Digital bank robbers make off with $6.7 million
During the holidays cybercriminals kept themselves busy, hacking websites and stealing all the data they could find. South African Postbank, a financial institution owned by SA Post Office, is one of the victims.
South African bank Postbank was robbed of $6.7 million earlier this month. But the thieves didn’t need masks and guns to pull off the job — just computers.
To pull off the heist, the hackers created a backdoor into one of the bank’s computers. From that hacked computer, they were able to access the rest of the network and issue the commands to distribute the $6.7 million to different accounts owned by the thieves. Those accounts were promptly emptied via ATM visits. Preliminary reports revealed that the cybercrime ring responsible for the theft opened a number of Postbank accounts all across the country and then, in the period between January 1 and January 3, they managed to access a Post Office employee’s computer from where they deposited money from other accounts into their own.
Since the crime didn’t raise any red flags with its automated fraud-detection programs, bank employees failed to notice the money was missing until the bank re-opened after the New Year’s holiday.
The irony is that 3 years ago the institution invested a large amount of money in their anti-fraud systems. However, as we can clearly see, anti-fraud systems aren’t worth much if the company doesn’t have a strict policy for the way their employees handle computers.
If the reports are true, then it is very likely that an employee with privileged rights must have fallen victim to a scam email designed to spread a malicious Trojan.
Fin24 reports that the National Intelligence Agency, which offers assistance when a government institution is compromised, has launched an investigation to precisely determine the causes that allowed for the incident to occur.
Bank representatives state that none of their customers are affected by the breach, but security experts believe that Postbank’s systems desperately need an upgrade.
Crooks don’t necessarily have to hack into a bank’s systems to gain access as it may be much easier to manipulate someone into handing over some information that can be utilized to just waltz in without being detected.
Lately, we’re presented with many cases in which a little bit of social engineering can perform much more efficiently than even the most sophisticated piece of malware. Take the thieves who stole 9 million dollars from payroll debit cards issued by RBS Worldpay.
AT&T iPad site hacker to fight on in court
A hacker facing trial on charges that he and a cohort conspired to break into an AT&T Web site for 3G iPad users told CNET today that he will fight the charges “to the end.”
Andrew “Escher” Auernheimer, 26, was indicted several months ago on one count of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers and one count of identity theft. He faces up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. Co-defendant Daniel Spitler pleaded guilty in June and a judge put the case on hold, reportedly because of plea negotiations.
But Auernheimer, whose hacker handle is “weev,” says he’s not going to cop a plea.
“I did not fold the two previous times when the FBI tried to frame me as a terrorist” for allegedly calling in a bomb threat to a synagogue, which he denies, he said in an e-mail. “I will not fold now when they try to libel me as a thief. My indictment conveys a message that I am some sort of identity thief.”
In a follow-up phone interview, Auernheimer said he has done “nothing ethically wrong” and is being persecuted for “telling the truth” by exposing a security hole in AT&T’s Web site that was leaking e-mail addresses and unique device numbers for about 120,000 3G iPad users last year, including government and high-profile corporate customers.
Andrew Auernheimer, aka “Weev,” in a photo from earlier this year.(Credit: Anonymous)“I contend there is no crime in telling the truth or using AT&T’s, or anybody’s, publicly accessible data, to cite it to talk about how they made people’s data public,” he said. “There’s a continuance until January. There may be a trial then…I just want to fight this thing to the end.”
A Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment because the court case is pending.
Asked his thoughts on Spitler’s guilty plea, Auernheimer said he was sure that Spitler would “cooperate in some way.” “I don’t blame him. He’s a good guy,” he said of his former hacking partner. “It’s probably terrifying for most people to go through this process. I’ve been fighting ‘The Man’ for years.”
Spitler wrote a script called the “iPad 3G Account Slurper” and used it against AT&T servers to harvest the iPad user data. The Justice Department contends that he and Auernheimer plotted on how to take advantage of the security hole for profit, but Auernheimer claims they were merely trying to protect consumers and waited until AT&T knew about the hole and fixed it before allowing Gawker to publish the details.
“I’ve never once made a dime off embarrassing a large corporation. I’ve never attempted to make a dime and AT&T is basically a public figure that is open to criticism. I think it’s fair,” he said. “Embarrassing somebody by telling the truth is not malice. It’s necessary speech.”
The Justice Department has released excerpts of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) logs in which the hackers discussed selling the e-mail addresses to spammers, shorting AT&T stock before releasing details of the breach, and destroying evidence.
