Security Breach Invaded 8,500 Recipients of Unemployment Insurance Agency Michigan (UIA)

Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) Hacked! 8,500 Recipients Personal Data Leaked

A major security breach has invaded Unemployment Insurance Agency of Michigan, widely known as UIA. Sources revealed that the attack was placed in between mid of July to mid of September which affected more than 8,500 unemployment insurance recipients in Michigan with leak of social security numbers, bank account numbers, passwords, phone numbers & few other sensitive data. This security breach was first detected Sept. 17 by contractor JP Morgan Chase. In his reaction the director of the Unemployment Insurance Agency, Shaun Thomas said -“The UIA is deeply concerned about this incident.” But due to some untold reason state official were not notified until this December first week. Dan Lohrmann, the state’s chief security officer in the Department of Technology, Management and Budget, said he has “worked closely with JP Morgan Chase to share our concern about the delayed notification and to ensure that the state receives immediate notice of future problems. “We work around the clock to keep citizen information and data protected, and I feel confident that everyone involved in this event understands the importance of protecting personal information.” Chase, which handles the debit cards Michigan uses to pay unemployment insurance benefits to some recipients, said those who accessed the bank’s website between mid-July and mid-September may have been affected. The 8,500 claimants in Michigan are among about 465,000 cardholders nationwide who may have been affected, the bank said. So far the identity of the hackers & their reasons behind this attack is not been identified, but Chase has notified law enforcement and both the bank and the state will be notifying claimants whose information was potentially compromised. 

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Cupid Media Network Breach Exposes 42 Million Passwords in Plain Text

Cupid Media Network Breach Exposes 42 Million Passwords in Plain Text (Uunencrypted)

Cupid Media one of the leading niche online dating network that have more than 35 large online dating website, faced a massive intrusion that effects more than 42 million of its registered users. From an exclusive report of Kerbs On Security we came to know that the breach was taken earlier in this year. Where the hackers managed to gain access into the crucial servers belongings to Cupid Media network. According to the managing director of Cupid Media, Mr Andrew Bolton - "In January we detected suspicious activity on our network and based upon the information that we had available at the time, we took what we believed to be appropriate actions to notify affected customers and reset passwords for a particular group of user accounts.” After a preliminary investigation it has been found that the purloined database of Australia-based niche dating service Cupid Media was found on the same server where hackers had amassed tens of millions of records stolen from Adobe. More than 42 million peoples' unencrypted names, dates of birth, email addresses and passwords have been found from the pinched database. I am very much wearied to see that a high value site like Cupid is unconcerned about the basic security counter measure. Even their confidential tables remained unencrypted which allows the hacker to gain the personal information in plain text. Like the Cupid Media security team, the registered users also found very much inadvertent and unaware of basic security measures. I am saying this because of the leaked passwords, almost two million picked "123456", and over 1.2 million chose "111111". "iloveyou" and "lovely" both beat out "password", and while 40,000 chose "qwerty", 20,000 chose the bottom row of the keyboard instead - yielding the password "zxcvbnm". 

Jason Hart of famous data protection firm Safenet said "The true impact of the breach is likely to be huge. Yet, if this data had been encrypted in the first place then all hackers would have found is scrambled information, rendering the theft pointless."

This security breach of Cupid Media reminds us  the decent history of breach where we have seen a slew of attacks against the following sites: Drupal.org  Scribd, Guild Wars 2, Gamigo, Blizzard, Yahoo, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Formspring, Android Forums, Gamigo,  Nvidia,Blizzard, Philips, Zynga, VMWare, Adobe,  Twitter,  New York Times, Apple and so on. While covering this story on behalf of VOGH, I am warning our readers across the globe to use strong alphanumeric passwords to avoid such disaster. Also the webmasters and security administrator are highly recommended to use salted encryption in their database to prevent fortuitousness cyber attack. 

