Vulnerabilities and exploits

I’m pretty sure that most of you guys know about the recent phone scam which is circulating right now. They have been calling a lot of people in countries such as Germany, Sweden, the UK and probably more. The scam is pretty simple; they pretend to be from a department within Microsoft which has received indications that your computer is infected with some malware. Finally i just got fed up with them calling all the time so to thought id do something about it.

Nowadays we see many successful attacks that lead to personal data leaks. How do we deal with cases when our passwords can be leaked?

This month’s patch Tuesday brings a set of three “critical” bulletins focused on Windows/web browser component vulnerabilities and six other bulletins rated “important”.

Browsing is a risky activity from a security point of view. The good old times when we could identify a bunch of suspicious sites and avoid them are gone forever. Massive infections of websites are common nowadays, blindly infecting as many sites as possible. Once these sites are compromised, the access is usually sold to cybercriminals. At this point the site hosts malware or redirects victims to some exploit kit.

Deep inside one of Stuxnet’s configuration blocks, a certain 8 bytes variable holds a number which, if read as a date, points to June 24th, 2012. This is actually the date when Stuxnet’s LNK replication sub-routines (https://securelist.com/myrtus-and-guava-episode-1/29614/) stop working and the worm stops infecting USB memory sticks.

Recently, we came by an interesting targeted attack which was evading most antivirus products. This is a recent spearphish targeting various Tibetan and human rights activists. It demonstrates the level of effort put into infiltrating their groups with some unique characteristics, relative to the many other exploits targeting CVE-2012-0158.
Here’s how such e-mails appear:

Microsoft released a set of five bulletins, patching 29 total software vulnerabilities.

Two weeks ago, when we announced the discovery of the Flame malware we said that we saw no strong similarity between its code and programming style with that of the Tilded platform (https://securelist.com/stuxnetduqu-the-evolution-of-drivers/36462/) which Stuxnet and Duqu are based on.

The Flame malware uses several methods to replicate itself. The most interesting one is the use of the Microsoft Windows Update service.

In our FAQ on Flame posted on May 28, 2012, we postulated there might be a still undiscovered zero-day vulnerability in Flame

According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab products detected and neutralized almost 1 billion malicious objects in Q1 2012.

Google is set to launch Android 5.0, aka Jelly Bean, this fall. But do we even need it? While Google has made some steps in securing its Play branded marketplace, and offered a few security updates to the operating system, it is a fact that the most targeted Android platform is still 2.x. Why is that? There are several reasons, not the least of which is a lack of security patches provided to previously deployed operating system versions.

In an airport lounge during my last trip I came across some cool tab devices running on Android integrated with an external keyboard available for public use and connected to the Internet. I performed a quick check of downloaded files, most visited sites and browser history and found a huge list of sensitive information. Here are some examples:

In 2011, Apple was estimated to account for over 5% of worldwide desktop/laptop market share. This barrier was a significant one to break – Linux maintains under 2% market share and Google ChromeOS even less.

we can confirm yet another Mac malware in the wild – Backdoor.OSX.SabPub.a being spread through Java exploits.

This new threat is a custom OS X backdoor, which appears to have been designed for use in targeted attacks. After it is activated on an infected system, it connects to a remote website in typical C&C fashion to fetch instructions. The backdoor contains functionality to make screenshots of the user’s current session and execute commands on the infected machine.