In one exchange, Auernheimer writes: “This could be like, a future massive phishing operation serious like this is valuable data we have a list a potential complete list of AT&T iphone subscriber emails,” to which Spitler responds: “ipad but yeah.” Asked to comment about statements from the logs that would appear to be damaging to his case, Auernheimer said “It’s easy to misconstrue a true statement as evidence of malice…our acts reveal no malice. I went straight to the press and I told exactly what needed to be told.”
When asked why he didn’t go directly to AT&T first, he said: “AT&T has a commercial interest in not having their negligence with consumer data spoken about, ever…I used the press as a proxy and I waited for (AT&T) to patch before going public.”
Auernheimer, 26, said he is barred from using IRC, communicating with anyone in his hacking group or any potential witnesses or co-defendants, and doing random Web browsing, but can use the Internet for “commerce.”
He was forced to leave his Fayetteville, Ark., home because of a bail condition requiring him to stay in the jurisdiction, he added, and as a result, he is living in Jersey City, N.J. (Meanwhile, drug charges he was arrested on last year after an FBI sweep of his home in the AT&T case have been dropped, he said.)
He has a public defender and has raised about $10,000 for his legal defense fund, he said. While he waits for trial, he is learning the Erlang programming language and is “open to security work.”
“I definitely have a habit of pissing people off. I’m not apologetic for that,” said the self-described Internet “troll.” “I think that the people that get pissed off probably deserve it. It serves a social function.”
10 Hackers Who Made History
The computer world has a rich history of hackers who steered the progress of computer science and gave shape to computers, the internet and networking as we see it today — in some cases single-handedly.
And while yes, there are the Black Hat hackers behind internet mayhem, thievery, and chaos, there are also White Hat hackers who use their computer savvy for good. There’s also a different kind of hacker entirely: the tinkerer. They all played parts, big and small, in creating the computer world as it exists today. Here are 10 of the greatest:
Konrad Zuse
It all begins with Konrad Zuse, arguably the very first computer hacker. He may not have been a hacker in the modern sense of the word, but none of it would have been possible without him. You see, Zuse made the world’s very first fully programmable (Turing-complete as they say) computer, known as the Z3. It began, of course, as the Z1, and while it wasn’t built in a cave with a box of scraps, Zuse did build it himself in his parents’ apartment, completing it in 1938. Zuse eventually gained some backing by the German government, leading to the evolution from the Z1 to the Z3, which, complete in 1941, is considered the mother of modern computing.
John “Captain Crunch” Draper
John Draper was hacking computers long before computers were even common place. Draper’s hacking heyday was back in the early 1970s, when the largest computer network to which the general public had any access was the telephone system. At the time, telephones were managed by an automated system using specific analogue frequencies which could be exploited to make free long distance or even international calls. It was called “Phreaking”, and one of the most well-known Phreaking tools was a toy whistle that came in a box of Cap’n Crunch cereal. With this whistle, Draper created another popular Phreaking tool known as the Blue Box, a device that could produce many other tones used by the phone companies.
Steve Wozniak
A contemporary to John Draper, Wozniak was no stranger to Phreaking. In fact, after Draper shared the details of his Blue Box design during a Homebrew Computer Club meeting, Wozniak built a version of his own. Steve Jobs saw the marketing potential in the device, and the two Steves began their first joint venture together. Wozniak’s hacking days weren’t all spent on projects of questionable legality, though. With the proceeds from their blue boxes as well as selling Wozniak’s cherished HP calculator and Jobs’ VW van, Wozniak created the Apple I. With the other Steve’s marketing prowess, their company became the industry leader it is today.
Robert Tappan Morris
As a graduate student at Cornell University, Robert Morris created his claim to fame: the computer worm. According to Morris, he created the worm as an attempt to gauge the size of the internet at the time. After its release on November 2, 1988, the Morris Worm went on to infect approximately 6000 systems (about 10 per cent of the internet attached computers at the time). The worm was intended to be unobtrusive, but due to a flaw in its replication algorithm, it copied itself excessively, causing heaving system loads and ultimately leading back to Morris. In 1989, Morris became the first person indicted and later convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.
Mark “Phiber Optik” Abene
Here’s a name you may not be familiar with: Mark Abene. He never hacked into the D.O.D. nor did he steal millions of dollars in some Swordfish-style bank heist. What he did do was piss off AT&T. As a member of the hacker group Masters of Destruction, Abene was often poking around on AT&T’s systems. When AT&T’s telephone system crashed, leaving 60,000 customers without phone service for over nine hours, they quickly blamed Abene. The Secret Service paid him a rather aggressive visit, confiscating his equipment, and while AT&T eventually admitted that the crash was a mistake on its part, Abene was charged with computer tampering and computer trespassing in the first degree. Later, he would face more charges and ultimately serve a year in federal prison, making him the first hacker to do so.
