Apple Hacked By The Same Group Who Attacked Facebook

Apple Hacked, Macintosh Computers Infected  By The Same Group Who Attacked Facebook 

The month of February is not going good for cyber space, specially for giant organization. Last week the social networking giant Facebook fallen victim of a devastating cyber attack which did effected a number of  systems. Facebook admitted that it faced a "sophisticated attack" on computers where it has been found the attackers used a zero-day Java exploit to initiate the attack, but that no user data was compromised. The same thing happened to micro blogging site Twitter and New York Times. And now it was the turn for Apple. The California based multinational company acknowledged that recently their systems has been attacked by hackers who infected Macintosh computers of some employees. Like Facebook here also no data has been effected, "there was no evidence that any data left Apple." -said Apple. 

According to an exclusive report of Reuters -some unknown hackers infected the computers of some Apple workers when they visited a website for software developers that had been infected with malicious software. The malware had been designed to attack Mac computers. The same software, which infected Macs by exploiting a flaw in a version of Oracle Corp's Java software used as a plug-in on Web browsers, was used to launch attacks against Facebook, which the social network disclosed on Friday. The malware was also employed in attacks against Mac computers used by "other companies," Apple said, without elaborating on the scale of the assault. Experts are presuming that all these cyber attacks of February, that is Twitter, New York Times, Facebook & Lastly Apple Inc was originated from China, and executed by the same hacker group. On the other side few experts are also saying that the group responsible for the hack, has been identified as "Unit 61398" of the People's Liberation Army. But so far there is no proof. 

Apple also revealed that it plans to release a software tool later Tuesday that will protect customers against the same type of software that was used against its employees. 

Apple also provided a statement as follows:-

"Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers. The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers. We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple. We are working closely with law enforcement to find the source of the malware.

Since OS X Lion, Macs have shipped without Java installed, and as an added security measure OS X automatically disables Java if it has been unused for 35 days. To protect Mac users that have installed Java, today we are releasing an updated Java malware removal tool that will check Mac systems and remove this malware if found..."

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DHS & US-CERT Recommended to Disable Java in Web Browsers

DHS & US-CERT Recommended to Disable Java in Web Browsers Unless It's Absolutely Necessary

The running time is proving to be the worst period for Java, as it has been walking under serious security issues. Yet again security researchers have pointed out a zero-day security vulnerability in the Java program that hackers are exploiting. The exploit takes advantage of a vulnerability left open in Java 7 Update 10, released in October last year. It works by getting Java users to visit a website with malicious code that takes advantage of a security gap to take control of users' computers. Thus how Java is being used by cyber criminals to infect computers with malware. Oracle, hasn't specified the number of users who have downloaded Java 7 Update 10. However, Java runs on more than 850 million computers and other devices. When Oracle released Update 10, so it is predictable that more than 850 million devices run by Java is under threat. The exploit was first discovered by French researcher Kafeine, who claimed to have found it running on a site registering hundreds of thousands of page views daily. From that site, immediately that vulnerability and a large number of effected devices has been spotted in the wild. In Java 7 Update 10 the creator of Java, Oracle added several security control and fixed older bugs and promised more security enhancement, but its very unfortunate that Oracle failed to keep their promise. What ever after this newly discovered 0-day hole spotted wildly, Oracle Security Alert CVE-2013-0422 states that Java 7 Update 11 addresses this (CVE-2013-0422) and an equally severe, but distinct vulnerability (CVE-2012-3174). Immunity has indicated that only the reflection vulnerability has been fixed and that the JMX MBean vulnerability remains. Java 7u11 sets the default Java security settings to "High" so that users will be prompted before running unsigned or self-signed Java applets. It "strongly recommends" that Java SE 7 users upgrade immediately to avoid all kind of security hazards. 

After seeing all the drama, many of you have failed to keep trust in Java, and you all will be relieved when you will gone through the security advisory of CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) where they have clearly instructed to disable Java in your popular web-browser. In their official release CERT said "Unless it is absolutely necessary to run Java in web browsers, disable it as described below, even after updating to 7u11. This will help mitigate other Java vulnerabilities that may be discovered in the future."

You will see similar advice in the advisory posted on the official DHS US-CERT website where DHS also suggested to disable Java until and unless it is that much necessary. "To defend against this and future Java vulnerabilities, consider disabling Java in web browsers until adequate updates are available. As with any software, unnecessary features should be disabled or removed as appropriate for your environment." - said U.S. CERT in their advisory. 