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Drupal.org Hacked ! More Than 967,000 Registered User Details Compromised

Drupal.org Hacked ! More Than 967,000 Registered User Details Compromised 

Drupal, one of the most famous and widely used open-source content management framework have fallen victim to cyber criminals. The Drupal Security Team and Infrastructure Team has discovered unauthorized access to account information on the official Drupal website and another site called groups.drupal.org. This security breach has exposed user names, country, and email addresses along with hashed passwords of more than 967,000 registered users on the Drupal.org. But still a matter of relief is that the breach failed to infiltrate the credit card details which was stored on the same server. According to security release unauthorized access was made via third-party software installed on the Drupal.org server infrastructure, and was not the result of a vulnerability within Drupal itself. Drupal team have worked with the vendor to confirm it is a known vulnerability and has been publicly disclosed. They are still investigating and will share more detail when it is appropriate. Upon discovering the files during a security audit, the security team has already shut down the association.drupal.org website to mitigate any possible ongoing security issues related to the files. The Drupal Security Team then began forensic evaluations and discovered that user account information had been accessed via this vulnerability. The suspicious files may have exposed profile information like username, email address, hashed password, and country. In addition to resetting your password on Drupal.org, it is also recommending a number of measures (below) for further protection of your information, including, among others, changing or resetting passwords on other sites where you may use similar passwords. 

As a precautionary measure of the said security breach, Drupal Security Team has reset all Drupal.org account holder passwords and are requiring users to reset their passwords at their next login attempt. A user password can be changed at any time by taking the following steps. 

1. Go to https://drupal.org/user/password 
2. Enter your username or email address. 
3. Check your email and follow the link to enter a new password. It can take up to 15 minutes for the password reset email to arrive. If you do not receive the e-mail within 15 minutes, make sure to check your spam folder as well.

Counter Measures that Drupal has Taken to avoid such mishap is something followed- as attacks on high-profile sites (regardless of the software they are running) are common, Drupal strive to continuously improve the security of all Drupal.org sites. To that end, Drupal have taken the following steps to secure the Drupal.org infrastructure:

• Staff at the OSU Open Source Lab (where Drupal.org is hosted) and the Drupal.org infrastructure teams rebuilt production, staging, and development webheads and GRSEC secure kernels were added to most servers
• Drupal is scanning and have not found any additional malicious or dangerous files and making scanning a routine job in their process
• There are many subsites on Drupal.org including older sites for specific events. Drupal created static archives of those sites.

This security breach of Drupal which affected more than 967,000 users is giving us a remind of the decent history of breach where we have seen a slew of attacks against the following sites: Scribd, Guild Wars 2, Gamigo, Blizzard, Yahoo, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Formspring, Android Forums, Gamigo,  Nvidia,Blizzard, Philips, Zynga, VMWare, Adobe,  Twitter  New York Times, Apple and so on. 

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LulzSec Hacker Cody Kretsinger Sentenced 1 Year Imprisonment For Sony Breach

LulzSec Hacker Cody Kretsinger Sentenced 1 Year Imprisonment For Security Breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment  

Infamous LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger who pleaded guilty last year in front of Federal Court of California for taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment server has faced judgement. 25 year aged Kretsinger who is also known as "Recursion" was one of the key member of Lulz Security, widely known to us as LulzSec, an offshoot of the international hacking group Anonymous. According to federal prosecutors, Cody Kretsinger has been sentenced to one year in prison in  Los Angeles. This court rule has been followed by home detention. Kretsinger, was also been ordered by a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles to perform 1,000 hours of community service after his release from prison, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. Although prosecutors refused to say whether the hacker was co-operating with authorities in return for a softer sentence. 

During last year's plea hearing, Kretsinger told a federal judge that he gained access to the Sony Pictures website and gave the information he found there to other members of LulzSec, who posted it on the group's website and Twitter. "I joined LulzSec, your honor, at which point we gained access to the Sony Pictures website," said Kretsinger in the federal court. Prosecutors said Kretsinger and other LulzSec hackers, including those known as "Sabu" and "Topiary," stole the personal information of thousands of people after launching an "SQL injection" attack on the website; ultimately caused the unit of Sony Corp more than $600,000 in finical damage, along with that the attack caused bad impact and loss of faith for Sony Corporation and it's customers across the globe. 