Kevin “Dark Dante” Poulsen
Poulsen holds claim to one of the more amusing hacks of all time. A radio contest held by KIIS-FM promised a shiny new Porsche 944 S2 to the 102nd person to call into the station. Rather than try his luck among the multitude of Los Angeles listeners, Poulsen took over all of the telephone lines to the station to ensure he’d be the 102nd caller. He eventually had to disappear once he became a fugitive of the FBI. This landed him a spot on the popular TV show Unsolved Mysteries. The show’s hotlines crashed when the episode aired. Coincidence? In 1991, Poulsen was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to various counts of computer fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. Interestingly, since his incarceration, Poulsen made a complete 180, helping in cyber crime cases, and even capturing sexual predators on MySpace.
Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick is perhaps the most famous hacker in computer history, likely due to his being the first hacker to make the FBI’s Most Wanted list. As a master of social engineering, Mitnick didn’t just hack computers; he hacked the human mind. In 1979, at the age of 16, he hacked his way into his first computer system and copied proprietary software. He would often engage with admin personnel, such as in phone calls and email messages, and trick them into giving up passwords and other security information. After a two and a half year pursuit, Mitnick was finally arrested and served five years in prison. He now runs his own computer security consultancy, Mitnick Security Consulting.
Tsutomu Shimomura
Not all hackers fall under the Black-Hat umbrella. Tsutomu Shimomura is a White-Hat hacker credited with capturing Kevin Mitnick. In 1994, Mitnick stole some of Shimomura’s personal files and distributed them online. Motivated by revenge, Shimomura came up with a trace-dialling technique to back-hack his way in to locating Mitnick. With Shimomura’s information, the FBI was able to pinpoint and arrest Mitnick.
Richard Stallman
In his early years, Stallman was a graduate student and programmer at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Labs where he would constantly engage with MIT’s rich hacking culture. As an advocate for just about everything Open Source, Stallman fought back when MIT installed a password system in its Computer Science department. He would decrypt users’ passwords (not an easy task given the processing power of the 1970s) and send them a message with their password in plaintext, suggesting they leave the password blank in order to re-enable anonymous use. Going into the 1980′s, Stallman didn’t like the proprietary stance many manufacturers were taking on their software. This eventually led Stallman to create the GNU General Public licence and GNU operating system, a completely free Unix-like OS that is completely Unix-compatible.
Linus Torvalds
Following Stallman’s lead, Linus Torvalds is another White-Hat hacker. His hacking days began with an old Commodore VIC-20 and eventually a Sinclair QL, both of which he modified considerably. On the QL in particular, he programmed his own Text Editor and even a Pac-Man clone he dubbed Cool Man. In 1991, he got an Intel 80386 powered PC and began creating Linux, first under its own limited licence but eventually merged it into the GNU Project under the GNU GPL. Torvalds hadn’t originally intended on continued support for his Linux Kernel, but due to the nature of the Open Source project, it grew into one of the most hacker friendly (and secure) operating systems available.
The New Reality of Stealth Crimeware
Anyone who has been in information security recently knows that it has gotten easier for cybercriminals to build stealth crimeware. The malware we deal with on a regular basis grows ever more difficult to find, while high-end targeted attacks such as Stuxnet and other advanced persistent threats (APTs, the abbreviation I hate) are using ever more advanced rootkit techniques to avoid detection.
Cybercriminals use clever stealth techniques to evade detection because it allows their malware to be more effective, live on a machine or network longer, and thus maximize the compromise. McAfee Labs is now at the point where we detect more than 110,000 new unique rootkits per quarter.
To make matters worse, there is another issue that many fail to recognize:
Today’s current OS-based security model is not adequate; cybercriminals know how to get past these defenses every time.
The security industry has to find a new vantage point on cybercriminal behavior to stop and uncover their stealth techniques. It is time for our industry to start looking at security beyond the operating system to gain a more effective view of how cybercriminals operate.
We delve into these and many other issues in our latest report: “The New Reality of Stealth Crimeware,” written by myself and Thom Sawicki of Intel. Download it here.
