Issue 79- Week of Aug 22nd

1.      Scorpene leak: The Scorpene-class submarines are developed a French company called DCNS. A former French Navy officer who quit the service in the early 1970s and worked for French defense companies for more than 30 years before becoming a subcontractor to DCNS - copied sensitive data from DCNS along with a French colleague and took it to a Southeast Asian country, where they were employed in a private company. This 22,400 page sensitive data was then stored in one of the company servers. In 2013, they both were sacked and the company found their replacement in Australia, with whom the company shared this data over the internet. Last week, the information on the Scorpene submarine and excerpts have been released by 'The Australian' newspaper.  The person plans to surrender the disk to the Australian government on Monday. Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar played down the leak, saying it is "not a big worry".

2.      Apple releases 'Emergency' patch after advanced spyware targets human rights Activist: Apple has released iOS 9.3.5 update for iPhones and iPads to patch three zero-day vulnerabilities after a piece of spyware was found targeting the iPhone used by a renowned UAE human rights defender. NSO Group, which sells spying and surveillance software, has been exploiting three zero-day security vulnerabilities in order to spy on dissidents and journalists. The zero-day exploits have allowed the company to develop sophisticated spyware tools that can access the device location, contacts, texts, calls logs, emails and even microphone. Apple fixed these three vulnerabilities within ten days after being informed. Apple had recently announced a bug bounty reward of up-to US$200K.

3.      ATMs in Thailand hacked; 12 Million Baht stolen; 10,000 ATMs prone to hackers: An Eastern European gang of criminals has stolen over 12 Million Baht (approx. US$350k) from a total of 21 ATMs in Bangkok and other five provinces by hacking a Thai bank's ATM network. Hackers were able to infect the GSB (Govt. Savings Bank)'s ATM machines by inserting malware infected cards into it and then making it spew out up-to 40k Bhat for every transaction.

4.      Mail.ru forums hacked: Over 25 million accounts associated with forums hosted by Russian internet giant Mail.ru have been stolen by hackers. The databases were stolen in early August, according to breach notification site LeakedSource.com, which obtained a copy of the databases. The hackers' names aren't known, but they used known SQL injection vulnerabilities found in older vBulletin forum software to get access to the databases. In the recent past, using outdated software has led to hacking of Steam Game Forums and Clash of Kings Forums.

5.      Wildfire Ransomware code cracked: Victims of the Wildfire Ransomware can get their encrypted files back without paying hackers the ransom, after the ‘No More Ransom’ initiative released a free decryption tool. ‘No More Ransom’ runs a web portal that provides keys for unlocking files encrypted by various strains of ransomware, including Shade, Coinvault, Rannoh, Rakhn and, most recently, Wildfire. The Ransom was for 1.5 Bitcoins (1 Bitcoin = US$575) and the victims were Dutch speakers from Netherlands and Belgium. Meanwhile in India - Shri Dhanvantari Herbals - An Indian Ayurvedic pharmaceutical company based in Punjab has been hit by Ransomware.

6.      Dropbox prompts users to reset old passwords: Dropbox is asking users to change their old passwords as part of a "preventative measure". In a blog post, the file-sharing and cloud storage company called out to users who haven't changed their passwords since mid-2012, saying the login credentials are potentially at risk and should be updated. As is often the case, some people reuse their usernames and passwords across different web services, when anyone of them is compromised like LinkedIn or MySpace did, it leads to Password reuse attacks.

7.      Opera browser reports breach: The company revealed that attackers gained access to Opera Sync, a service that lets users synchronize their browser data and settings across multiple platforms. It is investigating the incident, but initially believes the attack may have compromised user data, including passwords and login names. Opera counts 350 million users across its range products with 1.7 million Sync users. The company has reset all passwords and emailed all registered Opera sync users with details.

8.      Leaked Exploits are Legit and belong to NSA- Cisco & Fortinet confirm: Last issue we discussed about the NSA hack and its leaked hacking tools. NSA was systematically spying on customers of big technology companies like Cisco, Fortinet, and Juniper for at least a decade. After a thorough investigation, Cisco confirmed the authenticity of these exploits, saying that these hacking tools contain exploits that leverage two security vulnerabilities affecting Cisco ASA software designed to protect corporate and government networks and data centers.  Fortinet, also warned of a high-risk vulnerability leaked in the NSA hack, which affects older versions of its FortiGate firewalls. The identity of the hackers-'The Shadow Brokers' is still

8.a mystery.

9.      GozNym Trojan spreads to attack German banks: Last week, Researchers confirmed that the financial malware, a Trojan discovered in April this year, has recently targeted 13 German banks and their local subsidiaries. The hybrid malware (Gozi ISFB Malware + Nymaim malware), includes an exploit kit dropper, web-injection capabilities, encryption, anti-VM, and control flow obfuscation, making the malware persistent, difficult to detect, and also very powerful. The malware sends victims to fraudulent, carbon-copy websites of financial institutions in order to lure them into parting with their online banking details.

10.   170 cyber frauds in 7 months in Visakhapatnam: In the past seven months, Vizag has registered 170 cyber fraud cases, of which 110 are related to siphoning off of money from bank accounts. The spurt in one-time passwords (OTP) frauds has left the police befuddled. “Despite several warnings, citizens fall prey to conmen and share confidential details. NIST (US National Institute of Standards and Technology) has declared -SMS-based Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), to be insecure.

Image Courtesy: The Australian