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Tuesday 5 January 2010
Secret code protecting cellphone calls set loose
Cryptographers have moved closer to their goal of eavesdropping on cellphone conversations after cracking the secret code used to prevent the interception of radio signals as they travel between handsets and mobile operators' base stations.
The code is designed to prevent the interception of phone calls by forcing mobile phones and base stations to rapidly change radio frequencies over a spectrum of 80 channels. Without knowing the precise sequence, would-be eavesdroppers can assemble only tiny fragments of a conversation.
At a hacker conference in Berlin that runs through Wednesday, the cryptographers said they've cracked the algorithm that determines the random channel hopping and have devised a practical means to capture entire calls using equipment that costs about $4,000. At the heart of the crack is open-source software for computer-controlled radios that makes the frequency changes at precisely the same time, and in the same order, that the cellphone and base station do.
"We now know this is possible," said Karsten Nohl, a 28-year-old cryptographer and one of the members of an open-source project out to prove that GSM, the technical standard used by about 80 percent of the mobile market, can't be counted on to keep calls private. The attack "is practical, and there are real vulnerabilities that people are exploiting."
A spokeswoman for the GSM Association, which represents 800 operators in 219 countries, said officials hadn't yet seen the research.
"GSM networks use encryption technology to make it difficult for criminals to intercept and eavesdrop on calls," she wrote in an email. "Reports of an imminent GSM eavesdropping capability are common."
The channel-hopping crack comes as the collective is completing the compilation of a rainbow table that allows them to decrypt calls as they happen. The table works because GSM encryption uses A5/1, a decades-old algorithm with known weaknesses. The table - a 2-terabyte list of known results that allows cryptographers to deduce the unique key that encrypts a given conversation - was developed by volunteers around the globe using giant clusters of computers and gaming consoles.
Within days of the project announcement in August, the GSMA pooh-poohed it as a "theoretical compromise" that would have little practical effect on the security of phone calls. In addition to the massive rainbow table needed, the GSMA said it doubted researchers had the means to process the vast amounts of raw radio data involved.
"Initially, we didn't consider channel-hopping a big security feature," Nohl told The Register. "If the GSM Association's excuse for bad crypto is there is another security feature we rely on much more, then of course, we'll break that, too."
A bare-bones attack can be pulled off with a PC with a medium-end graphics card, a large hard drive, two USRP2 receivers and the channel-hopping software. Under normal conditions, it will take a few minutes of conversation before eavesdroppers have collected enough data to break the encryption. Because the calls are recorded and played back later, the entire contents of a conversation can still be captured.
More elaborate setups that use a network of computers or Field Programmable Gate Array devices, will be able to unlock calls almost instantaneously, Nohl said.
To capture both ends of a conversation, an attacker would have to place one of the radios in close proximity to the person making the call, while the second would be used to capture downlink transmissions coming from a carrier's base station. That requires a fair amount of effort because attackers must target a specific individual.
But in many cases - such as phone menus used by banks and airline companies - it's sufficient for an attacker to intercept only the downlink, said David Burgess, a signal processing engineer who helped to identify weaknesses used to break A5/1.
"Even if I only see the downlink, that's still very useful," he said. "The base station is acknowledging back every button press."
After weaknesses in A5/1 became common knowledge, mobile operators devised A5/3, an algorithm that requires about a quintillion times more mathematical operations to break. Despite estimates that some 40 percent of cellphones are capable of using the newer cipher, it has yet to be adopted, largely, Nohl says, because of the cost of upgrading and fears older handsets will be left behind.
"A5/3 is a better encryption algorithm and there has been a long-standing proposal to make this the preferred cipher in GSM," he said. "But no network operator with one exception that I'm aware of has started adopting A5/3 so far."
The GSMA has said it plans to transition to the new technology, but has yet to provide a timetable.
Nohl described the channel-hopping techniques at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress, an annual hacker conference in Berlin, along with fellow reverse engineer Chris Paget. Their presentation is here. ®
The code is designed to prevent the interception of phone calls by forcing mobile phones and base stations to rapidly change radio frequencies over a spectrum of 80 channels. Without knowing the precise sequence, would-be eavesdroppers can assemble only tiny fragments of a conversation.
At a hacker conference in Berlin that runs through Wednesday, the cryptographers said they've cracked the algorithm that determines the random channel hopping and have devised a practical means to capture entire calls using equipment that costs about $4,000. At the heart of the crack is open-source software for computer-controlled radios that makes the frequency changes at precisely the same time, and in the same order, that the cellphone and base station do.