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Introduction
Stealth is the art of travelling undetected, of being invisible. Stealth technology allows military aircraft,
Ninjas, and malware to sneak up on the enemy to launch an attack, gain intelligence, or take over
systems and data.
Although stealth techniques are used in sophisticated attacks like Conficker and Operation Aurora, the
Stuxnet attack offers a new blueprint—and benchmark—for how committed criminals can use stealth
techniques to steal data or target computing systems. Stuxnet innovations included a combination of
five zero-day vulnerabilities, three rootkits, and two stolen digital certificates. Powerful toolkits, like what is available in the Zeus Crimeware Toolkit, make stealth malware development a “point- and-click” endeavor, no longer restricted to the most knowledgeable programmers. While there are no definitive industry figures, McAfee Labs estimates that about 15 percent of malware uses sophisticated stealth technique to hide and spread malicious threats that can cause significant damage.1 These attacks form the cornerstone—the “persistent” part—of advanced persistent threats (APTs).
Data Privacy Weather Report – News Roundup for 2011
Data privacy is on the firing line this year with Fortune 500 companies in the scope. It’s been a long shot year with the proliferation of organized crime, its merger with global communications, and further development of horizontal markets to sustain profitability.
alternatives. We’ve designed Dropbox to protect user data against
threats of all kinds, but we’ve focused on helping users avoid the most
common threats: not having current backups, not having any backups at
all, accidentally deleting or overwriting files, losing USB drives with
sensitive information, leaving files on the wrong computer, etc.”
or behind an electric gate, you don’t need to worry that somebody
might attach a tracking device to it while you sleep. But
the Constitution doesn’t prefer the rich over the poor; the man
who parks his car next to his trailer is entitled to the same privacy
and peace of mind as the man whose urban fortress is
guarded by the Bel Air Patrol. The panel’s breezy opinion is
troubling on a number of grounds, not least among them its
unselfconscious cultural elitism (shwing!).
.
2011 Guardian Analytics – Commercial Banking Fraud (SMB)
Online Bank Fraud Continues To Plague Small Businesses, Study Says
Responses to the February 2011 survey from more than 533 SMBs indicate that money continues to be siphoned unnoticed from business accounts at an alarming rate and SMBs are leaving their institutions at alarming pace because of it. This means financial institutions are facing a lose-lose proposition: losing money and losing customers.
Business banking fraud — particularly in small and midsize companies — is still causing major problems for both the businesses and the banks that serve them, according to a study published today.
The “2011 Business Banking Trust Study,” a follow-up to a similar study conducted last year, was written by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Guardian Analytics. This year’s numbers suggest that the banking fraud situation has not improved since 2010.
“The industry has not moved the needle in addressing the corporate account takeover and fraud plaguing SMBs and their financial institutions,” the report states. “The data shows that fraud is still pervasive, money is leaving accounts unnoticed at an alarming rate, and businesses will leave their banks because of it.”
Fifty-six percent of businesses experienced fraud in the past 12 months, according to the study. Of those that experienced fraud, 61 percent were victimized more than once. Seventy-five percent of the victims experienced online account takeover and/or online fraud. These figures are nearly the same as last year’s, the researchers say.
In 78 percent of fraud cases, banks failed to catch fraud before funds were transferred out, according to the study. Banks were able to keep money from leaving the bank in 22 percent of the cases and fully recover fraudulently transferred funds for 10 percent of businesses.
Banks were unable to recover funds in 68 percent of cases, leading to losses for both business and banks, Ponemon says. Banks took the losses in 37 percent of cases by reimbursing businesses for unrecovered funds; businesses took losses in 60 percent of cases.
Forty-two percent of respondents in the study said they do not believe the bank would cover any losses if their companies’ assets were stolen and not recovered. Despite this attitude, 70 percent of businesses still think their institution should be ultimately responsible for securing online accounts.
Forty-three percent of businesses said they have moved their banking activities elsewhere after a fraud incident. Ten percent of businesses that have experienced fraud have terminated their banking relationships following fraud attacks. Thirty-three percent said they did not fully terminate their relationship, but moved their primary cash management services to another institution.
2011 Business Banking Trust Study (PDF)
2011 Verizon Data Breach Report
Verizon’s 2011 Data Breach Investigations, a study conducted by the Verizon RISK Team with cooperation from the U.S. Secret Service and the Dutch High Tech Crime Unit.
Verizon’s 2010 Data Breach Report found that the number of data breaches quintupled from 2009, highlighting the shift as cyber-criminals target smaller businesses.
