Securo-boffins uncover new GLOBAL cyber-espionage operation

Government ministries, technology firms, media outlets, academic research institutions and non-governmental organisations have all fallen victim to an ongoing cyberespionage operation with tendrils all over the world, according to researchers.

Infosec researchers have uncovered SafeNet in as many as 100 countries.

SafeNet targets potential marks using spear-phishing emails featuring a malicious attachment that exploits a Microsoft Office vulnerability that was patched last year (CVE-2012-0158).

The operation appears to involve two campaigns linked together by the use of the same strain of malware and differentiated by the use of different command-and-control infrastructures.

One strand of the operation uses spear-phishing emails with subject lines related to either Tibet or Mongolia. The topic of emails in the second part of the campaign is yet to be identified but appears to have broader appeal since this strand of the operation has claimed victims in countries ranging from India to the US, China, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia and Brazil. Entities in India appear to have been hit hardest by the malware.

Sloppy coding on one of the campaign's command servers allowed researchers to extract reams of information about the attack, as Trend Micro researchers explain in a white paper (PDF) on the attack.

One of the C&C servers was set up in such a way that the contents of the directories were viewable to anyone who accessed them. As a result, not only were we able to determine who the campaigns victims were, but we were also able to download backup archives that contained the PHP source code the attackers used for the C&C server and the C code they used to generate the malware used in attacks.

It seems like nearly 12,000 unique IP addresses spread over more than 100 countries were connected to two sets of command-and-control (C&C) infrastructures related to the SafeNet malware.

Trend's researchers reckon the average number of actual victims remained at 71 per day, with few if any changes from day to day. "This indicates that the actual number of victims is far less than the number of unique IP addresses," according to the security researchers.

The people behind the attack are connecting to command servers using VPN technology and the Tor anonymiser network. This means that little evidence about where the attackers are based can be obtained from the command nodes running the campaign. However clues in the coding have led Trend's researchers to speculate the malware at least was brewed in China.

"While determining the intent and identity of the attackers remains difficult, we assessed that this campaign is targeted and uses malware developed by a professional software engineer who may be connected to the cybercriminal underground in China," writes Trend Micro threat researcher Nart Villeneuve in a blog post on the campaign.

"However, the relationship between the malware developers and the campaign operators themselves remains unclear."

Source:
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/20/safe_cyber_espionage/

Marks & Sparks accused of silently bonking punters over the tills

High-street socks'n'frocks chain Marks and Spencer is accused of quietly taking money from shoppers' contactless bank cards at the tills.

The accusations come from Radio 4's Money Box listeners, who called in to report that M&S had billed cards in purses and handbags over the air, unbeknownst to customers who had intended to pay for stuff another way.

It seems the money was unexpectedly taken from bank cards that can do pay-by-wave with compatible tills using Near Field Communications (NFC). One simply has to wave the card near the machine - within a few centimetres - for the transaction to take place over the air by radio wave.

But customers complained this was happening over a much greater distance with the tills that M&S recently installed in its UK stores.

The retail chain refunded the disputed payments - even those that went unnoticed until the customer's bank statement turned up weeks later - while pointing out that its NFC system was well tested prior to deployment. With a million transactions a month, one might expect more than couple of complaints if there was a significant problem.

The technology used by M&S is supplied by Visa. While neither company has responded to The Register's enquiries, we do know that several of the scenarios described by Money Box listeners should not be possible if the equipment is programmed to the NFC standard.

It's certainly possible for a till to debit the wrong card. However, doing so from several feet away beggars belief, in El Reg's opinion, as the induction coil that powers the NFC card has a very limited range: you effectively have to bonk your card against the machine.

However, one can imagine a wallet or purse being held beside an NFC reader in the same hand which is placing the preferred card onto the terminal, which could result in the wrong card being debited.

But the EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) standard to which NFC terminals are supposed to conform requires the contactless circuit to be disconnected as soon as a chip'n'PIN card is slotted in. This is necessary as most chip cards also have NFC embedded, these days, and cards in the slot are perfectly positioned for the contactless reader; so the decision was made that the insertion of the card should indicate a preference for PIN.

One of the two callers who complained to Money Box said that a contactless transaction was made despite her debit card being in the Chip-and-PIN slot. Indeed, Paula from London claimed to have paid twice for the same goods, once using her PIN and once again using a contactless card which was 40cm away in her bag. M&S apparently refunded the money, but the BBC reckons other people might not have noticed.