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Egyptian Hackers Selling Zero-day Exploit of Yahoo Mail For $700

Egyptian Hackers Selling Zero-day Exploit of Yahoo Mail For $700

Those people who wander in many underground hackers community, knows very well that several unethical equipment such as Botnet, Zero-day exploit, black hole exploit kit, malware, undisclosed vulnerabilities and so on were sold there for different prices. Those products were generally priced between $5-$500, but today I will talk about an expensive product, which listed itself top on the black market. I am talking about a new cross-site scripting exploit that enables attackers to steal cookies and access Yahoo email accounts. According to the blog post of Krebs on Security -A zero-day vulnerability in yahoo.com that lets attackers hijack Yahoo! email accounts and redirect users to malicious Web sites offers a fascinating glimpse into the underground market for large-scale exploits. The exploit, being sold for $700 by an Egyptian hacker on an exclusive cybercrime forum, targets a “cross-site scripting” (XSS) weakness in yahoo.com that lets attackers steal cookies from Yahoo! Webmail users. Such a flaw would let attackers send or read email from the victim’s account. In a typical XSS attack, an attacker sends a malicious link to an unsuspecting user; if the user clicks the link, the script is executed, and can access cookies, session tokens or other sensitive information retained by the browser and used with that site. These scripts can even rewrite the content of the HTML page. The hacker posted the following video to demonstrate the exploit for potential buyers. 

“I’m selling Yahoo stored xss that steal Yahoo emails cookies and works on ALL browsers,” wrote the vendor of this exploit, using the hacker handle ‘TheHell.’ “And you don’t need to bypass IE or Chrome xss filter as it do that itself because it’s stored xss. Prices around for such exploit is $1,100 – $1,500, while I offer it here for $700. Will sell only to trusted people cuz I don’t want it to be patched soon!” -said the hacker.  

In response Ramses Martinez, director of security at Yahoo!, said the challenge now is working out the exact yahoo.com URL that triggers the exploit, which is difficult to discern from watching the video. “Fixing it is easy, most XSS are corrected by simple code change,” Martinez said. “Once we figure out the offending URL we can have new code deployed in a few hours at most.”

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VUPEN Researchers Said: They Have First Zero-Day Exploit for Windows 8 & Internet Explorer 10

VUPEN Researchers Said: They Have First Zero-Day Exploit for Windows 8 & Internet Explorer 10

Everyday the users of Microsoft newly launched and so far most advanced windows operating system, I mean Windows 8 are increasing. But we have to keep in mind the security threats are also increasing in parallel. Recently well known French IT security firm Vupen, also known as controversial bug hunters and exploit sellers claimed to have Zero-day exploit of Windows 8. Experts at Vupen Security took credit of cracking the low-level security enhancements featured in Windows 8, Microsoft's latest operating system. According a tweet made by the official account of Vupen Security said it already has a Windows 8 exploit on offer. "Our first 0day for Win8+IE10 with HiASLR/AntiROP/DEP & Prot Mode sandbox bypass (Flash not needed) is ready for customers. Welcome #Windows8" 

Apparently, the exploit combines several unpatched (0-day) security holes in the new version of Windows and the bundled Internet Explorer 10 browser to inject malicious code into systems via specially crafted web pages. Also VUPEN CEO and head of research Chaouki Bekrar sent out a pair of ominous Tweets yesterday claiming to have developed the first zero-day exploit for Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10, both released Oct. 26. Bekrar hints the exploit is a sandbox bypass for IE10 with ASLR, DEP and anti-ROP mitigations enabled. “We welcome #Windows8 with various 0Ds combined to pwn all new Win8/IE10 exploit mitigations,” Bekrar wrote. 

The exploit allegedly bypasses all of Windows 8's malware protection features: for example the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) function that Microsoft has extended in the current edition of Windows to cover more system areas and offer improved randomisation. Vupen claims that the exploit also bypasses the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and ROP features as well as Internet Explorer's sandbox-like Protected Mode. A patch for the exploited holes may not become available in the foreseeable future: Vupen said that it discovered the vulnerabilities itself and doesn't plan to disclose them to Microsoft. The company is only offering its exploit to its paying customers, among them government investigation authorities. Should Microsoft close the holes, the elaborate exploit would significantly decrease in value.