"We now know this is possible," said Karsten Nohl, a 28-year-old cryptographer and one of the members of an open-source project out to prove that GSM, the technical standard used by about 80 percent of the mobile market, can't be counted on to keep calls private. The attack "is practical, and there are real vulnerabilities that people are exploiting."
A spokeswoman for the GSM Association, which represents 800 operators in 219 countries, said officials hadn't yet seen the research.
"GSM networks use encryption technology to make it difficult for criminals to intercept and eavesdrop on calls," she wrote in an email. "Reports of an imminent GSM eavesdropping capability are common."
The channel-hopping crack comes as the collective is completing the compilation of a rainbow table that allows them to decrypt calls as they happen. The table works because GSM encryption uses A5/1, a decades-old algorithm with known weaknesses. The table - a 2-terabyte list of known results that allows cryptographers to deduce the unique key that encrypts a given conversation - was developed by volunteers around the globe using giant clusters of computers and gaming consoles.
Within days of the project announcement in August, the GSMA pooh-poohed it as a "theoretical compromise" that would have little practical effect on the security of phone calls. In addition to the massive rainbow table needed, the GSMA said it doubted researchers had the means to process the vast amounts of raw radio data involved.
"Initially, we didn't consider channel-hopping a big security feature," Nohl told The Register. "If the GSM Association's excuse for bad crypto is there is another security feature we rely on much more, then of course, we'll break that, too."
A bare-bones attack can be pulled off with a PC with a medium-end graphics card, a large hard drive, two USRP2 receivers and the channel-hopping software. Under normal conditions, it will take a few minutes of conversation before eavesdroppers have collected enough data to break the encryption. Because the calls are recorded and played back later, the entire contents of a conversation can still be captured.
More elaborate setups that use a network of computers or Field Programmable Gate Array devices, will be able to unlock calls almost instantaneously, Nohl said.
To capture both ends of a conversation, an attacker would have to place one of the radios in close proximity to the person making the call, while the second would be used to capture downlink transmissions coming from a carrier's base station. That requires a fair amount of effort because attackers must target a specific individual.
But in many cases - such as phone menus used by banks and airline companies - it's sufficient for an attacker to intercept only the downlink, said David Burgess, a signal processing engineer who helped to identify weaknesses used to break A5/1.
"Even if I only see the downlink, that's still very useful," he said. "The base station is acknowledging back every button press."
After weaknesses in A5/1 became common knowledge, mobile operators devised A5/3, an algorithm that requires about a quintillion times more mathematical operations to break. Despite estimates that some 40 percent of cellphones are capable of using the newer cipher, it has yet to be adopted, largely, Nohl says, because of the cost of upgrading and fears older handsets will be left behind.
"A5/3 is a better encryption algorithm and there has been a long-standing proposal to make this the preferred cipher in GSM," he said. "But no network operator with one exception that I'm aware of has started adopting A5/3 so far."
The GSMA has said it plans to transition to the new technology, but has yet to provide a timetable.
Nohl described the channel-hopping techniques at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress, an annual hacker conference in Berlin, along with fellow reverse engineer Chris Paget. Their presentation is here. ®
Kingston coughs to security flaw in 'Secure' flash drive
Kingston Technology is instructing customers to return certain models of its memory sticks, after the firm discovered a glitch in its DataTraveler Secure flash drives.
The company said in a security notice that the models affected were "privacy" editions of the DataTraveler Secure, DataTraveler Elite and DataTraveler Blackbox.
Kingston said the security flaw could allow a wrongdoer to hack into the memory sticks.
"A skilled person with the proper tools and physical access to the drives may be able to gain unauthorised access to data," warned the vendor.
Kingston added that a number of its USB drives weren't affected by the security flaw.
Customers whose drives could be exploited by the security loophole should return the product, where Kingston said it would apply a factory update.
Kingston had claimed that its Data Traveler Secure drive was the first of its kind to protect "100 per cent of data on-the-fly via 256-bit hardware-based AES encrpytion".
It's also supposed to "meet enterprise-level security and compliance requirements", according to blurb about the drive on the firm's website. ®
The company said in a security notice that the models affected were "privacy" editions of the DataTraveler Secure, DataTraveler Elite and DataTraveler Blackbox.
Kingston said the security flaw could allow a wrongdoer to hack into the memory sticks.
"A skilled person with the proper tools and physical access to the drives may be able to gain unauthorised access to data," warned the vendor.
Kingston added that a number of its USB drives weren't affected by the security flaw.
Customers whose drives could be exploited by the security loophole should return the product, where Kingston said it would apply a factory update.
Kingston had claimed that its Data Traveler Secure drive was the first of its kind to protect "100 per cent of data on-the-fly via 256-bit hardware-based AES encrpytion".