While talking about this story, we would like to recap the decent history - where the arrest followed by guilty pleading of all the key members of LulzSec including  Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, Jeremy Hammond, Raynaldo Rivera & Cody Kretsinger came a month after court documents revealed that Anonymous leader "Sabu," whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, turned traitor to his community and became FBI informer and provided all the information on fellow hackers.

-Source (Reuters & Yahoo) 

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'Scribd' World's Largest Document Sharing Website Admits Security Breach

'Scribd' World's Largest Document Sharing Website Admits Security Breach 

Scribd- San Francisco-based document sharing site have fallen victim of cyber attack. Such kind of massacre is no doubt very much shameful for one of the world largest document sharing website which have more than 100 million of registered user. Like other largest companies, Scribd acknowledged the attack. In their official security announcement the company said that the operations team of Scribd have discovered and blocked suspicious activity on Scribd's network that appears to have been a deliberate attempt to access the email addresses and passwords of registered Scribd users. But the matter of relief is that only the 1% of its registered users have been affected during the hack. Immediately after this intrusion get spotted Scribd security team have emailed every user whose password was potentially compromised with details of the situation and instructions for resetting their password.  So, if you are a Scribd user and you did not receive such email from Scribd, then you are most likely unaffected.  If you still wish to check, you can use this web tool to determine if your account was among those affected. From the official announcement of Scribd, we came to know that the inertial investigation have already take place, which indicates that no content, payment and sales-related data, or other information were accessed or compromised. It has been  believed that the information accessed by the hackers was limited to general user information, which includes usernames, emails, and encrypted passwords.  Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Scribd are encrypted (in technical terms, they are salted and hashed). Most of the users were therefore unaffected by this; however, the analysis shows that a small percentage may have had their passwords compromised. In an abundance of caution, it has been highly recommended for those affected users to reset their password and to change their password on any other services they might have used it on. 

At conclusion of the note, Scribd team did serious apology to its users while saying -"we would like to sincerely apologize for our failure to live up to our users' expectations in this instance. We’re incredibly disappointed that this happened and are committed to doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again. We will work harder than ever to ensure that we deserve the trust that our users place in us." 

While talking about big cyber attacks against large companies we would like to remind you in the last year we have been a slew of attacks against the following sites: Guild Wars 2, Gamigo, Blizzard, Yahoo, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Formspring, Android Forums, Gamigo,  Nvidia,Blizzard, Philips, Zynga, VMWare, Adobe,  Twitter  New York Times, Apple and so on. 

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NBC.com Compromised, Hackers Exploited The Website to Spread Malware

NBC.com Compromised, Hackers Exploited The Website to Spread Malware

The month of February is still going from bad to worse for the cyber domain, in this very month cyber criminals swallowed the security system of many giant companies like Facebook, Twitter, Apple, New York Times and many more. But the game is not over yet, as we have just passed a few weeks, when the attack on NY Times took place, which stolen the employ database; yet again the cyber criminals have targeted another media giant National Broadcasting Company widely known as NBC. During the attack, hackers have successfully gain access inside the server of NBC and planted malware, in order to harm innocent readers. Famous security expert and blogger Brian Krebs said that the hackers inserted code into the NBC.com homepage. This caused visiting browsers to load pages from third-party sites that were compromised. While explaining the nature of the attacker, Krebs said; "The compromised sites tried to foist the Citadel Trojan, a variant of the Zeus Trojan." The Zeus is a "sophisticated data theft tool that steals passwords and allows attackers to control machines remotely" he added. Not only the NBC’s home page, also several others were affected, including the pages of late night talk show hosts Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon. Well known security firm Sophos explained how roughly attack played out, and how NBC got sucked into the equation:

• NBC's hacked pages were altered to add some malicious JavaScript that ran in your browser.
• The JavaScript injected an additional HTML component known as an IFRAME (inline frame) into the web page.
• The IFRAME sucked in further malicious content from websites infected with an exploit kit known as RedKit.
• The exploit kit delivered one of two exploit files to try to take control over your browser via a Java vulnerability or a PDF bug.
• If the exploit worked on your computer, financially-related crimeware from the Citadel or ZeroAccess families was installed.