Billing twice certainly shouldn't be possible. The process flow of a payment is well known, and the till shouldn't issue multiple receipts any more than it would accept two successive Chip-and-PIN payments for the same goods.

It is possible that the terminals used by M&S were hugely overpowered if they were reading cards at 40cm, or that they fail to implement the EMV standard properly. Equally, it's also possible that the tills are apparently running software which allows multiple billing for the same transaction. The two complaints to M&S, plus a similar complaint made to Pret a Manger, could well be the tip of an extensive iceberg.

That said, it's more likely that a customer placing a contactless card on a terminal accidentally had their wallet in the same hand, or an improperly inserted card resulted in the terminal contacting the NFC bank card in the shopper's purse instead.

Contactless payments are a bit scary, and one should probably keep an eye on one's credit card bills while the technology beds in, but on this particular scandal we'll side with Occam.

Source:
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/20/marks_and_spencer_nfc/

Critical issues affecting multiple game engines

We have just released a paper [1], in which we detail several 0-day
issues affecting a number of different game engines, including: Unreal
Engine, CryEngine 3 and idTech 4.

During our presentation at the recent NoSuchCon conference in Paris, we
discussed [2] additional details about game engine issues. Additionally
we demonstrated [3] how an attacker can use master servers to perform
mass-exploiting of game vulnerabilities, in order to target and potentially
take down entire game networks.


[1] http://revuln.com/files/ReVuln_Game_Engines_0days_tale.pdf
[2] http://revuln.com/files/Ferrante_Auriemma_Exploiting_Game_Engines.pdf
[3] http://vimeo.com/66027238


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Source:
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2013/May/109

Yahoo! Japan says 22 MEELLION User IDs may have been nabbed

Yahoo! Japan has told its 200 million customers to change their passwords after revealing that 22 million user IDs may have been exposed in a suspected intrusion last week.

The attack was detected at around 9:00 PM local time on Thursday night, with the internet giant apparently cutting access while it checked what had happened.

Reports suggest it discovered an attempt to steal User IDs, with a file containing 22 million potentially exposed.

We dont know if the file was leaked or not, but we cant deny the possibility, given the volume of traffic between our server and external terminals, Yahoo! Japan said in a statement sent to AFP.

Although the data which may have been compromised apparently doesnt include passwords and the kind of user data needed to reset passwords, the firm is taking no chances.

Hackers also tried to breach Yahoo! Japan last month in a similar raid on user data, although their motives remain unclear.

Yahoo! Japan is a joint venture between the internet pioneer and Japanese mobile and broadband operator SoftBank, which remains one of the US giants few remaining success stories.

In the first quarter of 2013, it was Yahoo!s Japan JV in which it has a 33 per cent stake as well as its 20 per cent investment in Chinas Alibaba, which helped the firm to record a 36 per cent year-on-year increase in net income to $390 million (253.9m).

Source:
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/20/yahoo_japan_user_id_breach/

Gay marriage? We'll put a stop to that 'bug', says Nintendo

A bug that permitted same-sex marriage in a Nintendo game was a mistake by the developer rather than a victory for equality, we're told.

Gamers playing Tomodachi Collection: New Life - the latest version of The Sims-like role-playing game for the 3DS handheld - noticed they had the option of allowing male characters to marry and raise children together. Oddly, though, female avatars (Miis) were not allowed to wed other female avatars.

Previous editions of Tomodachi Collection did not permit any same-sex marriages, geek culture blog Kotaku noted.

The gay wedding "feature" introduced in New Life generated a bit of local buzz: "In Japan, some Tomodachi Collection: New Life owners seem thrilled by the bug, posting photos of their gay couples online," Kotaku reported. "In the images, male Mii characters ask each other to go steady, propose marriage, go on honeymoons, bathe together, and raise children."

The Sims franchise was among the first to allow in-game gay relationships, a trend more recently followed by Mass Effect, so was Nintendo following suit?

Socially conservative Nintendo has kicked such speculation firmly into touch: it has told punters that the same-sex marriage was a bug ("Human relations that become strange") that should be squashed.

The downloadable gay-marriage-tackling update for the game also covers a number of more serious faults, such as an inability to boot up the cutesy time-waster or save your progress if you can get the thing going. Players who want to continue with their in-game gay couples should avoid downloading the patch.

Source:
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/20/nintendo_patches_in_game_gay_feature/