident or a bug, it’s by design, but bugs in the same framework (aka TCC) responsible for user data privacy protection have become so common they are almost uninteresting!

Be sure that you understand just what and what isn’t protected by the operating system and under what conditions.

7. Criminals Aren’t Interested in Mac Users

It’s a common myth in computer security that most malware authors aren’t interested in Mac users because “the market is too small” to be worth their time. After all, it is supposed, it takes a considerable investment in resources to develop, distribute and manage malware infections, and for that effort criminals want a good ROI. Consequently, it’s assumed, they don’t bother targeting Macs and stick to the easier pickings of Windows users.

There’s plenty of fallacy to unpack here. First, the market is too small? This thinking is about 15 years out of date, or pre-iPhone’s 2007 launch to be accurate. Macs may have once been the niche buy of certain kinds of ‘creatives’ and a few vociferous enthusiasts, but their market share has steadily increased over the last decade or so.

At first, this was off the back of iOS/macOS (or OS X as it was then) ecosystem integration, but it’s long been the case that Macs have become popular in their own right for their longevity, stability and – relative to Windows – security. Developers of all stripes love them, executives love them, and this last quarter Apple reported that Mac sales alone accounted for more than $10 billion of revenue. That’s a pretty healthy-sized market to attack for any malware author, just ask the developers of XLoader, XCSSET and OSAMiner.

Second, mac malware isn’t particularly difficult to create. If you can create any kind of Mac app, making it do something malicious is a fairly trivial tweek (an unfortunate fact that makes macOS malware difficult to catch for certain kinds of security solutions that rely on identifying malware by file characteristics rather than behavior). Add to that that macOS malware is increasingly cross-platform – malware authors are targeting multiple platforms with the same source code written in languages like Java, Go and Kotlin – and the “heavy investment for no return” argument doesn’t really hold any water.

Sure, the most common and profitable threats found on Macs are adware, but they didn’t get that way by being stopped by nothing more than ‘a savvy user’.

8. Nation-States Don’t Target Mac Users

Well, if the criminals looking to make a quick buck are on board, what about the APTs? As noted above, developers and execs love to buy Macs – they’re powerful and chic – and they have a reputation for being secure (although we note it’s Chromebooks that now enjoy the “these don’t get viruses” meme).

APTs have always been busy targeting Macs just as they have any other devices used by “persons of interest”. This past year, we saw not only targeted attacks against political activists but also what was very likely an espionage attack against a US business.

We also learned last month that, while most Mac malware requires some level of social engineering, there are in-the-wild exploits that can infect a Mac user who simply visits the wrong website. Both macOS.Macma and OSX.DazzleSpy were delivered by leveraging exploits to drop and execute code with privileges in a watering-hole attack. And as noted above, CVE-2022-22587 patched a few weeks ago was an actively exploited zero-day that allowed malicious attackers to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. At this time, we have no idea who the targets were.

Want to stop targeted malware? Invest in an EDR that offers agents built natively to run on Mac architectures, both Intel and arm64 (aka Apple silicon)

9. Apps Downloaded from the App Store are Safe

The Mac App Store, and its counterpart the iOS App Store, occupy a special place in Apple’s ecosystem. Such apps run in sandbox environments on the user’s device, are vetted by Apple, and distributed by identified developers. The vast majority are, indeed, safe, there’s no questioning that. But there are, nevertheless, questions about a small minority.

App Store apps are mostly safe, but the origin of the download doesn’t guarantee that you’re not getting malware. Developers of legitimate App Store apps have noticed scam apps on the App Store blatantly copying legitimate apps and being boosted with fake ratings and reviews, themselves purchased in bulk from other criminals. It’s been estimated that such apps could be scamming users out of $2 million a year or more.

If Apple’s built-in defenses are not going to recognize and block scams and malware, users without other defenses are left pretty much exposed.

10. The Best Security Apps Are in the App Store

If you’re thinking you want some extra security solution for your Macs, the one place not to look is the App Store. This has nothing to do with our previous point about the dubiousness of some App Store apps, but rather the nature of what kind of apps are allowed in the App Store.

As we already said, App Store apps must be sandboxed – that’s one of Apple’s conditions of entry – but a good security app by definition can’t operate in a sandbox environment. A sandbox is like a container that isolates an app from other apps and other data on a device. It’s one of a number of techniques that can be utilized to help make certain kinds of apps safer.

However, there’s no such thing as an effective sandboxed security app. So-called “security apps” found in the App Store have no visibility into other processes and no capability to block or remove malware (itself almost always unsandboxed) on your device. They are, by and large, at best useless, and at worst fraudulent.

If you want effective security, you need a solution that can actually protect your device against threats and offer visibility into malicious actions; in other words, you need something that runs outside of a sandbox.

You won’t find anything like that in the App Store.

Conclusion

Macs are great. Let’s not forget that! But we can admire our Macs as great work machines without falling into the naive belief that they are some kind impregnable fortresses that don’t need any help to keep them secure against a growing crowd of threat actors.

Computer security is a moving target, and certainly in the enterprise that requires a dedicated security solution provider who is at the forefront of keeping up with the latest threats. Help your Macs – and your Mac users – to help themselves by being aware of the reality of the macOS security threatscape and being proactive in your security posture.

If you would like to see how SentinelOne can help protect your macOS devices, contact us or request a free demo.

IRS To Ditch Biometric Requirement for Online Access

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said today it will be transitioning away from requiring biometric data from taxpayers who wish to access their records at the agency’s website. The reversal comes as privacy experts and lawmakers have been pushing the IRS and other federal agencies to find less intrusive methods for validating one’s identity with the U.S. government online.

Late last year, the login page for the IRS was updated with text advising that by the summer of 2022, the only way for taxpayers to access their records at irs.gov will be through ID.me, an online identity verification service that collects biometric data — such as live facial scans using a mobile device or webcam.

The IRS first announced its partnership with ID.me in November, but the press release received virtually no attention. On Jan. 19, KrebsOnSecurity published the story IRS Will Soon Require Selfies for Online Access, detailing a rocky experience signing up for IRS access via ID.me. That story immediately went viral, bringing this site an almost unprecedented amount of traffic. A tweet about it quickly garnered more than two million impressions.

It was clear most readers had no idea these new and more invasive requirements were being put in place at the IRS and other federal agencies (the Social Security Administration also is steering new signups to ID.me).

ID.me says it has approximately 64 million users, with 145,000 new users signing up each day. Still, the bulk of those users are people who have been forced to sign up with ID.me as a condition of receiving state or federal financial assistance, such as unemployment insurance, child tax credit payments, and pandemic assistance funds.

In the face of COVID, dozens of states collectively lost tens of billions of dollars at the hands of identity thieves impersonating out-of-work Americans seeking unemployment insurance. Some 30 states and 10 federal agencies now use ID.me to screen for ID thieves applying for benefits in someone else’s name.

But ID.me has been problematic for many legitimate applicants who saw benefits denied or delayed because they couldn’t complete ID.me’s verification process.  Critics charged the IRS’s plan would unfairly disadvantage people with disabilities or limited access to technology or Internet, and that facial recognition systems tend to be less accurate for people with darker skin.

Many readers were aghast that the IRS would ask people to hand over their biometric and personal data to a private company that begin in 2010 as a way to help veterans, teachers and other public servants qualify for retail discounts. These readers had reasonable questions: Who has (or will have) access to this data? Why should it be stored indefinitely (post-verification)? What happens if ID.me gets breached?

