Category Archives: DDoS Criminals

White House unveils initiatives to combat botnets

The Obama administration on Wednesday revealed new initiatives to combat botnets, believed to present one of the greatest threats to the integrity of the internet. Botnets are employed by cyber thieves to gain control of computers to perform illegal activities, including siphoning off assets, initiating denial of service (DoS) attacks, which could shut down a targeted website, or distributing spam. The initiatives stem from a voluntary public-private partnership between the White House Cybersecurity Office and the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security (DHS), which coordinate with private industry to lead the Industry Botnet Group (IBG), a group of nine trade associations and nonprofit organizations representing thousands of companies. “The issue of botnets is larger than any one industry or country,” said White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt at an event to announce the program (Schmidt recently announced his resignation). Also present at the event were Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology Patrick Gallagher, and a number of industry CEOs. According to an administration official who spoke with SCMagazineUS.com on Friday, “industry deserves credit for the real work in getting this done.” He said that the strategy goes back to a Commerce greenpaper on cyber security looking at areas where the government saw a solution in the private sector that could alleviate the botnet problem, but was not gaining traction and collective action. “Companies didn’t want to invest if other companies weren’t,” the administration official said. A call went out from the Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security to the private sector to find ways to build incentives for companies to implement best practices around botnets. “We were pleasantly surprised to find so much agreement,” the official said. A series of meetings at the White House followed, led by Schmidt, which led to the writing of IBG’s “Principles for Voluntary Efforts to Reduce the Impact of Botnets in Cyberspace,” he said. “Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility – the responsibility of government, our private sector partners and every computer user,” Napolitano said at Wednesday’s event, according to a release. “DHS has set out on a path to build a cyber system that supports secure and resilient infrastructure, encourages innovation, and protects openness, privacy and civil liberties.” The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) was also at the event to support the IBG’s principles. “We have a shared responsibility to commit resources to address the growing threats from botnets, which threaten to undermine the digital economy,” Craig Spiezle, executive director and president, Online Trust Alliance, said in a statement. “Preserving online trust and confidence needs to be a priority and the broad adoption of the Industry Botnet Group principles is an important step toward protecting the internet.” Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/white-house-unveils-initiatives-to-combat-botnets/article/243712/

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White House unveils initiatives to combat botnets

WHMCS under renewed DDoS blitz after patching systems

‘Undesirable people’ are all over us WHMCS, the UK-based billing and customer support tech supplier, has once again come under denial of service attacks, on this occasion following an upgrade of its systems to defend against a SQL injection vulnerability.…

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WHMCS under renewed DDoS blitz after patching systems

Man arrested for hacking into billing provider

The FBI has arrested hacker “Cosmo”, according to a report by Eduard Kovacs of Softpedia. Cosmo is alleged to be the leader of four-man hacktivist group UGNazi, which took control of the web site of major payment services provider WHMCS just over a week ago. Previously, UGNazi had been known primarily for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks carried out using its own botnet. Earlier this month, for example, it briefly took down the US Department of Education web site. UGNazi received even more attention when, on 21 May, it hacked into servers belonging to UK billing company WHMCS and copied private internal information, which it posted online two days later. The stolen data included a MySQL dump of the company’s customer database containing nearly 130,000 records, and data from the main server. The hackers gained access to WHMCS’ Twitter account and infiltrated the user forum. The group also carried out DDoS attacks to take down the WHMCS domain for several hours. The UGNazi hackers reportedly used basic social engineering techniques to gain access to the WHMCS domain. One of the hackers, probably Cosmo, phoned WHMCS’s hosting company claiming to be the company’s CEO and correctly answered the security question. They were then given full access to the company’s main server. WHMCS provides payment systems for small to medium-sized web sites. At the time of the intrusion, the customer database contained just under 13,000 credit card numbers, which were encrypted using a symmetrical AES algorithm. Passwords were salted, which should have made them harder to decrypt – but since the salt was recorded directly after the password, not impossible. Following the attack, the hackers spent several days taunting WHMCS. They posted tweets in the name of the company and rewrote some company blog and forum postings. In a statement on PasteBin, UGNazi stated that its motivation for the hack was simply to open the eyes of WHMCS users. The group’s US-based web site is now offline – having been, according to a tweet by Cosmo, seized by the FBI. Members of the group have told Kovacs that they are confident that the FBI will not be able to prove anything in relation to Cosmo. A fifth member left the group shortly before the attack on WHMCS. According to Softpedia, another member of the group hasn’t been online “for the past couple of days”. WHMCS has now reset all passwords for its customer area and warned its customers to be vigilant for ongoing consequences of the hack. Yesterday the company was forced to inform its customers of a further security concern, when a programmer informed WHMCS of a vulnerability in its payment processing system, for which the company released an immediate patch. Source: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Man-arrested-for-hacking-into-billing-provider-1587517.html

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Man arrested for hacking into billing provider

DoS crashes updated iPads, iPhones

A denial of service attack has been disclosed in the latest version of Apple iOS. The attack targets Safari in iOS 5.1.1 and a proof of concept was published online. Alienvault security researcher Alberto Ortega said the attack may also affect previous versions of the Apple operating system. The attack was successfully demonstrated on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Ortega said the error was a “step to achieve a real exploitation”. “iOS has a lot of mitigations to avoid successful exploitation,” Ortega said. “This software has errors and holes but you will need to bypass those hard mitigations and find more weaknesses  to have something “usable’.” Ortega reported the error to Apple at the time of disclosure but had no response from the notoriously security silent company. “When JavaScript function match() gets a big buffer as parameter the browser unexpectedly crashes. By extension, the function search() is affected too,” Ortega said in the advisory. Source: http://www.crn.com.au/News/302620,dos-crashes-updated-ipads-iphones.aspx