-Source (The-H & threatpost)

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Researcher Figure-out Yet Another Java Hole That Puts 1 Billion Users at Risk

Researcher Figure-out Yet Another Java Hole That Puts 1 Billion Users at Risk

Just as Oracle is ramping up for the September 30 start of JavaOne 2012 in San Francisco yet again another critical Java vulnerability has been spotted in the wild.  The Polish security researcher Adam Gowdiak has found another vulnerability in Java that could allow an attacker to bypass the sandbox. This newly discovered security hole has effected all latest versions of Oracle Java SE software. According to Security Explorations researcher Adam Gowdiak, who sent the email to the Full Disclosure Seclist, this Java exploit affects “one billion users of Oracle Java SE software.” So far the researcher were able to successfully exploit the vulnerability and achieve a complete Java security sandbox bypass 

in the environment of Java SE 5, 6 and 7. Researcher could only claim such an impact with reference to Java 7 environment (the 

Apple QuickTime attack relying on Issues 15 and 22 is the only exception here). 

The following Java SE versions were verified to be vulnerable:

• Java SE 5 Update 22 (build 1.5.0_22-b03)
• Java SE 6 Update 35 (build 1.6.0_35-b10)
• Java SE 7 Update 7  (build 1.7.0_07-b10)

All tests were successfully conducted in the environment of a fully patched Windows 7 32-bit system and with the following web browser applications:

• Firefox 15.0.1
• Google Chrome 21.0.1180.89
• Internet Explorer 9.0.8112.16421 (update 9.0.10)
• Opera 12.02 (build 1578)
• Safari 5.1.7 (7534.57.2)

So far there are no reports that the vulnerability is being exploited for attacks. Oracle has not said whether or when it will close the vulnerability. Here we want to remind the very recent history, when several zero day vulnerability was found in all the version of java, which was added on BlackHole Exploit kit. Later Oracle released a patch to close the security hole. 

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Adobe Says Windows 8 Users are Vulnerable to Active Flash Exploits (Microsoft Will not Patch the Bug Until October)

Adobe Says Windows 8 Users are Vulnerable to Active Flash Exploits (Microsoft Will not Patch the Bug Until October 26)

Adobe confirmed a serious security hole in Windows 8, hackers have been aiming at  Microsoft's Windows 8 PCs for several weeks as it is vulnerable to attack by exploits. Its very unfortunate for those who runs all the four (consumer preview, developer preview, release preview & enterprise) pre-release version of Windows 8, because the Redmond based software giant Microsoft said it will not patch the bug in Flash Player until what it called "GA," for "general availability." That would be Oct. 26, when Windows 8 hits retail and PCs powered by the new operating system go on sale. 

"We will update Flash in Windows 8 via Windows Update as needed," a spokeswoman said in a reply to questions. "The current version of Flash in the Windows 8 RTM build does not have the latest fix, but we will have a security update coming through Windows Update in the GA timeframe."
Microsoft, not Adobe, is responsible for patching Flash Player in Windows 8 because the company took a page from Google's playbook and integrated the popular media software with Internet Explorer 10 (IE10), the new operating system's browser. Last month, Adobe issued two updates for Flash Player that patched eight vulnerabilities, some of which were ranked as "1" by the company, its highest threat warning. One of the vulnerabilities, tagged as CVE-2012-1535, was patched Aug. 14, but had been exploited for an indeterminate time before that.
In fact, CVE-2012-1535 was one of four "zero-days," or unpatched vulnerabilities, exploited in a 16-week stretch by an elite hacker gang revealed by Symantec researchers on Friday. Microsoft has not updated the Flash in IE10 within Windows 8 to accommodate those two sets of patches, Adobe confirmed Friday. "Flash Player 11.3.372.94 does not incorporate the fixes released in APSB12-18 and APSB12-19," said Wiebke Lips, a spokeswoman for Adobe, referring to the Aug. 14 and Aug. 21 Flash updates.
Windows 8 RTM's IE10 identifies the integrated Flash Player as version 11.3.372.94, a more recent build than the one in Windows 8 Release Preview, but older than the most-up-to-date version for Windows, 11.4.402.265, which Adobe delivered on Aug. 21.