The Washington Post reported today that in a meeting with lawmakers, IRS officials said they were considering another identity verification option that wouldn’t use facial recognition. At the same time, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) challenged the Treasury Department and IRS to reconsider the biometric requirements.

In a statement published today, the IRS said it was transitioning away from using a third-party service for facial recognition to help authenticate people creating new online accounts.

“The transition will occur over the coming weeks in order to prevent larger disruptions to taxpayers during filing season,” the IRS said. “During the transition, the IRS will quickly develop and bring online an additional authentication process that does not involve facial recognition. The IRS will also continue to work with its cross-government partners to develop authentication methods that protect taxpayer data and ensure broad access to online tools.”

“The IRS takes taxpayer privacy and security seriously, and we understand the concerns that have been raised,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig wrote. “Everyone should feel comfortable with how their personal information is secured, and we are quickly pursuing short-term options that do not involve facial recognition.”

The statement further stressed that the transition announced today does not interfere with the taxpayer’s ability to file their return or pay taxes owed. “During this period, the IRS will continue to accept tax filings, and it has no other impact on the current tax season,” the IRS said. “People should continue to file their taxes as they normally would.”

It remains unclear what other service or method the IRS will use going forward to validate the identities of new account signups. Wyden and others have urged the IRS to use Login.gov, a single sign-on service that Congress required federal agencies to use in 2015.

“Login.gov is already used to access 200 websites run by 28 Federal agencies and over 40 million Americans have accounts,” Wyden wrote in a letter to the IRS today. “Unfortunately, login.gov has not yet reached its full potential, in part because many agencies have flouted the Congressional mandate that they use it, and because successive Administrations have failed to prioritize digital identity. The cost of this inaction has been billions of dollars in fraud, which has in turn fueled a black market for stolen personal data, and enabled companies like ID.me to commercialize what should be a core government service.”

Login.gov is run by the U.S. General Services Administration, which told The Post that it was “committed to not deploying facial recognition…or any other emerging technology for use with government benefits and services until a rigorous review has given us confidence that we can do so equitably and without causing harm to vulnerable populations.”

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Cybersecurity – Week 5

The Good

This week brings another welcome victory for law enforcement. This time around we focus on darknet market site CanadaHQ (Canadian Headquarters) and individuals connected to the site. CanadianHQ was notorious for trading in spamming services, phishing kits, stolen credentials and access to compromised computers before it was taken offline.

The CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) provided an update this past week stating that four suspects involved with the site, including the creator of the market, had been handed penalties for violating Canada’s Anti Spam Legislation (CASL) totaling $300,000.

The CRTC indicated that these individuals were responsible for sending “emails mimicking well-known brands in order to obtain personal data including credit card numbers, banking credentials, and other sensitive information”. The individuals charged in violation of the CASL are:

  • Chris Tyrone Dracos (aka “Poseidon”)
  • Marc Anthony Younes (aka “CASHOUT00” and “Masteratm”)
  • Souial Amarak (aka “Wealtyman” and “Supreme”)
  • Moustapha Sabir (aka “La3sa”)

It is alleged that Dracos was the creator and primary administrator of the market. As such, he received the harshest penalty with a fine of $150,000. The three remaining individuals were given fines of $50,000 each. Chief Compliance Officer of the CRTC, Steven Harron, indicated that this was one of the more “challenging and complex” cases they had worked on under the Canada Anti-Spam Legislation.

However, there is indication of a broader scope to these actions as CRTC also indicate they have “identified a number of other vendors…actions will be taken against them in the near future”. It sounds like we can look forward to more of these efforts and resulting market closures in the future.

The Bad

The FBI on Tuesday released a new PSA (public service announcement) around the ongoing tactics used by scammers and cybercriminals. PSA I-020122-PSA focuses on the exploitation of security weaknesses on job recruitment websites. Scammers use these to post fraudulent job postings with the intention of extracting personal information or money from would-be applicants. According to the FBI, on average, victims are duped out of almost $3000 a time.

While the tactic is hardly new, it continues to pay rich dividends for cybercriminals precisely because many employment-oriented networking sites fail to use strong security verification measures. Scammers have exploited such weaknesses to post fake job offerings on legitimate company pages alongside genuine job postings. Users of such sites are left to determine the real from the fake for themselves, with predictably unfortunate outcomes.

Similarly, scammers reproduce genuine job postings on other sites, changing the contact details to capture interested job seekers. They even go so far as to spoof the identity of legitimate company employees, conduct fraudulent interviews, and even make fake job offers to victims in their quest to gather as much PII as possible. The PII is then later sold or used in additional scams.

The PSA provides several further examples of these tactics in use over the past three years, and they go on to outline how the scams also impact the reputation of businesses that are repeatedly scammed. The PSA contains a set of recommendations for both companies and job seekers to assist in curtailing the impact or damage caused via this tactic and to avoid falling victim to such scams. We encourage all to read and review the PSA for further guidance.

The Ugly

This week saw one of the UK’s largest food and snack companies, Leicester-based KP Snacks (aka Kenyon Produce), provide further details around last Friday’s ransomware attack. On Wednesday, the company informed partners that as a result of the attack, it was unable to “safely process orders or dispatch goods”.

According to reports, the Conti ransomware group, which is developed and maintained by the same team that brings us Trickbot, was behind the attack. The operators are said to have breached KP Foods’ internal network and gained access to sensitive files such as employee details, credit card statements, birth certificates and financial documents, exfiltrating the data before encrypting it.

The Conti leaks site listed KP Snacks with the usual countdown timer for payment, which is due to “expire” around February 6th. It is not known at this time whether the company is negotiating with the attackers, but per their official statement they have initiated their “cybersecurity response plan and engaged a leading forensic information technology firm and legal counsel to assist” them in their investigation. The company has also said that “it is unknown when this will be resolved”.

Once again, such attacks only highlight the need for companies to deploy security solutions that can truly prevent ransomware attacks, while also ensuring all staff are given good cybersecurity awareness training on a regular basis. The ransom amount is only part of the cost of failure here, and often not even the most significant part at that.

How Phishers Are Slinking Their Links Into LinkedIn

If you received a link to LinkedIn.com via email, SMS or instant message, would you click it? Spammers, phishers and other ne’er-do-wells are hoping you will, because they’ve long taken advantage of a marketing feature on the business networking site which lets them create a LinkedIn.com link that bounces your browser to other websites, such as phishing pages that mimic top online brands (but chiefly Linkedin’s parent firm Microsoft).

At issue is a “redirect” feature available to businesses that chose to market through LinkedIn.com. The LinkedIn redirect links allow customers to track the performance of ad campaigns, while promoting off-site resources. These links or “Slinks” all have a standard format: “https://www.linkedin.com/slink?code=” followed by a short alphanumeric variable.

Here’s the very first Slink created: http://www.linkedin.com/slink?code=1, which redirects to the homepage for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

The trouble is, there’s little to stop criminals from leveraging newly registered or hacked LinkedIn business accounts to create their own ad campaigns using Slinks. Urlscan.io, a free service that provides detailed reports on any scanned URLs, also offers a historical look at suspicious links submitted by other users. This search via Urlscan reveals dozens of recent phishing attacks that have leveraged the Slinks feature.

Here’s one example from Jan. 31 that uses Linkedin.com links to redirect anyone who clicks to a site that spoofs Adobe, and then prompts users to log in to their Microsoft email account to view a shared document.