It's also supposed to "meet enterprise-level security and compliance requirements", according to blurb about the drive on the firm's website. ®
Mr. Bean ousts PM from Spain's official website
Spain's prime minister was briefly ousted from that country's official website after hackers replaced his likeness with that of bumbling slapstick character Mr. Bean.
Representatives for Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero confirmed the defacement of www.eu2010.es but insisted data on the site was never compromised, the BBC reported. Instead, the stunt was done using cross-site scripting attack, which injects unauthorized content and code into vulnerable websites.
People who tried to visit the PM's site site were briefly met by an image of Mr. Bean actor Rowan Atkinson. Comparisons between the appearance of Spain's leader and the buffoon have been a long-standing joke.
While the hack was relatively harmless XSS, or cross-site scripting holes can be exploited to inject malicious code into visitors' browsers that steal authentication credentials or redirect victims to malicious websites.
Screenshot of Mr. Bean
More from the BBC and Reuters are here and here. ®
Representatives for Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero confirmed the defacement of www.eu2010.es but insisted data on the site was never compromised, the BBC reported. Instead, the stunt was done using cross-site scripting attack, which injects unauthorized content and code into vulnerable websites.
People who tried to visit the PM's site site were briefly met by an image of Mr. Bean actor Rowan Atkinson. Comparisons between the appearance of Spain's leader and the buffoon have been a long-standing joke.
While the hack was relatively harmless XSS, or cross-site scripting holes can be exploited to inject malicious code into visitors' browsers that steal authentication credentials or redirect victims to malicious websites.
Screenshot of Mr. Bean
More from the BBC and Reuters are here and here. ®
Adobe Reader vuln hit with unusually advanced attack
With more than a week until Adobe is scheduled to patch a critical vulnerability in its Reader and Acrobat applications, online thugs are targeting it with an unusually sophisticated attack.
The PDF file uses what's known as egg-hunting shellcode to compress the first phase of the malicious payload into 38 bytes, a tiny size that's designed to thwart anti-virus detection. As a result, just four of the 41 major AV programs detect the attack more than six days after the exploit surfaced, according to this analysis from Virus Total.
The shellcode then loads an obfuscated binary file contained in the PDF file that installs PoisonIvy, a backdoor client used to maintain control over infected PCs.
"Not only was this a very interesting example of a malicious PDF document carrying a sophisticated 'war head,' but it also showed the length attackers are willing to go to in order to make their malware as hard to detect as possible, not only for the AV vendors, but also for victims," wrote Bojan Zdrnja, a Sans handler who analyzed the exploit.
The PDF was distributed through email that was specifically targeted at an unnamed organization, Zdrnja, who is a senior information security consultant with Infigo, said in an interview with The Register. Based on the metadata found in the PDF, it originated in China and was produced on December 29.
Just to make the attack even harder for end users to detect, the obfuscated binary runs a third executable program that does nothing more than open a benign file called baby.pdf on the infected machine. Zdrnja believes this is done to deflect attention and prevent users from figuring out their PC has just been compromised.
In mid December, Adobe confirmed the critical flaw in Reader and Acrobat, but said a fix wouldn't come until January 12, the same day Microsoft is slated to release its next installment of security fixes. The vulnerability, which is classified as CVE-2009-4324, has been under targeted attack for more than three weeks. White hat hackers have also added an exploit to the Metasploit framework for penetration testers.
These latest in-the-wild attacks are bound to add fuel to critics who say Adobe software, which runs on well more than 95 percent of the world's computers, needs to be better screened for security vulnerabilities. The company is in the process of designing a new updater that will patch security holes in Reader, Acrobat, and Flash without requiring user interaction, according to the Zero Day blog. Beta users will begin testing it sometime this month.
This should come as good news. The wide availability of exploits targeting now-patched vulnerabilities suggests that a significant portion of users don't run the most recent version of the programs.
Adobe has also pledged to beef up the security of Reader and Acrobat by using software fuzzers and other tools to proactively find bugs that can be exploited. Since then, criminals have beat Adobe to spotting new critical vulnerabilities at least twice, including the latest attacks. ®
The PDF file uses what's known as egg-hunting shellcode to compress the first phase of the malicious payload into 38 bytes, a tiny size that's designed to thwart anti-virus detection. As a result, just four of the 41 major AV programs detect the attack more than six days after the exploit surfaced, according to this analysis from Virus Total.
The shellcode then loads an obfuscated binary file contained in the PDF file that installs PoisonIvy, a backdoor client used to maintain control over infected PCs.
