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FBI Warns of Email Forwarding Rules Being Abused in Recent Hacks
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '20

03 Dec '20

'The US Federal Bureau of Investigation says that cyber-criminals are increasingly relying on email forwarding rules in order to disguise their presence inside hacked email accounts. From a report: In a PIN (Private Industry Notification) alert sent last week and made public today, the FBI says the technique has been seen and abused in recent BEC (Business Email Compromise) attacks reported over the summer. The hackers' technique relies on a feature found in some email services called "auto-forwarding email rules." As its name implies, the feature allows the owner of an email address to set up "rules" that forward (redirect) an incoming email to another address if a certain criteria is met. Threat actors absolutely love email auto-forwarding rules as they allow them to receive copies of all incoming emails without having to log into an account each day -- and be at risk of triggering a security warning for a suspicious login.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/12/02/1944205 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Malicious npm Packages Caught Installing Remote Access Trojans
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '20

03 Dec '20

'The security team behind the "npm" repository for JavaScript libraries removed two npm packages this Monday for containing malicious code that installed a remote access trojan (RAT) on the computers of developers working on JavaScript projects. From a report: The name of the two packages was jdb.js and db-json.js., and both were created by the same author and described themselves as tools to help developers work with JSON files typically generated by database applications. Both packages were uploaded on the npm package registry last week and were downloaded more than 100 times before their malicious behavior was detected by Sonatype, a company that scans package repositories on a regular basis. According to Sonatype's Ax Sharma, the two packages contained a malicious script that executed after web developers imported and installed any of the two malicious libraries. The post-install script performed basic reconnaissance of the infected host and then attempted to download and run a file named patch.exe that later installed njRAT, also known as Bladabindi, a very popular remote access trojan that has been used in espionage and data theft operations since 2015.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/12/02/1939247 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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iPhone Zero-Click Wi-Fi Exploit is One of the Most Breathtaking Hacks Ever
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '20

03 Dec '20

'Dan Goodin, writing for ArsTechnica: Earlier this year, Apple patched one of the most breathtaking iPhone vulnerabilities ever: a memory corruption bug in the iOS kernel that gave attackers remote access to the entire device -- over Wi-Fi, with no user interaction required at all. Oh, and exploits were wormable -- meaning radio-proximity exploits could spread from one nearby device to another, once again, with no user interaction needed. This Wi-Fi packet of death exploit was devised by Ian Beer, a researcher at Project Zero, Google's vulnerability research arm. In a 30,000-word post published on Tuesday afternoon, Beer described the vulnerability and the proof-of-concept exploit he spent six months developing single-handedly. Almost immediately, fellow security researchers took notice. "This is a fantastic piece of work," Chris Evans, a semi-retired security researcher and executive and the founder of Project Zero, said in an interview. "It really is pretty serious. The fact you don't have to really interact with your phone for this to be set off on you is really quite scary. This attack is just you're walking along, the phone is in your pocket, and over Wi-Fi someone just worms in with some dodgy Wi-Fi packets." Beer's attack worked by exploiting a buffer overflow bug in a driver for AWDL, an Apple-proprietary mesh networking protocol that makes things like Airdrop work. Because drivers reside in the kernel -- one of the most privileged parts of any operating system -- the AWDL flaw had the potential for serious hacks. And because AWDL parses Wi-Fi packets, exploits can be transmitted over the air, with no indication that anything is amiss.' -- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/20/12/02/1933245 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Greg Kroah-Hartman: 'Don't Make Users Mad'
by Peter Reutemann 01 Dec '20

01 Dec '20

'Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux Foundation fellow currently responsible for stable Linux kernel releases, shared the lessons he's learned as a kernel developer that are applicable to other developers at this year's Linux App Summit. He started by showing how he could succinctly distill the essence of the talk into a single five-word slide: "Don't make your users mad...." Kroah-Hartman explains that one of Linus Torvalds' most deeply-held convictions: don't break userspace. "Other operating systems have this rule as well — it's a very solid rule — because we always want you to upgrade. And we want you to upgrade without worrying about it. We don't want you to feel scared. If you see a new release, and we say, 'Hey, this fixes a bunch of problems,' we don't want you to feel worried about taking that. That's really really important — especially with security...." If you do make a change, make sure there truly is a compelling reason. "You have to provide enough reason and enough goodness to force somebody to take the time to learn to do something else. That's very rare." His example of this was systemd, which unified a variety of service configurations and initialization processes. "They did it right. They provided all the functionality, they solved a real problem that was there. They unified all these existing tools and problems in such a way that it was just so much better to use, and it provided enough impetus that everybody was willing to do the work to modify their own stuff and move to the new model. It worked. People still complain about it, but it worked. Everybody switched... It works well. It solves a real problem. "That was an example of how you can provide a compelling reason to move on — and make the change."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/11/28/0714229 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Raspberry Pi Used To Hack Tesla Model X SUV Key Fob
by Peter Reutemann 29 Nov '20