A recent phishing site that abused LinkedIn’s marketing redirect. Image: Urlscan.io.

Urlscan also found this phishing scam from Jan. 12 that uses Slinks to spoof the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Here’s a Feb. 3 example that leads to a phish targeting Amazon customers. This Nov. 26 sample from Urlscan shows a LinkedIn link redirecting to a Paypal phishing page.

Let me be clear that the activity described in this post is not new. Way back in 2016, security firm Fortinet blogged about LinkedIn’s redirect being used to promote phishing sites and online pharmacies. More recently in late 2021, Jeremy Fuchs of Avanan wrote that the use of a LinkedIn URL may mean that any profession — the market for LinkedIn — could click.

“Plus, more employees have access to billing and invoice information, meaning that a spray-and-pray campaign can be effective,” Fuchs wrote. “The idea is to create a link that contains a clean page, redirecting to a phishing page.”

In a statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity, Linkedin said it has “industry standard technologies in place for URL sharing and chained redirects that help us identify and prevent the spread of malware, phishing and spam.” LinkedIn also said it uses 3rd party services — such as Google Safe Browsing, Spamhaus, Microsoft, and others — to identify known-bad URLs.

KrebsOnSecurity couldn’t find any evidence of phishers recently using LinkedIn’s redirect to phish LinkedIn credentials, but that’s certainly not out of the question. In a less complex attack, an adversary could send an email appearing to be a connection request from LinkedIn that redirects through LinkedIn to a malicious or phishous site.

Also, malicious or phishous emails that leverage LinkedIn’s Slinks are unlikely to be blocked by anti-spam or anti-malware filters, because LinkedIn is widely considered a trusted domain, and the redirect obscures the link’s ultimate destination.

Linkedin’s parent company — Microsoft Corp — is by all accounts the most-phished brand on the Internet today. A report last year from Check Point found roughly 45 percent of all brand phishing attempts globally target Microsoft. Check Point said LinkedIn was the sixth most phished brand last year.

The best advice to sidestep phishing scams is to avoid clicking on links that arrive unbidden in emails, text messages and other mediums. Most phishing scams invoke a temporal element that warns of dire consequences should you fail to respond or act quickly. If you’re unsure whether the message is legitimate, take a deep breath and visit the site or service in question manually — ideally, using a browser bookmark to avoid potential typosquatting sites.

Sneaky Spies and Backdoor RATs | SysJoker and DazzleSpy Malware Target macOS

As last year closed out, we provided a round up of the previous 12 months of Mac malware, making the observation that, among other things, 2021’s macOS malware cohort saw a focus on spyware and the targeting of users in Asia, particularly China and Hong Kong. The first month of 2022 has seen those trends continue with two new malware campaigns discovered in January, namely SysJoker and DazzleSpy.

In this post, we give brief overviews of these two new malware families, offering both additional details not previously reported along with indicators for detection and threat hunting.

SysJoker (11th Jan, 2022)

The first new Mac malware report of 2022 came courtesy of researchers at Intezer in the form of a threat they dubbed SysJoker, which comes in Windows, Linux and macOS variants. Researchers say that the Linux version was found in-the-wild infecting a server belonging to “a leading educational institution”.

The Mac-specific variant of this malware is a Universal binary named types-config.ts, compiled for both Intel x86 and Apple silicon M1 arm64 architectures.

Upon execution, the Mach-O installs a persistence LaunchAgent that masquerades as an Apple launch service ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.update.plist.

Persistence mechanism used by SysJoker malware on macOS

The fake service targets an executable called ~/Library/MacOsServices/updateMacOs. This file is also written by the types-config.ts file and is in fact a straight copy of itself. The SentinelOne agent captures the chain of execution and displays it in the Management console for easy pivoting and threat hunting.

OSX.SysJoker backdoor execution chain as captured by the SentinelOne agent

The malware is written in C++ and much of the initial action occurs in the entry.init0 function. Using r2, we can get a quick summary of the function’s important strings.

Some of the embedded strings in the SysJoker binary

The “drive.google.com” address delivers a file “domain.txt” that contains an obfuscated domain name address. The key shown above at address 0x1000139e2 is used to decode the contents of “domain.txt”, which turns out to to be the DNS address “graphic-updater.com”.

Other hardcoded strings are then concatenated with the decoded DNS address to form a full C2.

https://graphic-updater[.]com/api/attach
The C2 address is determined on-the-fly during execution

We note that SysJoker has a peculiarity that, to our knowledge, has not been described by other researchers. In our tests, if the malware is run as root when the path

/Users/root/Library/SystemNetwork

does not exist, the malware will abort.

That’s an unusual path, as the root user on macOS typically exists under /var/root, not /Users/root.

Whether this is an oversight or a peculiarity of SysJoker’s intended target is unclear. At this point, we have no explanation for this behaviour, but merely note that if /Users/root does exist, then the malware executes as expected, and drops the components under that file path hierarchy.

SysJoker uses an unorthodox path for a macOS root user

According to previous researchers who also analyzed the Windows and Linux variants, SysJoker’s primary purpose is to await commands from the C2. We, and our sample, did indeed wait, but the C2 appeared to be uninterested in talking to either of us. Intezer has more details on the backdoor’s functionality.

How To Protect Against OSX.SysJoker

The SentinelOne Singularity platform fully detects OSX.SysJoker.

SentinelOne detects SysJoker on execution

Aside from the one reported in-the-wild incident against a “leading educational institution”, it is unclear at this time how SysJoker is distributed, who it targets, or what the authors’ objectives are. However, the cross-platform nature of the malware suggests that it may be part of a wider campaign, and it is imperative that organizations have a capable multi-engined security solution in place to defend against these kinds of attacks.

DazzleSpy (25th Jan)

OSX.DazzleSpy was discovered by ESET researchers following the same trail as Google’s Project Zero from a poisoned watering hole targeting Hong Kong pro-democracy activists. Whereas Google’s investigation led them to macOS.Macma, researchers Marc L’Etienne and Anton Cherepanov caught a quite different payload.

OSX.DazzleSpy comes in the form of an unsigned, Mach-O file compiled for Intel x86 architecture, although it’s perfectly possible that undiscovered ARM versions exist as well.

On execution, the Mach-O installs a persistence LaunchAgent that masquerades as an Apple launch service at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.softwareupdate. This fake service targets an executable called “softwareupdate” written inside a hidden folder of the user’s home folder, ~/.local/softwareupdate.

DazzleSpy LaunchAgent property list for persistence

The executable “softwareupdate” contains a mixture of public and private frameworks. On the public side, the malware authors have adopted the tonymillion Reachability framework to determine network connections, YYModel for efficient parsing of JSON data, and GCDAsyncSocket to handle TCP/IP socket networking tasks. A date comparison method, +(int)compareOneDay:(NSDate *)oneDay withAnotherDay:(NSDate *)anotherDay, also appears to have been lifted from a Chinese-language programming forum.

DazzleSpy contains a mix of public and private frameworks and methods

For functionality, DazzleSpy contains code for searching and writing files, exfiltrating environmental info, dumping the keychain, running a remote desktop and running shell commands, among others.

A number of methods are run as shell commands via NSTask APIs

DazzleSpy collects and drops a number of other files in the hidden ~/.local directory related to espionage and data collection.