"Not only was this a very interesting example of a malicious PDF document carrying a sophisticated 'war head,' but it also showed the length attackers are willing to go to in order to make their malware as hard to detect as possible, not only for the AV vendors, but also for victims," wrote Bojan Zdrnja, a Sans handler who analyzed the exploit.
The PDF was distributed through email that was specifically targeted at an unnamed organization, Zdrnja, who is a senior information security consultant with Infigo, said in an interview with The Register. Based on the metadata found in the PDF, it originated in China and was produced on December 29.
Just to make the attack even harder for end users to detect, the obfuscated binary runs a third executable program that does nothing more than open a benign file called baby.pdf on the infected machine. Zdrnja believes this is done to deflect attention and prevent users from figuring out their PC has just been compromised.
In mid December, Adobe confirmed the critical flaw in Reader and Acrobat, but said a fix wouldn't come until January 12, the same day Microsoft is slated to release its next installment of security fixes. The vulnerability, which is classified as CVE-2009-4324, has been under targeted attack for more than three weeks. White hat hackers have also added an exploit to the Metasploit framework for penetration testers.
These latest in-the-wild attacks are bound to add fuel to critics who say Adobe software, which runs on well more than 95 percent of the world's computers, needs to be better screened for security vulnerabilities. The company is in the process of designing a new updater that will patch security holes in Reader, Acrobat, and Flash without requiring user interaction, according to the Zero Day blog. Beta users will begin testing it sometime this month.
This should come as good news. The wide availability of exploits targeting now-patched vulnerabilities suggests that a significant portion of users don't run the most recent version of the programs.
Adobe has also pledged to beef up the security of Reader and Acrobat by using software fuzzers and other tools to proactively find bugs that can be exploited. Since then, criminals have beat Adobe to spotting new critical vulnerabilities at least twice, including the latest attacks. ®
Adobe To Surpass Microsoft As Hacker Target
By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
December 30, 2009
Adobe Reader and Flash will surpass Microsoft Office applications as favorite targets of cybercriminals, a security vendor predicted Tuesday.
In unveiling its 2010 Threat Predictions report, McAfee said the growing popularity of the Adobe products has attracted the attention of cybercriminals, who have been increasingly targeting the applications.
Adobe Reader and Flash are two of the most widely deployed applications in the world.
As a result of Adobe's success in client software, McAfee Labs believes "Adobe product exploitation will likely surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in 2010."
Security experts for quite a while have warned of the potential security risk posed by Flash. In November, Foreground Security identified a flaw in the way Web browsers handle Flash files that could be used to compromise Web sites that have users submit content.
Beyond Adobe, cybercriminals are also expected to step up efforts next year to crack social networking sites, as well as third-party applications in general. Internet users can expect crooks to use more complex Trojans and botnets to build and execute attacks and to take advantage of HTML 5 to create threats. HTML 5 is the next major revision of hypertext markup language, the core markup language of the Web.
InformationWeek
December 30, 2009
Adobe Reader and Flash will surpass Microsoft Office applications as favorite targets of cybercriminals, a security vendor predicted Tuesday.
In unveiling its 2010 Threat Predictions report, McAfee said the growing popularity of the Adobe products has attracted the attention of cybercriminals, who have been increasingly targeting the applications.
Adobe Reader and Flash are two of the most widely deployed applications in the world.
As a result of Adobe's success in client software, McAfee Labs believes "Adobe product exploitation will likely surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in 2010."
Security experts for quite a while have warned of the potential security risk posed by Flash. In November, Foreground Security identified a flaw in the way Web browsers handle Flash files that could be used to compromise Web sites that have users submit content.
Beyond Adobe, cybercriminals are also expected to step up efforts next year to crack social networking sites, as well as third-party applications in general. Internet users can expect crooks to use more complex Trojans and botnets to build and execute attacks and to take advantage of HTML 5 to create threats. HTML 5 is the next major revision of hypertext markup language, the core markup language of the Web.
RockYou sued over data breach
By Elinor Mills
InSecurity Complex
CNET News
December 30, 2009
An Indiana man filed a lawsuit against RockYou this week alleging that the provider of social-networking apps failed to secure its network and protect customer data, enabling a hacker to grab passwords of 32 million users earlier this month.
The suit seeking class action status was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by lawyers for Alan Claridge, of Evansville, Ind., who registered with RockYou in August 2008 to use a photo-sharing application. RockYou is a publisher and developer of online apps and services like "SuperWall" on Facebook and "Slideshow" on MySpace.
Claridge said he received an e-mail from RockYou on December 16 informing him that his sensitive, personally identifiable information, including e-mail address and password, may have been compromised in a security breach, according to the suit.
