Security breach/compromise - 2013

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Twitter hacked - 250K pwd's reset
- http://blog.twitter.com/2013/02/keep...rs-secure.html
Feb 01, 2013 - "... Within the last two weeks, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have chronicled breaches of their systems... This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later. However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords – for approximately 250,000 users. As a precautionary security measure, we have reset passwords and revoked session tokens for these accounts. If your account was one of them, you will have recently received (or will shortly) an email from us at the address associated with your Twitter account notifying you that you will need to create a new password. Your old password will not work when you try to log in to Twitter... This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident. The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked. For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users..."

- https://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=15064
Last Updated: 2013-02-02 02:22:50 UTC

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Fed Reserve hacked by Anonymous
- http://h-online.com/-1799026
6 Feb 2013 - "Hacktivists affiliated with the Anonymous collective breached an internal web site of the US Federal Reserve, according to a report from Reuters*. A spokesman for the US central bank said: "The Federal Reserve system is aware that information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product," adding that the "exposure" was fixed rapidly and "is no longer an issue". The hackers had released a spreadsheet with details of 4000 US bank executives as part of a campaign named "OpLastResort"... but according to a memo sent to members of the Federal Reserve's Emergency Communication System, what had been compromised was mailing address, business phone, mobile phone, business email and fax numbers. The memo said: "Despite claims to the contrary, passwords were not compromised". The Federal Reserve's Emergency Communication System (ECS) is designed to help the Fed estimate how much damage a natural disaster may have done by allowing bank executives to send them updates if their operations have been affected. It appears that the contact information for this system is what was taken and published. The Federal Reserve says that all the individuals affected by the breach have been contacted."
* http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91501920130206
"... 'Every system is going to have some vulnerability to it. You cannot set up a system that will survive all possible attacks' said Mark Rasch, director of Privacy and security consulting at CSC and a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor. 'You have to defend against every possible vulnerability and the attackers only have to find one way in,' he said."

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Facebook hacked...
- http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91E16O20130216
Feb 16, 2013 - "Facebook Inc said on Friday hackers had infiltrated some of its employees' laptops in recent weeks, making the world's No.1 social network the latest victim of a wave of cyber attacks, many of which have been traced to China... Facebook noted in its blog post* that it was not alone in the attack, and that "others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well," although it did not specify who. The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment... In its blog post, Facebook described the attack as a "zero-day" attack, considered to be among the most sophisticated and dangerous types of computer hacks. Zero-day attacks, which are rarely discovered or disclosed by their targets, are costly to launch and often suggest government involvement. While Facebook said no user data was compromised*, the incident could raise consumer concerns about privacy and the vulnerability of personal information stored within the social network... Facebook said it spotted a suspicious file and traced it back to an employee's laptop. After conducting a forensic examination of the laptop, Facebook said it identified a malicious file, then searched company-wide and identified "several other compromised employee laptops". Another person briefed on the matter said the first Facebook employee had been infected via a website where coding strategies were discussed. The company also said it identified a previously unseen attempt to bypass its built-in cyber defenses and that new protections were added on February 1. Because the attack used a third-party website, it might have been an early-stage attempt to penetrate as many companies as possible..."
* https://www.facebook.com/notes/faceb...51249208250766
Feb 15, 2013 - "... we flagged a suspicious domain in our corporate DNS logs and tracked it back to an employee laptop. Upon conducting a forensic examination of that laptop, we identified a malicious file, and then searched company-wide and flagged several other compromised employee laptops. After analyzing the compromised website where the attack originated, we found it was using a "zero-day" (previously unseen) exploit to bypass the Java sandbox (built-in protections) to install the malware. We immediately reported the exploit to Oracle, and they confirmed our findings and provided a patch on February 1, 2013, that addresses this vulnerability..."