While the number of data breaches soared in 2010, the amount of information lost has dropped dramatically, according to Verizon’s latest data breach survey. The contradiction underscores what some security experts have been saying: attackers are increasingly targeting smaller companies because it’s easier.
Released April 19, the latest “2011 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report” from Verizon Business counted 760 data breaches in 2010, compared to only 141 data breaches in 2009. Verizon noted a dramatic decline of 97 percent in the number of compromised records in 2010, as compared to 2009.
Among some of the report’s key findings:
- Hacking, at 50 percent, and malware, at 49 percent, are the most prominent types of attack, with many incidents involving weak or stolen credentials and passwords;
- Physical attacks, such as skimming at ATMs, pay-at-the-pump gas terminals and POS systems, for the first time rank among the three most common ways to steal information, comprising 29 percent of all investigated cases;
- Outsiders are responsible for 92 percent of breaches, while the percentage of insider attacks dropped from 49 percent in 2009 to 16 percent in 2010.
Attacks Remain Easy
According to the report, 83 percent of the databases hit in 2010 were targets of opportunity; 92 percent of the attacks were classified as “not highly difficult.”
- 86 percent of the year’s breaches were discovered by third parties;
- 97 percent were avoidable through simple or intermediate controls;
- 89 percent of the corporate or organizational victims were not compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard at the time of the hack.
Download the 2011 Data Breach.
Cyber Insecurity
Our society’s infrastructure can no longer function without computers and networks. The sum of the world’s networked computers is a rapidly increasing force multiplier. Today’s businesses are becoming heavily dependent on technology for integration, productivity and organizational scalability. Data is an increasing fraction of total corporate wealth and needs to remain secure while ensuring confidentiality, availability and integrity.
Increasingly, organizations require communications to provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, and connectivity to data sources. Technology enables employees and partners to work and access systems anywhere, anytime – also placing systems at an increased risk by the same token of availability. The protection of digital assets during transport, and at rest on storage devices is essential to the life cycle of information as it transcends the border of physical and logical controls.
The world of security is becoming more complex and threatening every day. This increasing complexity embeds dependencies in a manner that may diminish the frequency of surprises; however, the surprises will be all the more unexpected when they inevitably occur.
Security is becoming a means and not an end; modern protection strategies are quickly shifting toward risk absorption rather than risk avoidance. Service orientated architectures and Web 2.0 technologies are fueling the internet revolution while at the same time rapidly deteriorating the security situation. That deterioration compounds when nearly all individuals and businesses are establishing dependencies on computer and communications systems. It is thus obvious that increasing dependence means ever more difficulty in crafting protections against known and unknown threats to systems.
The traditional network barriers that separated trusted from untrusted and “inside” from “outside” are now disappearing. As more applications become directly accessible to remote users and systems, the concept of the network perimeter becomes increasingly vague and more difficult to protect. Attacks are no longer confined to lower areas of the network stack and target widely adopted systems and software programs, having major implications globally, in all sectors.
Threats and risk are chiefly growing amongst the poorly coded applications, and unsophisticated end-users. Protections need to work together in a concerted effort to reduce risk and mitigate known and unknown threats to computing systems.
Modern day security has become architecture of devices, people and software that work towards providing the best possible layered defense against attacks.
Key drivers:
Increasing complexity
Sophistication of applications and attacks
Financial Gain for Hackers
Workforce Productivity
State & Government Compliance
Those with either an engineering or management background are aware that one cannot optimize everything at once that requirements are balanced by constraints. In engineering, this is said as “Fast, Cheap, Reliable: Choose Two.”. In the public policy arena, we must first remember that the definition of a free country: a place where that which is not forbidden is permitted. No society needs rules against impossibilities and I believe that we are now faced with “Freedom, Security, Convenience: Choose Two.”
For me, I will take freedom over security and I will take security over convenience, and I will do so because I know that a world without failure is a world without freedom. A world without the possibility of sin is a world without the possibility of righteousness. A world without the possibility of crime is a world where you cannot prove you are not a criminal. A technology that can give you everything you want is a technology that can take away everything that you have. At some point, in the near future, one of us security geeks will have to say that there comes a point at which safety is not safe.
A proud member of:
The InfraGard program is a public/private cooperative effort dedicated to improving our national security. InfraGard consists of Chapters throughout the United States. The FBI leads the U.S. Government side of InfraGard. Infragard provides a trusted forum for the exchange and channeling of information and subject matter expertise related to the protection of our nation’s critical infrastrcuture from physical and cyber threats.