Some of the hardcoded paths found in the DazzleSpy executable
~/.local/softwareupdate
~/.local/security/keystealDaemon
~/.local/security.zip
~/.local/SearchFiles
~/.local/RecoveryFiles
~/.local/security

Although we only saw the first of these files dropped in our tests, analysis of the static code suggests that another hidden directory, .Documenty, may also be used by the malware.

A path we didn’t see on execution, but potentially useful for hunting

The authors appear to have been careless (or perhaps deliberate!) in leaving artifacts from the development environment. As noted by ESET, one user name embedded in the malware is “wangping”, but we also note two others: “wp” and “XpathX”.

Usernames found embedded in the DazzleSpy binary

Of these, “XpathX” seems to have a number of paths typical of an active user, but why these should have found their way into the code is both mysterious and suspicious.

Multiple paths for user “XpathX” are embedded in DazzleSpy

There’s no obvious mechanism that would easily result in those being embedded accidentally, and one could be forgiven for thinking that these paths were deliberately placed. We might also wonder about the authenticity of other paths such as /Users/wangping/pangu/.

How To Protect Against OSX.DazzleSpy

OSX.DazzleSpy, like macOS.Macma before it, appears to be aimed at visitors to certain websites holding content about, or of interest to, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists and activism. Although that is a small demographic, the threat actors also exploited a (now-patched) local privilege escalation, CVE-2021-30869, to run the payload as root.

SentinelOne’s behavioral engine detects OSX.DazzleSpy on execution. In order to prevent infections like DazzleSpy, be sure to install a good behavioral AI engine that can recognize novel threats based on what they do. Legacy AV scanners that rely on known signatures or cloud reputation services alone will not be able to stop threats that have not previously been detected in the wild.

SentinelOne detects OSX.DazzleSpy on execution

Admin users can view details including threat indicators in the Management console and pivot directly from there to Deep Visibility for extended threat hunting across the estate if required.

The SentinelOne behavioral AI catches the malware attempting persistence

Conclusion

These two new Mac malware families continue trends we noted previously in macOS malware. DazzleSpy’s use of vulnerabilities is a clear warning to those that continue to insist Mac users cannot get malware if they engage in “safe behavior”: such a stance does not match today’s threatscape.

Meanwhile, SysJoker’s cross-platform backdoor functionality shows that threat actors are factoring in Mac targets along with Windows and Linux as they develop new ways to steal data and compromise organizations. As with all your other endpoints, it is vital to keep your Mac fleet protected by a capable, defense-in-depth security solution such as the SentinelOne platform.

If you would like to learn more about how SentinelOne can protect your Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, IoT and Cloud workload endpoints, contact us or request a free demo.

Indicators of Compromise

OSX.SysJoker

DNS REQUESTS
drive.google.com.
googlehosted.l.googleusercontent.com.
graphic-updater.com.

DNS RESPONSES
142.250.199.14
216.58.199.225
216.58.203.78
23.254.131.176
36.4.104.0

COMMANDS EXECUTED
/bin/sh
/bin/bash
/usr/bin/whoami

FILEPATHS
/Users/root/Library/SystemNetwork
~/Library/MacOsServices/updateMacOs

HASHES
updateMacOs
554aef8bf44e7fa941e1190e41c8770e90f07254 1a9a5c797777f37463b44de2b49a7f95abca786db3977dcdac0f79da739c08ac

types-config.ts
01d06375cf4042f4e36467078530c776a28cec05
d0febda3a3d2d68b0374c26784198dc4309dbe4a8978e44bb7584fd832c325f0

OSX.DazzleSpy

FILEPATHS
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.softwareupdate.plist
~/.local/softwareupdate
~/.local/security.zip
~/.local/security/keystealDaemon
.Documenty/security/libkeystealClient.dylib
.Documenty/security/keys.err
.Documenty/security/security-unsigned
.Documenty/security/keystealDaemon

C2
88.218.192[.]128:5633

HASHES
server.enc
ee0678e58868ebd6603cc2e06a134680d2012c1b
f9ad42a9bd9ade188e997845cae1b0587bf496a35c3bffacd20fefe07860a348

Finding the perfect kids’ pink desk chair

Finding the perfect kids’ pink desk chair is not so easy. That’s why we did some research and came up with the following list of the best pink desk chairs for your little princess.

The following is a list of the top 5 pink desk chairs currently available in the market today. What’s more, they are all available on Amazon so you know you’re getting a great price and the highest level of online security and trust.

So, without further ado, here’s our list of the best pink desk chairs:

SIDIZ Ringo Kid Desk Chair

The SIDIZ Ringo Kid Desk Chair is an excellent choice if you want a pink desk chair. Ringo was built with a growing youngster in mind, aged 6 to 13 (3.5 ft to 5.3 ft tall). It promotes good posture, which is considered critical for a growing child while seated.

This chair has a 4-level height adjustment so that it can grow with your child. The arms are in a comfortable position, which makes typing on a desk much more enjoyable. The backrest may be adjusted to provide greater seat room, allowing your child to customize the chair in a most comfortable way for them.

The detachable footrest is great for providing leg support without taking up too much space. This is perfect for kids who enjoy their sitting experience to last a little longer. 360-degree swivel is another excellent feature of this kids’ pink desk chair.

Ringo Kids’ Desk Chair comes in several colors, but pink is the most popular. Thanks to its versatile design that can adapt to any room, this adorable desk chair will look good no matter where you put it.

The Mesh Back Desk Chair

The Mesh Back Desk Chair from the HouseInBox Store is one of the most interesting pink kids’ desk chairs on our list. You can tell this without even reading any reviews or descriptions.

The backrest is composed of a lightweight, breathable PP material. The middle backrest offers good support. The chair’s upholstery is of exceptional quality. The cushioned seat adds another layer of comfort during those long homework sessions. It swivels 360 degrees, so your child can turn around to get a better view of the room.

The convenient pneumatic lift handle lets you adjust the desk chair to your child’s height. The maximum seat height is 34.2 inches.

CIMOO Cute Bunny Desk Chair for Kids

Staying within the interesting desk chairs section, the CIMOO Cute Bunny Desk Chair is another interesting choice. It sports adorable bunny ears on a backrest, which is pretty unique.

The chair’s back cushions and seat are well padded, allowing your child to enjoy maximum comfort. This chair is covered in a skin-friendly soft fuzzy fabric. No wonder this lovely chair is a great place to sit and read or play!

This chair features a heavy steel foundation that ensures its sturdiness and can support up to 250 pounds. There are no sharp edges, so it’s safe for your child.

The CIMOO Cute Bunny Desk Chair is the most affordable choice on our list, but that doesn’t mean it’s of lower quality. It’s a terrific deal for the price!

VIVO Height Adjustable Kids Desk Chair

This desk chair, designed for kids of different ages (aged 3 to 10), combines usefulness and safety.
VIVO Height Adjustable Desk Chair offers you complete control over how high or low the chair’s height goes. A locking mechanism ensures that it won’t move up or down any further once a height is adjusted. Overall, this kids’ chair provides a good posture during sitting, preventing potential health issues in the future.

This chair is constructed of high-quality PP plastic with a steel frame for maximum support. The base has a non-toxic, scratch-resistant finish that will protect your floor and provide long-lasting performance.

Perfect for kids’ rooms, study areas, or any playroom, this office chair is an excellent choice for a cute and comfortable kids’ pink desk chair.

GreenForest Kids Desk Chair

Equipped with a 360-degree swivel, this kids’ desk chair offers your child great mobility. They can spin around the room to see what is going on or reach for that toy that was just out of their grasp.