Adobe actually told some users about Windows 8's Flash situation two weeks ago. On an Adobe support forum, a company representative announced on Aug. 23 that there would be no Flash update for Windows 8 and IE10 until late October. "Since Windows 8 has not yet been released for general availability, the update channel is not active," said Chris Campbell, identified as an Adobe employee. "Once this goes live, you'll start getting updates to Flash Player."

-Source (Computer World)

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Kaspersky Releases Linux Mail Security With Anti-malware, Anti-spam & Content Filtering

Kaspersky Releases Linux Mail Security With Anti-malware, Anti-spam & Content Filtering 

Russian anti virus firm & security giant  Kaspersky Lab has released an anti-spam and anti-malware application called Linux Mail Security which can be integrated into different type of Linux-based mail server to fight spam and block malicious attachments. The latest spam-fighting features – including Reputation Filtering and Enforced Anti-Spam Updates Service  help to filter out zero-hour spam, while our new ZetaShield technology helps to shield businesses from zero-day and targeted attacks. Designed for integration with a range of Linux-based mail systems, Kaspersky Linux Mail Security delivers the security, flexibility and ease of management that businesses and ISPs demand. 

Key Features:- 

• Advanced antivirus engine- Kaspersky Linux Mail Security includes the latest version of Kaspersky Lab’s award-winning antivirus engine – with behaviour stream signatures – to help detect and remove malicious attachments from incoming emails.
• 
  
• Zero-Day Exploit and Targeted Attack (ZETA) Shield- Kaspersky’s ZetaShield offers protection against unknown malware and exploits – to defend you from zero-day and zero-hour attacks and APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats).
• 
  

Powerful Anti-Spam Engine- Kaspersky Linux Mail Security provides the latest version of Kaspersky’s anti-spam engine – including two powerful new technologies:

• Enforced Anti-Spam Updates Service – uses push technology, directly from the Kaspersky cloud, to deliver real-time updates. By reducing the ‘update window’ from 20 minutes to approximately 1 minute, the Enforced Anti-Spam Updates Service helps to defend businesses against zero-hour spam and spam epidemics.
• Cloud-assisted Reputation Filtering – fights against unknown spam, to enhance the spam capture rate and reduce the number of false positives.

Kaspersky Security Network -The cloud-based Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) gathers data from millions of participating users’ systems around the world to help defend your system from the very latest viruses and malware attacks. Potential threats are monitored and analysed – in real-time – to help block dangerous actions, before harm is caused.

Attachment filtering- The new Format Recogniser feature can filter attachments – using information about file type, name and message size. This helps businesses to enforce their email usage policy and can help to address corporate liability issues that can arise when users try to distribute illegal music or video files via the corporate email system.

Improved!Global Blacklists and Whitelists- In addition to creating corporate blacklists or whitelists, administrators can manage ‘allowed’ or ‘denied’ senders email – using IPv4 and IPv6, wildcards and regular expressions.

Personal Blacklists and Whitelists- Users also can create their own blacklists and whitelists.

Backup and personal backup with flexible search -Blocked email is quarantined in a backup system. If the system uses Microsoft Active Directory or OpenLDAP, individual users can access their personal backup via the web so they’re less likely to need to call your helpdesk.

Integration with most popular MTAs (Postfix, Sendmail, Exim, qmail and CommunigatePro)- Kaspersky Linux Mail Security lets you select the method of integration, depending on your choice of Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) – so you can integrate as a filter or using a Milter API.

Antivirus command line file scanner- The Kaspersky Anti-Virus On-Demand Scanner can be used for on-demand virus checking of objects – which can include directories, regular files and devices such as hard drives, flash drives and DVD-ROMs.

Amavisd-new- Kaspersky Linux Mail Security supports integration with Linux mail systems using the high-performance AMaViS interface.

Monitoring and Reporting features- 

• SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) support – any type of event can be monitored using SNMP events and traps
• A new dashboard gives an at-a-glance view of status and monitoring
• Detailed, flexible reporting in PDF format – for customisable reports that help in the monitoring and analysis of security and policies
• Notification system – informs administrators and document owners about policy violation incidents
• Detailed logs – on all product actions, to help in identifying problems

Easy to deploy, maintain and manage- 

• System administrators can run manual updates or set the rules for fully automatic updates of antivirus, anti-spam and ZetaShield
• Integration with Active Directory and OpenLDAP
• Rich email traffic management rules – administrators can create rules according to corporate security policies
• IPv6 support
• Scalable architecture – the entire system can be easily migrated from a test server to a production environment

Kaspersky Linux Mail Security will support the following Linux distributions - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 Server, Fedora 16, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2, Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.4 Squeeze, CentOS 6.2, openSUSE Linux 12.1, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS; 12.04 LTS, Mandriva Enterprise Server 5.2, FreeBSD 8.3, 9.0, Canaima 3.0, Asianux 4 SP1. 