Security firm Imperva notified RockYou on December 4 that it had learned of a breach of RockYou's network from underground hacker forums. RockYou had been hit with a common type of exploit known as a SQL injection flaw that targets information stored in databases and hackers were regularly discussing the fact that the hole at RockYou was being exploited, the lawsuit said.
InSecurity Complex
CNET News
December 30, 2009
An Indiana man filed a lawsuit against RockYou this week alleging that the provider of social-networking apps failed to secure its network and protect customer data, enabling a hacker to grab passwords of 32 million users earlier this month.
The suit seeking class action status was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by lawyers for Alan Claridge, of Evansville, Ind., who registered with RockYou in August 2008 to use a photo-sharing application. RockYou is a publisher and developer of online apps and services like "SuperWall" on Facebook and "Slideshow" on MySpace.
Claridge said he received an e-mail from RockYou on December 16 informing him that his sensitive, personally identifiable information, including e-mail address and password, may have been compromised in a security breach, according to the suit.
Security firm Imperva notified RockYou on December 4 that it had learned of a breach of RockYou's network from underground hacker forums. RockYou had been hit with a common type of exploit known as a SQL injection flaw that targets information stored in databases and hackers were regularly discussing the fact that the hole at RockYou was being exploited, the lawsuit said.
The Decade's 10 Most Dastardly Cybercrimes
By Kevin Poulsen
Threat Level
Wired.com
December 31, 2009
It was the decade of the mega-heist, when stolen credit card magstripe tracks became the pork bellies of a new underground marketplace, Eastern European hackers turned malware writing into an art, and a nasty new crop of purpose-driven computer worms struck dread in the heart of America.
Now that the zero days are behind us, it's time to reflect on the most ingenious, destructive or groundbreaking cybercrimes of the first 10 years of the new millennium.
2000 - MafiaBoy
Once upon a time, "distributed denial of service attacks" were just a way for quarreling hackers to knock each other out of IRC. Then one day in February 2000, a 15-year-old Canadian named Michael "MafiaBoy" Calce experimentally programmed his botnet to hose down the highest traffic websites he could find. CNN, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Dell and eTrade all buckled under the deluge, leading to national headlines and an emergency meeting of security experts at the White House.
Compared to modern DDoS attacks, MafiaBoy's was trivial. But his was the cyberstrike that put the internet's security issues on a national stage, and inaugurated an era where any pissed off script kiddy could take down part of the web at will.
2002 - California Payroll Database Breach
On April 5, 2002, an unidentified hacker penetrated a California server housing the state government's payroll database, gaining access to names, Social Security numbers and salary information for 265,000 state workers from the governor on down. The breach itself was small potatoes, but when it emerged that the California Controller's Office had waited two weeks to warn the victims, angry lawmakers reacted by passing the nation's first breach disclosure law, SB1386.
The law requires hacked organizations to promptly warn potential identity theft victims. Its passage pulled the rock off the string of major corporate breaches that companies would have preferred to hush up.
Today, 45 states have enacted similar laws.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/ye_cybercrimes/
Threat Level
Wired.com
December 31, 2009
It was the decade of the mega-heist, when stolen credit card magstripe tracks became the pork bellies of a new underground marketplace, Eastern European hackers turned malware writing into an art, and a nasty new crop of purpose-driven computer worms struck dread in the heart of America.
Now that the zero days are behind us, it's time to reflect on the most ingenious, destructive or groundbreaking cybercrimes of the first 10 years of the new millennium.
2000 - MafiaBoy
Once upon a time, "distributed denial of service attacks" were just a way for quarreling hackers to knock each other out of IRC. Then one day in February 2000, a 15-year-old Canadian named Michael "MafiaBoy" Calce experimentally programmed his botnet to hose down the highest traffic websites he could find. CNN, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Dell and eTrade all buckled under the deluge, leading to national headlines and an emergency meeting of security experts at the White House.
Compared to modern DDoS attacks, MafiaBoy's was trivial. But his was the cyberstrike that put the internet's security issues on a national stage, and inaugurated an era where any pissed off script kiddy could take down part of the web at will.
2002 - California Payroll Database Breach
On April 5, 2002, an unidentified hacker penetrated a California server housing the state government's payroll database, gaining access to names, Social Security numbers and salary information for 265,000 state workers from the governor on down. The breach itself was small potatoes, but when it emerged that the California Controller's Office had waited two weeks to warn the victims, angry lawmakers reacted by passing the nation's first breach disclosure law, SB1386.
The law requires hacked organizations to promptly warn potential identity theft victims. Its passage pulled the rock off the string of major corporate breaches that companies would have preferred to hush up.
Today, 45 states have enacted similar laws.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/ye_cybercrimes/
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