This, of course, is an example of a dreaded drive-by download, where the crooks use a cascade of tricks to download, install and execute software without going through any of the warnings or confirmation dialog you might expect. This, in turn, means that even if you are a careful and well-informed user, you may end up in trouble, since there are no obvious signs that you are doing anything risky, or even unexpected.

As soon as this story get spotted the American commercial broadcasting television network, NBC News reported and confirmed that its site had been attacked. The broadcaster released the following statement regarding the website: "We've identified the problem and are working to resolve it. No user information has been compromised."

The emergency response team immediately take the situation under control and restored the website, and confirmed that the site is back again and completely safe for its visitors. But so far there is no evidence of attackers who were involved in this attack. For the safety of VOGH readers we would like to recommend you to update your operating systems and browser plugins. Also note that the attack on NBC was similar to many that have occurred in recent years in that the malicious sites tried to exploit vulnerabilities in Java. So it will better to disable Java, unless it is that much necessary. So stay tuned with VOGH and be safe in the cyber domain. 

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Chinese Hackers Breached New York Times & Stolen Employee's Password

Chinese Hackers Breached New York Times & Stolen Employee's Password 

Yet again the story of cyber espionage by Chinese hackers spotted in the wild, when the famous and one of the most popular American news daily reported that their system has been compromised by a round of sophisticated cyber attack generated from China. After the hack of White House unclassified network, it is the second time in last six month; when Chinese hackers have targeted the American cyber space. The New York Times has reported that for the last four months Chinese hackers have been infiltrating its networks, broken into the email accounts of senior staff, stolen the corporate passwords for every Times employee and used those to gain access to the personal computers of  more than 50 employees. 

According to a blog post of NYT - The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings. Security experts hired by The Times to detect and block the computer attacks gathered digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times’s network. They broke into the e-mail accounts of its Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, who wrote the reports on Mr. Wen’s relatives, and Jim Yardley, The Times’s South Asia bureau chief in India, who previously worked as bureau chief in Beijing. 

“Computer security experts found no evidence that sensitive e-mails or files from the reporting of our articles about the Wen family were accessed, downloaded or copied,” said Jill Abramson, executive editor of The Times. The hackers tried to cloak the source of the attacks on The Times by first penetrating computers at United States universities and routing the attacks through them, said computer security experts at Mandiant, the company hired by The Times. This matches the subterfuge used in many other attacks that Mandiant has tracked to China.

Cyber Espionage of China (2011-2012) at a Glance:-

While talking about this cyber attack, we would like to refresh your memory last two years, where the scenario of big cyber attack and espionage by Chinese hackers have been spotted several times. In 2012 Chinese hackers had  breached Telvent's corporate network & gained control of US Power Grid. Also in the middle of last year, we have seen that Chinese hackers have broken into Indian Navy's Computer System & stolen sensitive data. Few months before this hack, Tokyo based computer security firm Trend Micro confirmed that Chinese hackers were responsible for biggest cyber-espionage in India, Japan & Tibet. Also the director of National Security Agency (NSA) General Keith Alexander confirmed that hackers from China was responsible for the serious attack on one of the leading IT security & cyber security company RSA. Also in 2011 China was responsible behind the attack on US Chamber of Commerce, Satellite System of U.S, Nortel Network & so on.  But few days ago National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC), China's primary computer security monitoring network claimed that China fallen victim of one of biggest cyber attacks originated from US, Japan & South Korea. We must have to say that this statement is truly irrelevant. Cyber crime investigator have found that China was directly responsible for the hack into Japan's Biggest Defense Contractor Mitsubishi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) & Parliament of Japan. In case of South Korea  more than 13 Million of MapleStory players data has been stolen, there also hackers from China was responsible. 