The height of this kids’ office chair is adjustable so that it will grow right along with your little one. The pneumatic lift feature makes it easy to adjust the height of this kids’ desk chair.

Constructed of high-quality plastic with a steel frame, this kids’ chair is durable and will provide your child with years of comfortable seating. Even while doing schoolwork, the backrest of this chair ensures that your child is comfy at all times. It’s also ergonomically designed, with a supportive spine and good airflow to keep your child cool.

The only downside of this kids’ desk chair is that it is not padded with any foam. It would be nice to have some comfortable padding in the seating area.

About kids’ pink desk chairs

Kids’ pink desk chairs proved to be one of the most popular topics among people looking for kids’ room furniture.

We also noticed that many people were looking for pink desk chairs for girls. Pink is one of the most popular colors among young girls, and it is often used as a base color to complement other bright colors.

Kids’ pink desk chairs are great for children’s bedrooms because they create a fun and cozy ambiance that is perfect for playing or doing homework.

Kids’ pink desk chairs are a great way to add some color to your child’s room while encouraging them to do their homework.

The great thing about buying a kids’ pink desk chair is that the color pink has been proven to be very calming and perfect for children’s bedrooms. So it’s certainly worth opting for this color when choosing the furniture for your children’s bedroom.

What exactly is a kids’ pink desk chair?

A pink desk chair is simply a kids’ office chair in pink. There are also other colors that you can find for this type of furniture. These include blue, white, green, and many more. Usually, these pieces come with colorful backs to support your child’s imagination as they create their world of fantasies.

Pink desk chairs are usually used as chairs for your kids’ bedroom or playroom because they look great and provide plenty of comfort and support.

There isn’t much difference between a pink desk chair and a standard office chair except that it looks cute and girly. You can still find the same material for desk chairs in pink, including leather, wood, and vinyl.

More importantly, these chairs can still provide the same level of support and comfort as regular office chairs. Choose a durable piece that will last for years to come because kids are very tough on furniture.

A pink desk chair can even be used for your kid’s study table. What’s great about this type of chair is that it comes in many designs, styles, and shapes. It’s not just a standard office chair with a new color. You can find chairs explicitly designed for girls or even princesses, so you have plenty of choices.

The next time your daughter wants something, surprise her with a pink desk chair because she will definitely love it!

Why choose a pink desk chair for kids?

There are many reasons you should choose pink desk chairs for your kids. Here are some of the best benefits to look forward to:

  • The chair is often designed with cute designs and patterns that make it stylish and attractive to kids.
  • Children feel important when they have their own place at home, including a desk chair. This will motivate them to study.
  • Having a comfortable place to sit makes studying easier, which is why having a pink desk chair for your pink-enthusiast will help them concentrate on their lessons more effectively.
  • Kids like colorful things, and they can feel free to express themselves as much as they want when they play at home with the pink desk chair.

How to find the perfect kids’ pink desk chair

Before you run off to the store and buy the first pink desk chair for kids you see, here are the most important things to consider:

  • Kids chairs must be high quality and meet all safety standards. They should also have a sturdy design that can take some abuse from children without damage or tip-overs being an issue.
  • In addition, it’s essential to consider the shape of the chair. Kids’ desk chairs come in two main styles: A rounded back and shell-like seat that supports the spine or an S-shaped seat that has more room for the legs.
  • Depending on your child’s age, you’ll want to purchase a specific type of chair. Children under the age of 5 should have a chair that’s easy to get in and out of, with sturdy armrests that keep them from falling. Meanwhile, those between the ages of 8 and 12 will benefit from a low-back shell-style chair as this design comes closest to replicating adults’ chairs. For kids over the age of 13, a regular desk chair will do. They can also transition to a regular office chair for adults if they enjoy using the desk or simply opt for a standard-style chair with arms instead.
  • It’s important not to buy a kids’ desk chair based solely on looks, though comfort is key! If your child hates sitting in their new pink desk chair because it’s uncomfortable, they’ll have a tough time doing their homework.
  • You want a chair that’s kid-sized with a seat and back made from soft but supportive padding.
  • The seat should also be deep enough to support the entire length of their thighs, without them having to sit too close or too far away from the desk itself.
  • You should also consider your child’s height and weight. While a kids’ desk chair is often not adjustable, some models can be adjusted to suit various ages and sizes of children. Some even have removable seat pads or backrests to make them wider for bigger children or shorter for smaller ones.
  • As your kids will inevitably outgrow these desk chairs, it’s best to choose one easy to assemble and take apart.

In short: Kids’ desk chairs come in various shapes and sizes – but comfort is key. Make sure it fits your child’s height and comfort level, as well as their age and style preferences. Also, consider the shape of their body, the features that will make them easy to assemble or take apart, and whether or not they can be adjusted for larger children.

The post Finding the perfect kids’ pink desk chair appeared first on Comfy Bummy.

Fake Investor John Bernard Sinks Norwegian Green Shipping Dreams

Several articles here have delved into the history of John Bernard, the pseudonym used by a fake billionaire technology investor who tricked dozens of startups into giving him tens of millions of dollars. Bernard’s latest victim — a Norwegian company hoping to build a fleet of environmentally friendly shipping vessels — is now embroiled in a lawsuit over a deal gone bad, in which Bernard falsely claimed to have secured $100 million from six other wealthy investors, including the founder of Uber and the artist Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd.

John Bernard is a pseudonym used by John Clifton Davies, a convicted fraudster from the United Kingdom who is currently a fugitive from justice and residing in Ukraine. Davies’ Bernard persona has fleeced dozens of technology companies out of an estimated $30 million with the promise of lucrative investments.

For several years until reinventing himself again quite recently, Bernard pretended to be a billionaire Swiss investor who made his fortunes in the dot-com boom 20 years ago and who was seeking investment opportunities. Bernard generated a stream of victims by offering extraordinarily generous finder’s fees for investment brokers who helped him secure new clients. But those brokers would eventually get stiffed as well because Bernard’s company would never consummate a deal.

In case after case, Bernard would promise to invest millions in tech startups, and then insist that companies pay tens of thousands of dollars worth of due diligence fees up front. However, the due diligence company he insisted on using — another Swiss firm called Inside Knowledge — also was secretly owned by Bernard, who would invariably pull out of the deal after receiving the due diligence money.

The scam artist John Bernard (left) in a recent Zoom call, and a photo of John Clifton Davies from 2015.

But Bernard would adopt a slightly different approach to stealing from Freidig Shipping Ltd., a Norwegian company formed in 2017 that was seeking the equivalent of USD $100 million investment to bring its green fleet of 30 new offshore service vessels to fruition.

Journalists Harald Vanvik and Harald Berglihn from the Norwegian Business Daily write that through investment advisors in London, Bernard was introduced to Nils-Odd Tønnevold, co-founder of Freidig Shipping and an investment advisor with 20 years of experience.

“Both Bernard and Inside Knowledge appeared to be professionals,” the reporters wrote in a story that’s behind a paywall. “Bernard appeared to be experienced. He knew a lot about start-ups and got into things quickly. Credible and reliable was the impression of him, said Tønnevold.”

“Bernard eventually took on the role of principal investor, claiming he had six other wealthy investors on the team, including artist Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, known as The Weeknd, Uber founder Garrett Camp and Norilsk Nickel owner Russian Vladimir Potanin,” the Norwegian journalists wrote. “These committed to contribute $99.25 million to Freidig.”