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DoS crashes updated iPads, iPhones

US Firms Are Over-Reliant on Firewalls to Protect Against DDoS Attacks

By John E Dunn, techworld.com More than half of US businesses still rely on conventional firewalls or intrusion prevention systems to shield themselves from the scourge of DDoS attacks, a survey by services firm Neustar has found. The survey of 1,000 US-based IT professionals across a range of industries found that only 3 percent were using DDoS mitigation systems or services, with a quarter claiming they had no protection whatsoever against the threat. Eleven percent used intrusion detection/prevention systems even though such technology is (in common with firewalls, routers and switches) widely seen as an inadequate defence against contemporary DDoS bombardment, Neustar said. “Experts point out that during DDoS attacks these ‘defences’ become part of the problem. They quickly become bottlenecks, helping achieve an attacker’s goal of slowing or shutting you down. Moreover, firewalls won’t repel attacks on the application layer, an increasingly popular DDoS vector,” the authors note. A third of those questioned said DDoS attacks lasted for a day or more with 11 percent mentioning over a week. There didn’t appear to be any clear pattern that related attack length to industry segment, except that the travel industry appeared slightly more vulnerable to attacks lasting longer than 24 hours. Two thirds said the direct cost of all this DDoS was about $10,000 (£6,200) per hour or $240,000 per day, with 13 percent reckoning it as being $100,000 per hour. The most vulnerable to high costs was retail, a sector that depends on online sales to generate cashflow, followed by finance. The main anxiety in advance of DDoS attacks was the negative impact on customers, ahead of brand reputation damage and even direct costs. Companies such as Neustar have a vested interest in talking up the difficulty of dealing with DDoS the better to market protection services. However, the company said it accepted that there was no simple answer to countering DDoS attacks; even the best protection systems available still required trained, skilled staff to deploy and manage them. “With attacks becoming more sophisticated – mixing brute-force bandwidth assaults and surgical strikes on applications – in-depth knowledge and experience make a huge difference. There is no ‘magic box’ that can out-think attackers on its own.” Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/255772/us_firms_are_overreliant_on_firewalls_to_protect_against_ddos_attacks.html

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US Firms Are Over-Reliant on Firewalls to Protect Against DDoS Attacks

Flashback botmasters earned less than $15K

It has already been established that the criminals behind the Flashback botnet were after money, but according to Symantec researchers, their plan was foiled by the attention that the first massive Ma…

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Flashback botmasters earned less than $15K

Anti-Anonymous hacker takes credit for The Pirate Bay DDoS

After 72 hours of being hit with an extensive DDoS attack and having been intermittently inaccessible to its visitors, The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks are back online. It was initially thought that An…

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Anti-Anonymous hacker takes credit for The Pirate Bay DDoS

Three-Quarters of IT Professionals Fear Negative Brand Impact or Customer Experience as a Result of DDoS Attacks

New Data from Neustar Finds DDoS Attacks Can Cost Retailers More Than $100,000 Per Hour May 15, 2012, 9:30 a.m. EDT STERLING, Va., May 15, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Neustar, Inc., a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information and analysis to the Internet, telecommunications, entertainment and marketing industries, today released the results of a survey asking 1,000 IT professionals across North America about the business impact associated with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Among the findings, three-quarters of those surveyed cited impact on customer experience and brand as their greatest fears about the possible implications of DDoS attacks. By unleashing extremely high volumes of malicious Internet traffic or surgically targeting Web applications, hackers seek to shut down a company’s Web resources — typically websites, but also email servers. When hackers unleash a DDoS attack, it carries the potential to exert lasting damage to customer service, online revenue streams and brand reputation. Neustar Survey Results: Executed in Q1 2012, the survey garners responses of IT professionals in more than 25 industries such as finance and banking, retail, telecommunications, travel and IT. Notable findings include: – More than 300 respondents reported they had been attacked – The top concern was the impact attacks have on customer service — with 51 percent listing it as their greatest concern associated with the attacks – 35 percent of those attacked said the attacks lasted more than 24 hours — with 11 percent of attacks lasting more than a week – Specific to retailers, 67 percent who had experienced a DDoS attack pegged the costs of website outages at more $100,000 per hour — equating to loses of $2 million a day “The potential negative implications of DDoS attacks can be devastating for both marketers and IT professionals,” said Alex Berry, senior vice president, Enterprise Services, Neustar. “Many companies have been hit hard – with consequences lasting far longer than the attacks themselves. It’s important that companies are proactive about protecting their online presence, as well as their customers, to ensure the constant delivery of online services and necessary brand vigilance.” Overall, the survey shows that a significant number of companies face the risks of DDoS attacks, yet few have solutions designed specifically to combat attacks, with many relying solely on firewalls and intrusion detection systems. Less than 5 percent of respondents have a purpose-built DDoS mitigation solution, for example, an on-premise DDoS mitigation appliance. This explains why so many attacks last days — in fact, 35 percent respondents experienced attacks that lasted more than 24 hours. Without adequate protection, companies are unable to prevent losses from adding up. While many respondents are aware of the risks to their customer experience and public trust, they haven’t taken the next step to safeguard their reputation. Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/three-quarters-of-it-professionals-fear-negative-brand-impact-or-customer-experience-as-a-result-of-ddos-attacks-2012-05-15

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Three-Quarters of IT Professionals Fear Negative Brand Impact or Customer Experience as a Result of DDoS Attacks

Apple ships Flashback removal tool for OS X 10.5 Leopard

Following the discovery of a 600K strong Flashback botnet, Apple has been trying to undo the damage to its reputation and has worked on issuing tools, patches and updates aimed at cleaning up the infe…

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Apple ships Flashback removal tool for OS X 10.5 Leopard