29 Nov '20

'According to this Tom's Hardware story, a Belgian PhD student managed to wrest full control of a Tesla Model X SUV, by way of hijacking the Bluetooth keyfob and reprogramming it, using a Raspberry Pi. Tesla has since issued a software update to protect against that kind of attack Since the attack is done via Bluetooth, control could be gained wirelessly from 5 meters away. According to the article this is the third time the same student "has managed to exploit the key fob and gain access to the car. Previously he was able to clone the fob..." Computer Weekly also got an interesting quote from a senior security consultant at the electronic design automation company Synopsys, who argues that the research "demonstrates the impacts of security requirements and security features not having proper validation."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/11/28/2325210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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PHP 8.0 Brings Major (And Breaking) Changes to a 25-Year-Old Language
by Peter Reutemann 29 Nov '20

29 Nov '20

'"PHP version 8.0 has arrived, bringing with it a major update to the 25-year-old programming language..." writes Tech Republic. New language features include the nullsafe operator and attributes (commonly known as annotations in other languages) to add metadata to classes — and more: The JIT compiler is designed to bring performance improvements to web applications by turning code into instructions for the CPU at runtime. Meanwhile, union types is a feature that allows data of more than one type to be held by a variable. Named arguments allow developers to assign values to a function by specifying the value name, allowing optional parameters to be ignored. Alongside these, version 8.0 of PHP brings optimizations and enhancements to the language's type system, syntax, error handling and consistency.... Commenting on PHP 8.0, PHP programmer and stitcher.io developer, Brent Roose, noted that the latest version of the language may require developers to review code for any breaking changes.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/11/28/1030246 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Developer Successfully Virtualizes Windows for Arm on M1 Mac
by Peter Reutemann 29 Nov '20

29 Nov '20

'Developer Alexander Graf has successfully virtualized the Arm version of Windows on an M1 Mac, proving that the M1 chip is capable of running Microsoft's operating system. From a report: Currently, Macs with the M1 chip do not support Windows and there is no Boot Camp feature as there is on Intel Macs, but support for Windows is a feature that many users would like to see. Using the open-source QEMU virtualizer, Graf was able to virtualize the Arm version of Windows on Apple's M1 chip, with no emulation. Since the M1 chip is a custom Arm SoC, it is no longer possible to install the x86 version of Windows or x86 Windows apps using Boot Camp, as was the case with previous Intel-based Macs. However, he said in a Tweet that when virtualized on an M1 Mac, "Windows ARM64 can run x86 applications really well. It's not as fast as Rosetta 2, but close."' -- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/20/11/27/2343223 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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AGM in January
by Peter Reutemann 28 Nov '20

28 Nov '20

Hi everyone Since we had our last meeting for the year, I just want to announce our upcoming AGM on January 25th. Agenda (preliminary) • President's Report • Treasurer's Report • Election of 2021 Committee • General business • Consumption of pizza Details: https://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/274861121/ Don't worry, there will be another announcement closer to the date. ;-) Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Microsoft's 'Project Latte' Aims To Bring Android Apps To Windows 10
by Peter Reutemann 28 Nov '20

28 Nov '20

'Windows Central reports: Microsoft is working on a software solution that would allow app developers to bring their Android apps to Windows 10 with little to no code changes by packaging them as an MSIX and allowing developers to submit them to the Microsoft Store. According to sources familiar with the matter, the project is codenamed 'Latte' and I'm told it could show up as soon as next year. The company has toyed with the idea of bringing Android apps to Windows 10 before via a project codenamed Astoria that never saw the light of day. Project Latte aims to deliver a similar product, and is likely powered by the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL.) Microsoft will need to provide its own Android subsystem for Android apps to actually run, however. Microsoft has announced that WSL will soon get support for GUI Linux applications, as well as GPU acceleration which should aid the performance of apps running through WSL. It's unlikely that Project Latte will include support for Play Services, as Google doesn't allow Play Services to be installed on anything other than native Android devices and Chrome OS. This means that apps which require Play Services APIs will need to be updated to remove those dependencies before they can be submitted on Windows 10.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/11/27/2027234 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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2FA Bypass Discovered In Web Hosting Software cPanel
by Peter Reutemann 26 Nov '20

26 Nov '20

'ZDNet: Security researchers have discovered a major security flaw in cPanel, a popular software suite used by web hosting companies to manage websites for their customers. The bug, discovered by security researchers from Digital Defense, allows attackers to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA) for cPanel accounts. These accounts are used by website owners to access and manage their websites and underlying server settings. Access to these accounts is critical, as once compromised, they grant threat actors full control over a victim's site. On its website, cPanel boasts that its software is currently used by hundreds of web hosting companies to manage more than 70 million domains across the world. But in a press release today, Digital Defense says that the 2FA implementation on older cPanel & WebHost Manager (WHM) software was vulnerable to brute-force attacks that allowed threat actors to guess URL parameters and bypass 2FA -- if 2FA was enabled for an account. While brute-forcing attacks, in general, usually take hours or days to execute, in this particular case, the attack required only a few minutes, Digital Defense said today. Exploiting this bug also requires that attackers have valid credentials for a targeted account, but these can be obtained from phishing the website owner. The good news is that Digital Defense has privately reported the bug, tracked as SEC-575, to the cPanel team, which has already released patches last week.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/11/25/2227200 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 577-5304 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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