So in this case Bernard conveniently claimed he’d come up with almost all of the investment, which came $750,000 short of the goal. Another investor, a Belgian named Guy Devos, contributed the remaining $750,000.

But by the spring of 2020, it was clear that Devos and others involved in the shipping project had been tricked, and that all the money which had been paid to Bernard — an estimated NOK 15 million (~USD $1.67 million) — had been lost. By that time the two co-founders and their families had borrowed USD $1.5 million, and had transferred the funds to Inside Knowledge.

“Further investigations indicated that Bernard was in fact a convicted and wanted Briton based in the Ukrainian capital Kiev,” the Norwegian Business Daily reported. “Guy Devos has sued Nils-Odd Tønnevold with a claim of 750,000 dollars because he believes Tønnevold has a responsibility for the money being transferred to Bernard. Tønnevold rejects this.”

Bernard’s scam is genius because he never approaches investors directly; rather, investors are incentivized to put his portfolio in front of tech firms seeking financial backing. And because the best cons begin as an idea or possibility planted in the target’s mind.

What’s remarkable about Freidig Shipping’s fleecing is that we heard about it at all. In the first of this now five-part series, we heard from Jason Kane, an attorney who focuses on investment fraud. Kane said companies bilked by small-time investment schemes rarely pursue legal action, mainly because the legal fees involved can quickly surpass the losses. What’s more, most victims will likely be too ashamed to come forward.

“These are cases where you might win but you’ll never collect any money,” Kane said. “This seems like an investment twist on those fairly simple scams we all can’t believe people fall for, but as scams go this one is pretty good. Do this a few times a year and you can make a decent living and no one is really going to come after you.”

It does appear that Bernard took advantage of a stunning lack of due diligence by the Freidig co-founders. In this May 2020 post on Twitter — well after their funds had already been transferred to Bernard — Nils-Odd Tønnevold can be seen asking Uber co-founder Garrett Camp if he indeed had agreed to invest in his company:

John Clifton Davies, a.k.a. John Bernard, Jonathan Bibi, John Cavendish, is a U.K. man who absconded from justice before being convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 2015. Prior to his conviction, Davies served 16 months in jail on suspicion of murdering his third wife on their honeymoon in India. The U.K. authorities later dropped the murder charges for lack of evidence. Davies currently resides with his fourth wife in or near Kyiv, Ukraine.

If you liked this story, check out my previous reporting on John Bernard/Davies:

Due Diligence That Money Can’t Buy

Who is Tech Investor John Bernard?

Promising Infusions of Cash, Fake Investor John Bernard Walked Away With $30 Million

Investment Scammer John Davies Reinvents Himself?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Cybersecurity – Week 4

The Good

Cyber hygiene within the education sector is often overlooked when the spotlight frequently shines on attacks against high-profile enterprise targets, but the devices and networks used by our schools, teachers and students are nevertheless popular targets for criminals. Good news, then, that an individual responsible for hacking into 25 school network email accounts has pleaded guilty in Philadelphia this week.

Timothy Spillane, 39, admitted to setting up fraudulent email and bank accounts in his victims’ names after breaching the digital networks of two Philadelphia colleges. The attacker had hoped to conduct an elaborate tax fraud scheme using stolen student financial information, but he failed when he was unable to guess the victims’ adjusted gross income from the previous tax year.

The FBI had received a tip about Spillane’s activity, which spanned November 2017 to January 2018, and conducted a search warrant and arrest at his home after a short investigation. Sentencing has yet to be determined.

Meanwhile, DeepDotWeb co-owner and operator Tal Prihar, who pleaded guilty to money laundering last March, was sentenced to over 8 years jail time this week. Prihar and co-defendant Michael Phan earned over $8 million in kickbacks from purchases of contraband on darknet marketplaces.

The Bad

This week’s ransomware tales show just how ubiquitous the problem is for everyone connected to the internet, whether it’s a lone MIT professor in the U.S. or a multi billion dollar company in Taiwan, ransomware operators are out there encrypting files and demanding pay days.

Thousands of individual QNAP users were hit this week with ‘Deadbolt’ ransomware. The Taiwanese NAS backup and storage device maker was itself asked to pay a ransom for information about the alleged “zero day” exploit used in the attack. However, given the details that have emerged so far, it’s likely that the operators had instead based their targeting on scanning the internet for misconfigured devices that could be accessed from the internet without authentication. In any case, there was no shortage of victims, who were told they needed to pay 0.3 in Bitcoin. At least one reported that, having paid the ransom, they did not receive the promised decryption key.

At the other end of the scale, a reported attack by the Conti ransomware gang struck at another Taiwanese company this week, Delta Electronics. Delta, which serves as a contractor to both Apple and Tesla, was asked to pay a $15 million ransom by the gang, which claimed to have encrypted around a fifth of the company’s estimated 65,000 endpoints.

Although Delta have said no production systems were impacted, other reports suggest that the company has yet to restore most of the affected systems, with the company using an alternative web server while its official sites remain down.

The Ugly

It’s been a busy and not particularly pretty week for anyone involved with Apple security. The week began with news of OSX.DazzleSpy, a backdoor RAT that appears to be related to macOS.Macma and a watering-hole attack against Hong Kong Pro-Democracy activists. Then, the Cupertino device-maker was forced into pushing patches across its platforms for a number of bugs, some of which, the company said, were being actively exploited in the wild.

Among the vulnerabilities patched is an iOS bug that was first reported to 3rd-party vendor Trend Micro’s “Zero-Day Initiative” and apparently sat on for two months. By the time the researcher reported it directly to Apple in frustration at the lack of action, it had already been exploited in the wild.

Meanwhile, a bug in PackageKit that could allow a privileged attacker to bypass macOS’s System Integrity Protection, CVE-2022-22583, was patched and jointly credited to several different researchers. According to one analysis, an attacker could bypass SIP by abusing post-install scripts run by .pkg files and mounting an image onto /private/tmp, which is not itself protected by SIP.

This would allow the attacker to swap the SIP-entitled legitimate script run by the installer from a subdirectory in /private/tmp for one supplied by the attacker. Apple fixed the flaw by moving the location of installer scripts to a subfolder in the SIP-protected /Library folder.

CVE-2022-22583 builds on the Shrootless vulnerability reported previously by Microsoft as CVE-2021-30892. While it will undoubtedly cause concerns, it is unlikely to be exploited in the wild. As with Shrootless, exploiting this vulnerability requires the attacker to already have elevated privileges, and the use case for bypassing SIP from that vantage point is difficult to see. Stealthier persistence deep in the bowels of the system would be one, but modern versions of macOS with signed system volume (SSV) protection would likely notice any tampering there as soon as the system was rebooted, undermining the investment in stealth.

That said, there are plenty of other flaws addressed in the patches released by Apple this week, and users are strongly urged to update all their fruity devices.

Man-in-the-Middle Attack (MITM): Detection and Prevention Techniques

Although not as widespread of a cybersecurity threat as phishing or ransomware, MITM attacks can cause severe problems for enterprises. Attackers can use MITM attacks to steal credit card information and gain access to networks used by companies of all sizes by hijacking data and eavesdropping on sensitive exchanges of data between computers.

What is a Man-in-the-Middle Attack?

A man-in-the-middle attack is a type of cyberattack in which the attacker digitally interjects themselves into the middle of a conversation between a network user and a web application or server. As the so-called “man in the middle,” they can spy on users, intercept sensitive information, and even send their own messages while impersonating trusted computers.