- http://arstechnica.com/security/2013...-java-exploit/
Feb 15, 2013

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Chinese hacks got inside Apple, too
- http://www.theatlanticwire.com/techn...ple-too/62294/
Feb 19, 2013 - "Following a string of disclosures from big tech and media companies that could point to a larger Chinese threat, Apple on Tuesday became the latest to admit that its internal computers had been hacked — and by the same malware malfeasance that got inside Facebook, which, according to Reuters, all trace back to China. An Apple statement, via AllthingsD*, points to the same Java script malware that infected Facebook laptops as being the culprit with the attack on some Macs at Apple:
* http://allthingsd.com/20130219/apple...ed-by-hackers/
'... Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers. The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers. We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network...'
... No user information was compromised in the breach, as with the Facebook hack. Also like the Facebook hack, there's no official sign that the tech-company hacks are connected to a larger Chinese cyber-espionage campaign against the U.S. government, its companies, its infrastructure, and many organizations — a campaign that has now been tied to the Chinese People's Liberation Army. But even the most secretive and high-security American technology companies aren't safe, and now everyone's coming clean..."
> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91I10920130219

- http://h-online.com/-1806158
19 Feb 2013

Facebook, Twitter, Apple hack sprung from iPhone developer forum
The site, iphonedevsdk .com, could still be hosting exploit attacks.
- http://arstechnica.com/security/2013...cked-facebook/
Feb 19, 2013 9:52 pm UTC

Unusually detailed report links Chinese military to hacks against US
Chinese intrusions are increasingly targeting critical industrial systems.
- http://arstechnica.com/security/2013...ks-against-us/
Feb 19, 2013 9:30 pm UTC

Dev site behind Apple, Facebook hacks didn't know it was booby-trapped
iPhoneDevSDK says it wasn't contacted by the companies or law enforcement.
- http://arstechnica.com/security/2013...booby-trapped/
Feb 20, 2013

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

NBC.com redirects to Exploit kit ...
> http://www.malwaredomains.com/?p=3082

> https://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=15223
Last Updated: 2013-02-21 19:36:19 UTC - "... redirecting to malicious websites that contains exploitkit. At this point it seems like most of the pages contains an iframe that is redirecting to the first stage of the RedKit exploit kit... Some of bad iframes public known are:
hxxp ://www.jaylenosgarage [.]com/trucks/PHP/google.php
hxxp ://toplineops [.]com/mtnk.html
hxxp ://jaylenosgarage [.]com
The Redkit exploit kit will deploy the banking trojan Citadel..."

- https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/...?site=nbc.com/

- http://community.websense.com/blogs/...ompromise.aspx

- http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2013/02...d-malware.html

NBC says NBC.com site is now safe to visit
- http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...91K1DQ20130221
Feb 21, 2013 4:54pm EST - "... 'A problem was identified and it has been fixed,' an NBC Universal spokeswoman told Reuters. She declined to elaborate on the nature of the problem... NBC is controlled by Comcast Inc..."
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Fake Mandiant APT Report Used as Malware Lure
- https://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=15226
Last Updated: 2013-02-21 20:50:39 UTC

SSHD rootkit in the wild
- https://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=15229
Last Updated: 2013-02-21 21:08:34 UTC

[AplusWebMaster]

FYI...

Attack Traffic Overiew
- http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/dataviz1.html
Feb 24, 2013 - 07:43AM est
89.38% above normal

- http://www.akamai.com/html/technolog...thodology.html
"Attack Traffic: Akamai measures attack traffic in real time across the Internet with our diverse network deployments. We collect data on the number of connections that are attempted, the source IP address, the destination IP address and the source and destination ports in real time. The packets captured are generally from automated scanning trojans and worms looking to infect new computers scanning randomly generated IP addresses. The attack traffic depicts the total number of attacks over the last twenty-four hours. Values are measured in attacks per 24 hours (attacks/24hrs). Regions are displayed as countries or states."
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MS hacked ...
- https://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/arc...edirected=true
22 Feb 2013 - "As reported by Facebook and Apple, Microsoft can confirm that we also recently experienced a similar security intrusion. Consistent with our security response practices, we chose not to make a statement during the initial information gathering process. During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit, that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations. We have no evidence of customer data being affected and our investigation is ongoing. This type of cyberattack is no surprise to Microsoft and other companies that must grapple with determined and persistent adversaries. We continually re-evaluate our security posture and deploy additional people, processes, and technologies as necessary to help prevent future unauthorized access to our networks."
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Zendesk... breach compromised email addresses
- https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...mail_addresses
Feb 22, 2013 - "... Pinterest and Tumblr was also affected..."