Chinese Hackers Take Aim at American Drones

China has its own fairly sophisticated drone program, but that has not prevented the country from being unduly curious about how other countries manage theirs. A sophisticated hacking initiative called Operation Beebus has set its sights on drone programs in both the United States and India, and experts believe that the culprits behind the hacking effort are the notorious Comment Crew — hackers who operate as part of the Chinese military.
The information comes by way of FireEye Labs, a high-profile tech security firm. Since December 2011, hackers have attempted to slip malicious DOC and PDF files into important aerospace, defense and communications machines.
Operation Beebus utilizes the exact same methodology as the Comment Crew: It creates bogus text documents and seeds them with very subtle malware. Later, the Crew can extract sensitive information from a protected system via a backdoor. Although the malware compromises the computers, it does nothing to harm them: Operation Beebus wants information, and likely won't risk damaging its prize.
The backdoor pretends to be software from Google or Microsoft, which renders it hard to detect, especially since it does not harm users' computers in any way. Once in place, the backdoor allows alien IP addresses access to private files.

If the Comment Crew is indeed responsible, it's hard to say what the group's ultimate goal is. The organization has been fairly broad in choosing targets. It has attempted to hack into vital systems in companies that produce drones, as well as academic institutes with military funding that research the devices.
The Comment Crew is also interested in more than just drones. In 2012, it targeted North American and Spanish energy companies to learn about their automation processes. The group has also hacked the New York Times database to learn about sources for a damning exposé on the Chinese prime minister, and tried to shut down Tibetan activist websites. The Comment Crew typically seeks protected information, opting for outright harassment less frequently.
Most of the DOC and PDF files are unreadable nonsense, intended only to spread malware. However, one document provides a key misdirection: an analysis of a potential Pakistani drone program, purportedly penned by one Aditi Malhotra. Malhotra is a real person, and an expert not only on drone warfare, but also on the links between the Chinese and Pakistani militaries.

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Whether Malhotra actually wrote the document is difficult to say, and it's highly unlikely that she would identify herself so brazenly if she were involved in the attacks. Furthermore, Malhotra is Indian: Indemnifying herself through an attempted hack on her own government would be counterproductive. Although the attacks are veiled in Pakistani garb, FireLabs asserts, responsibility still likely lies with China.
Everyday users don't have much to worry about from Operation Beebus, since it has only targeted major players in the drone industry. Even so, avoiding strange attachments is always sound advice. If you're a member of the DIY drone community, keep an eye out for emails from unfamiliar senders, as well.
Operation Beebus wants some very specific information and likely has nothing good planned for it. Hijacking drones may not be commonplace just yet, but that capability could raise some serious questions about widespread drone use.


Source Tech news Daily

Twitter Malware: Spreading More Than Just Ideas

News, blogs, opinions – Twitter is one of the most popular social networks for spreading ideas. It has revolutionized the way millions of people consume news. With 288 million active users, Twitter is the world's fourth-largest social network. So it’s no surprise that Twitter is also being used for spreading malware.

Trusteer researcher Tanya Shafir has recently identified an active configuration of financial malware targeting Twitter users. The malware launches a Man-in-the-Browser (MitB) attack through the browser of infected PCs, gaining access to the victim’s Twitter account to create malicious tweets. The malware, which has been used as a financial malware to gain access to user credentials and target their financial transactions, now has a new goal: to spread malware using the online social networking service. At this time the attack is targeting the Dutch market.  However, because Twitter is used by millions of users around the world, this type of attack can be used to target any market and any industry.   

The attack is carried out by injecting Javascript code into the victim’s Twitter account page. The malware collects the user’s authentication token, which enables it to make authorized calls to Twitter's APIs, and then posts new, malicious tweets on behalf of the victim. 

Here is an excerpt from the injected Javascript code:
 

 

Here are some examples of the tweets posted by the malware from victim accounts. (Tweets containing explicit content were omitted from this blog post).
 

Original text (in Dutch): 

"Onze nieuwe koning Willem gaat nog meer verdienen dan beatrix. check zijn salaris"

(English translation: "Our new King William will earn even more than Beatrix. Check his salary")

 

Original text (in Dutch):

"Beyonce valt tijdens het concert van de superbowl, zeer funny!!!!"

(English translation: "Beyonce falls during the Super Bowl concert, very funny!!!!")

 

Original text (in Dutch): 

"topman [Dutch Bank] gaat ervandoor met onze miljoenen!! De minister heeft weer het nakijken... zie"

(English translation: "CEO of [Dutch Bank] is off with our millions!! The minister is inspecting again... see". We have removed the Bank’s name from the original tweet)

 

The tweets include the following malicious links (all appear to be inactive at the moment):

hXXp://yix.be/b18e9

hXXp://yix.be/11efb

hXXp://ow.ly/hr6a6

hXXp://01.nl/rohvj9

 

Trusteer researchers found these texts in multiple Twitter posts indicating that this attack has been successful at ensnaring victims.

 

Protecting users and enterprise endpoints from this attack

This attack is particularly difficult to defend against because it uses a new sophisticated approach to spear-phishing. Twitter users follow accounts that they trust. Because the malware creates malicious tweets and sends them through a compromised account of a trusted person or organization being followed, the tweets seem to be genuine. The fact that the tweets include shortened URLs is not concerning: Twitter limits the number of characters in a message, so followers expect to get interesting news bits in the form of a short text message followed by a shortened URL. However, a shortened URL can be used to disguises the underlying URL address, so that followers have no way of knowing if the link is suspicious.
 

While Trusteer did not inspect the URLs involved, it is quite possible that these URLs lead to malicious webpages. If so, when the browser renders the webpage’s content an exploit can silently download the malware to the user’s endpoint (a drive-by download).
 

This type of attack increases the need for enterprise exploit prevention technology: By blocking the exploitation of vulnerable endpoint user applications, like browsers, and preventing the malware download, exploit prevention technology stops the attack and prevents the malware from spreading and infecting more users. External sources like web content and email attachments, which can include a hidden exploit in the form of embedded code, should never be trusted. Such content should only be opened while monitoring the application state to ensure it is operating legitimately. Stateful Application Control should be used for analyzing what the application is doing (operation) and why it is doing it (state), to determine if an application action is legitimate or malicious