There are several ways to do this depending on the vulnerabilities of your computer and/or your network.

Notable examples of MITM Attacks

  • In 2003, a type of wireless router made by Belkin was found to periodically use a type of MITM attack to feed users ads for Belkin products. It accomplished this by taking over a connection being routed through it. Once done, the router failed to pass the traffic on to the user’s computer, sending them instead to a web page containing the ad. Belkin later removed this function via a firmware update following a public outcry against this feature.
  • In 2013, Nokia’s Xpress mobile web browser was found to be decrypting HTTPS traffic from the phones using a kind of MITM attack, giving Nokia the ability to see its customer’s encrypted data, including financial information and passwords, without their knowledge or consent.
  • In 2017, Equifax withdrew its mobile phone apps when it became apparent that they contained severe security vulnerabilities to MITM attacks.

How Does a Man-in-the-Middle Attack Work?

A man-in-the-middle attack consists of four steps.

  1. The attacker eavesdrops on the victim’s machine’s digital conversation with another computer.
  2. A message is sent from one user to another.
  3. The attacker intercepts the message.
  4. The attacker hijacks the message, then either alters it or sends their own message in its place without the other parties knowing, bypassing security measures like firewalls.

Common Types of Man-in-the-Middle Attacks

Although there are many different ways to pull off a successful MITM attack, they always involve some combination of four broad “buckets” of digital subversion with the end goal of imposing themselves into a data exchange between two computers.

The four buckets are:

  • Eavesdropping
  • Hijacking
  • Intercepting
  • Spoofing

Eavesdropping

MITM attacks usually involve the attacker eavesdropping on conversations between two computers in a network.

For example, a common type of MITM attack is called WiFi Eavesdropping. This occurs when a MITM attacker uses an unsecured WiFi network to trick people into logging into fake pages to steal their login credentials. Attackers commonly pull this off by creating fake WiFi networks with common names to trick users into logging into their accounts while the attacker eavesdrops or watches what they type while logging into different websites. This allows them to steal login credentials for their email, credit card, and even bank accounts.

Hijacking

Another type of MITM Attacks is DNS Cache Poisoning in which the attacker finds a way to take over a DNS resolver, aka a DNS recursor, which helps run a DNS by connecting computers in a network to each other. Once the recursor has been hijacked, the attacker can mislead you by telling the DNS resolver that the website you’re trying to access actually lives at a different IP address owned by the attacker. The attacker then gives your computer a fake DNS entry via the hijacked DNS resolver, leading you to a malicious website designed to look legitimate.

Intercepting

IP spoofing is a cyberattack in which the attacker intercepts and modifies the IP address of a packet of data sent from one computer to the recipient computer without the original sender knowing.

Another way MITM attackers may accomplish this is by interrupting a sequence of data sent from the trusted source. The attacker then sends data from their computer while flooding the server with a denial of service (DoS) attack, which prevents or impairs the original sender from responding in time.

Using this method, the attacker can send your computer data packets that seem like they came from a trusted source, tricking your computer into accepting data that couldcompromise the recipient’s personal info or sensitive enterprise data.

Spoofing

Spoofing is another MITM attack  where a threat actor impersonates, piggybacks off, masquerades as, or mimics  a legitimate sources to trick someone into acting against the interest of an organization.

Although we already covered IP spoofing earlier in this article, there are many ways spoofing can be used in MITM attacks. For example, in an HTTPS spoofing attack, attackers set up fake HTTPS websites.. This is often accomplished by sending victims phishing emails designed to look like they came from major banks, social media sites, or payment mediums like PayPal. The emails prompt the user to follow a link leading them to a fake website created by the attacker designed to look like the real thing.

The victim then downloads the Certificate Authority (CA) from the fake site, which is like a digital stamp of approval for users on public networks, indicating that they are trustworthy actors.

The attacker then digitally signs the certificate and sends it back to the user, who stores it in their trusted key store – along with all other trusted keys for legitimate websites. The threat actor then relays web traffic to the actual website and can now monitor all of  the victim’s web traffic for the session.

How to Detect a Man-in-the-Middle Attack

Man-in-the-middle attacks are designed to be very stealthy. After all, the whole point is to allow the attacker to bypass security measures like firewalls.

Fortunately, they are not wholly undetectable. MITM attacks can sometimes be picked out before they cause too much damage if you know what to look for.

Signs to Look For

Unexpected or repeated connections are sometimes a telltale sign of a MITM attack. Cybercriminals will disconnect users from a network so they can intercept their login details or eavesdrop on them when they try to reconnect.

Strange URLs are another dead giveaway that you’re dealing with an MITM attack or other cybersecurity threats.. For example, if you receive a seemingly trustworthy email from “Salesforce” asking you to follow a link to verify your account information, and that link leads to “salesforcel.mobileservice2013.com/txn?id=178948” instead of “www.salesforce.com,” you may be dealing with a cybercriminal, and logging into the site may compromise your organizations network and sensitive customer information.

Using unsecured or public networks is another way to leave yourself vulnerable to MITM attacks. Remember, MITM attackers sometimes create fake WiFi networks with common names to trick you into connecting with their computer so they can watch you log into various websites.

How to Prevent a Man-in-the-Middle Attack

Generally, it is easier to prevent MITM attacks than detect them. Following these general rules can save you a lot of money and headaches in the long run.

General Best Practices

  • Connect only to networks that are secured and encrypted. This is especially true for remote employees.
  • If you hover your mouse over a suspicious link without clicking on it, your browser should display the URL embedded in that link. If the URL leads to a different site than advertised, never click on it.
  • Pay attention to the grammar and spelling of the email. Bad grammar and spelling are usually signs that you’re not dealing with the genuine article.
  • Use a VPN for employees not on an office-managed network.
  • Only connect to URLs that say “HTTPS” in the beginning (example: https://www.sentinelone.com).
  • Use multi-factor authentication to log in whenever possible and have a corporate-level solution for login credentials.
  • Perhaps most importantly, trust no one, even behind a firewall! Cybercriminals are smart, and their methods constantly evolve. When it comes to cybersecurity, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

How SentinelOne Can Help with MITM and Other Attacks

As long as cybercriminals can use MITM attacks to steal login credentials and other sensitive information successfully, the methods by which they seek to do so will continue to change and evolve, especially with the expansion of more IoT devices and as IT supply chains become more complex.

SentinelOne can help defend against advanced cybersecurity threats, including MITM attacks. You can request a demo of SentinelOne to see us in action and learn more about the Singularity Platform.  SentinelOne’s cybersecurity solution encompasses AI-powered prevention, detection, response and hunting across endpoints, containers, cloud workloads, and IoT devices in a single autonomous platform.

What is Malware (Malicious Software)?

Any individual or enterprise can fall victim to cybercriminal attacks. It has never been more crucial to keep your data safe.

While some new technology has made life easier, it has also created new challenges. In the case of the internet, perhaps chief of all those challenges is the threat of malware whether you’re a user of Mac, Windows, Linux, or mobile devices.

Malware Definition

Malware, or malicious software, is a broad term that describes any code or software used with malicious intent against an individual computer, network, or server. “Malicious intent” is a general term, but in the context of cybersecurity, it can include stealing personal information, damaging or disabling computers and other devices, hijacking someone’s computer to mine bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and even stealing financial assets.

How Does Malware Spread?