For Detailed Information Click Here

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Hackers Sending Rogue 'Microsoft Services Agreement' Emails Exploiting Java Vulnerability

Hackers Sending Rogue 'Microsoft Services Agreement' Emails Exploiting Java Vulnerability

Cyber criminals are distributing mass on the internet while sending rogue email notifications about changes in Microsoft's Services Agreement to trick people into visiting malicious pages that use a recently circulated Java exploit to infect their computers with malware. Oracle left a security flaw in one of the world’s most widely used programs unpatched for four months and then issues a half-baked fix, the company is practically inviting cyber criminals to exploit its users en mass. And as expected the invitation has been accepted.

The rogue email messages are copies of legitimate notifications that Microsoft sent out to users to announce changes to the company's Services Agreement that will take effect Oct. 19. "This email is a legitimate announcement regarding updates to the Microsoft Services Agreement and Communication Preferences," a Microsoft program manager for supporting mail technologies who identifies herself as Karla L, said on the Microsoft Answers website in response to a user inquiring about the authenticity of the email message.

However, she later acknowledged the existence of reports about malicious emails that use the same template. "If you received an email regarding the Microsoft Services Agreement update and you're reading your email through Hotmail or Outlook.com, the legitimate email should have a Green shield that indicates the message is from a Trusted Sender," she said. "If the email does not have a Green shield, you can mark the email as a Phishing scam." 

However, in the malicious versions of the emails, the correct links have been replaced with links to compromised websites that host attack pages from the Blackhole exploit toolkit. Blackhole is a tool used by cybercriminals to launch Web-based attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in browser plug-ins like Java, Adobe Reader or Flash Player, in order to install malware on the computers of users who visit compromised or malicious websites.

This type of attack is known as a drive-by download and is very effective because it requires no user interaction to achieve its goal. The malicious Java applet used in this attack is detected by only eight of the 42 anitivirus engines available on the VirusTotal file scanning service. The Zeus variant has a similarly low detection rate.

"We're receiving multiple reports of a phishing campaign using the template from a legitimate Microsoft email regarding Important Changes to Microsoft Services Agreement and Communication Preferences," Russ McRee, security incident handler at the SANS Internet Storm Center, said Saturday in a blog post.

-Source (Info World)

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0-day Vulnerability Found in Java Spotted in the Wild

0-day Vulnerability Found in Java Spotted in the Wild

Yet another 0-day vulnerability found by FireEye's Malware Intelligence Lab that affects all the latest version of Java , including the current Java 7 update 6, are also vulnerable to the hole that is already being exploited in the wild. With the publication of a vulnerability notice by the US-CERT and warnings from the German BSI (Federal Office for Information Security), the best advice for all users is to disable Java applets in their browsers on all operating systems. The vulnerability can be exploited when a user visits a specially crafted web site and can be used to infect a system with malware. The code to exploit the problem is already available on the internet, making its use for infecting systems very likely. There is no patch available for the flaw so it is essential that users disable the Java plugins used by their browsers. Instructions for the various browsers can be found below:

• How to turn off Java Applets in Firefox
• Plugins in Chrome - refer to the Disable Specific Plugins section
• Disable Java in Safari 

Several security firms have already declared that, this newly found Java exploit had been added to Blackhole, a popular hacker's tool that bundles numerous exploits and tries each in turn until it finds one that will work against a personal computer. "Exploit code for the Java vulnerabilities has been added to the most prevalent exploit kit out there, Blackhole," said Websense in a short post on its company blog. The addition of the exploit to Blackhole was cited by FireEye researcher Atif Mushtaq in a similar blog entry yesterday as the basis for a spike in attacks. "After seeing the reliability of this attack, I have no doubt in my mind that within hours the casualties will be in the thousands," said Mushtaq.

-Source (The-H, CW)

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