There are many types of malware. Cybercriminals have created countless creative ways to infect devices with malware.

The most common ways malware tends to infect your computer are through phishing emails, malicious advertisements, fake software installations downloaded from the web, SMS text messages, malicious apps, and infected USB drives.. Whenever you’re online, you’re at risk of malware infection, though the extent of that risk varies depending on the situation.

A Brief History of Malware

The modern concept of a “computer virus” didn’t originate from something with malicious intent. Over the past six decades, scientists and engineers have contributed – whether knowingly or not – to creating malicious software as we know it, evolving from harmless experiments to malicious digital plagues requiring increasingly sophisticated antivirus programs and other cybersecurity systems to defend against them.

John von Neumann

The scientist, John von Neumann, is credited with introducing the theoretical concepts that would later lead to the development of malware. In his paper, “Theory and Organization of Complicated Automata,” published in 1966, von Neumann discusses the concept of self-replicating computer programs. The paper was a kind of experiment, and von Neumann’s designs for a self-replicating computer program were not created with malicious intent.

The Creeper Program

In 1971, Bob Thomas created a program called the “Creeper.” He designed it to test computer security systems and see if a self-replicating computer program was possible. The Creeper worked by moving from computer to computer, attaching itself to new drives while detaching itself from its previous host. When it was successful, it displayed a message on the screen of the infected computer that said, “I’M THE CREEPER. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!”

The Rabbit Virus

In 1974, the first computer virus, called The Rabbit Virus, was created. Once it infected a computer, it would replicate itself until it caused the computer to crash. It was named the “Rabbit Virus” for the speed of its replication process.

The First Trojan

Computer programmer John Walker created the first Trojan, a virus that sneaks onto a computer by either posing as or piggybacking onto useful software. Once installed on a computer, it reveals itself as malicious. Walker created the first Trojan, called ANIMAL, in 1975.

Floppy Disks

Although floppy disks were not originally developed with this function in mind,  in the 1980s, viruses commonly spread via infected floppy disks.. Programs like Brain and Elk Cloner could spread by installing themselves on computers once a floppy disk was inserted into them (usually the A or B drive). Brain and Elk Cloner were relatively harmless, but the methods by which they spread and propagated laid the groundwork for the design of modern malicious software. Programs like these first inspired Frederick Cohen and Len Adlemanthe to coin the phrase “computer virus” in 1983.

The 1990s and beyond

As personal computers became more popular, programmers began experimenting with new ways to use computer programs. Early malware could be as simple as malicious code hiding in a Microsoft Word document to more sophisticated, socially-engineered programs that would pose instant messaging (IM) users or web ads that trick users into downloading malware. Cybercriminals used similar tactics with email, and later social media. When smartphones became popular, hackers and scammers developed viruses for them as well.

How to Tell If You’ve Been Infected with Malware

There are many different ways to tell if your device is infected with malware, depending on the type of malware and which device is infected.

Some signs to look out for:

  • Your device slows down. Slower performance can mean that your hard drive is running out of memory, that you have too many programs running, that you need more RAM, or that your computer or device is infected with malicious software. Poorer than usual performance is a dead giveaway that something is wrong.
  • You are being plagued with annoying pop-up ads. Nobody likes annoying ads. It’s generally a good idea to avoid clicking any pop-ups you see on any website; they’re often a front for malicious software like adware or worse. If you see a lot of pop-up ads at unexpected times – especially if you don’t have a web browser open or are disconnected from the internet, you have likely been infected with malware.
  • Your internet browser redirects you to a web page you didn’t choose. If this happens, clear your browser’s cache and run a virus scan, and don’t log in to any web pages that contain sensitive information you wouldn’t want in the hands of a hacker.
  • Anything else that seems strange. If your computer behaves in irregular or unpredictable ways, play it safe. Assume that it’s been infected with malware and take the necessary steps.

Common Types of Malware

Spyware

Spyware is a type of malware that infects computer systems or other devices with a goal of stealing private information. While it usually targets users of desktop computers, mobile devices can be infected as well. Spyware can infect machines by exploiting security vulnerabilities, but it can also infect devices by tricking users into downloading harmful files via phishing, clickbait, downloading free software bundles or through Trojans, and many other ways.

Password stealers

Spyware can also be used to steal passwords from infected computers via malicious software. These may include login credentials for various websites, login passwords for offline software, and even critical system credentials.

Keyloggers

Sometimes called system monitors, spyware can take the form of malicious software that tracks keystrokes to steal passwords, spy on which websites you visit, steal your search history, and many other things that can be harmful to your computer or to your personal information.

Mobile spyware

Malicious software can target Android, iPhone, and other mobile devices to steal or spy on SMS text messages, emails, call logs, audio phone conversations, voicemails, and even your physical location. With work from anywhere, BYOD, and accelerating mobile malware attacks, mobile threat defense has quickly become a key part of a cohesive security strategy for all organizations.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a type of malware that locks you out of your device through encryption,, then demands payment (ransom) in exchange for returning access to you.

Ryuk

A recent example of ransomware was Ryuk, a virus that targeted large businesses, demanding high ransoms in the form of cryptocurrency to release the hijacked systems. The virus is attributed to the cybercriminal group CryptoTech.

Trojans

Trojans, or Trojan Horses, are a type of malicious software that disguises itself as legitimate software to gain entry to your computer, similar to how Greek soldiers snuck into the city of Troy in Homer’s The Iliad.

Mobile Trojans

Mobile Trojans can look like legitimate apps and programs. They’re often encountered in unofficial or pirated app marketplaces. Once they gain access to a mobile device, they can steal files, infect a computer network, extort users via ransomware, or spread to other devices.

Trojan Spyware

Trojans can be used to install spyware on your computer or device.

Adware

Adware is a type of malware that, once installed, causescountless ads to pop up on your screen unprompted. These ads may or may not seem legitimate and may contain additional malware.

Worms

Like the “Creeper” program, worms are malicious software that copy themselves as they move from one device to another. They typically spread by exploiting security vulnerabilities and don’t necessarily involve interaction with a user.

Rootkit

Some malicious software, called rootkit malware, can gain access to a computer or similar device in order to give the attacker administrative access. This allows them to make critical changes to a computer system, network,  or gain access to files the user wants to keep hidden or secure.

Fileless

Fileless Malware is a type of cyber attack that uses legitimate programs within a computer to execute malicious code or steal information. It’s challenging to track because it doesn’t install malicious software. Instead, it executes commands used by programs that come installed on a computer, so most antivirus programs mistake it for harmless activity by the device’s operating system or other benign software.

Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking is the process of installing malware that hijacks your computer’s processing power to mine bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies for the benefit of the hacker. This can lead to severe system slowdowns and even crashes.

How to Remove and Protect Yourself From Malware

If you find yourself with a malware problem, it may be time to re-evaluate your cybersecurity needs. Some best practices to consider:

  1. Streamline your defenses using an advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR) security solution like SentinelOne’s Singularity Complete platform.
  2. Use an enterprise protection solution that works in both cloud and hybrid environments.
  3. Rely on proven cybersecurity solutions that provide measurable results.

SentinelOne can help defend against advanced cybersecurity threats. You can request a demo of SentinelOne to see us in action and learn more about the Singularity Platform. SentinelOne’s cybersecurity solution encompasses AI-powered prevention, detection, response and hunting across endpoints, containers, cloud workloads, and IoT devices in a single autonomous platform.