All those above stories it has been clearly identified that China was the point of those said attacks, but it doesn't necessarily prove that it the operation is backed by the Chinese government or intelligence services. It could just as easily be a patriotic group of skilled, independent Chinese hackers upset with how the Western media is portraying their country's rulers. For all kind of cyber related topics and expert reviews on those matters just stay tuned  with only VOGH. 

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Hacker Breached Verizon Server & Stolen 3 Million Customer Data

Hacker Breached Verizon Server & Stolen 3 Million Customer Data

Verizon one of the most popular and largest Network provider and ISP of America faced a large scale cyber attack. A hacker going by the name of TibitXimer claimed to have breached one of major server of Verizon, by which he managed to gain access inside the database of Verizon customer. This data breach effected more than 3 Million Verizon FiOS customers including full names, addresses, mobile serial numbers, the opening date of each account, and account passwords. However, he said that figure was an estimate and had "no clue" exactly how many records there were, and that it was a "low estimate based on the size of one record and the size of all the files." A fraction of leaked data have been allegedly posted on pastebin, but later the post was removed. In a report Zdnet said that the cyber attack was taken place earlier in July, this year which allowed him to gain root access to the server holding the customer data. Tibit gained access to a server with little difficulty after working with another hacker to identify the security flaw. Though Tibit denied to mention the reason of this hack, and also he did not expose the nature of the vulnerability by which he managed to get access in the server. The hacker also said that after he informed Verizon of the exploit, the company "ignored my report," and did not comment. 

 He also noted that the exploit "still exists." "The worst part of it all, every single record was in plain text," he said. "I did not have to decrypt anything." He said he couldn't understand "why they still haven't fixed the exploits," months after informing the company of its poor network security.

Immediately after this hack Verizon authorities posted a notice while saying- "This incident was reported to the authorities when we first learned of it months ago and an investigation was launched. Many of the details surrounding this incident are incorrect and exaggerated. No Verizon systems were breached, no root access was gained, and this incident impacted a fraction of the number of individuals being reported. We take any and all attempts to violate consumer and customer privacy and security very seriously, so we notified individuals who could potentially have been impacted and took immediate steps to safeguard their information and privacy. Verizon has also notified law enforcement of this recent report as a follow-up to the original case.

....

There was no hack, and no access gained. A third party marketing firm made a mistake and information was copied. As for wireless v. wired customers, some of the individuals listed were Verizon customers who are not wireless customers but wired/wireline customers or prospective customers...."

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White House Unclassified Network Hacked By Chinese Hackers Using Spear Phishing

White House Unclassified Network Hacked By Chinese Hackers Using Spear Phishing

Another cyber espionage generated from China targeted the White House. U.S. government computers reportedly including systems used by the military for nuclear commands were breached by Chinese hackers. The White House it self confirmed the breach, while saying that hackers indeed made an attempt to infiltrate its computer system, but says it thwarted the effort and that no classified networks were threatened. Also the security breach did not appear to have stolen any data. White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters the White House is equipped with mitigation measures that identified the attack, isolated it and prevented its spread. He said there was no indication that any data was removed. “There are distinctions between those networks that contain classified information and those that don’t, and the attack was against an unclassified network,” Carney said. 

The hackers breached the network by using a technique known as spear phishing, in which they target victims who have access to sensitive computer networks by sending personalized emails that appear to come from trusted sources. Once the victims click on the bogus attachment or link, the hackers can install malicious software on the PCs to spy on users and steal data.  A law enforcement official who works with members of the White House Military Office confirmed the Chinese attack to press on Monday, but it remains unclear what information, if any, was taken or left behind. But still The White House officially did not say whether the recent attack was linked to China or not. 

"This [White House Communications Agency] guy opened an email he wasn't supposed to open," the source said. That email contained a spear phishing attack from a computer server in China, the law enforcement source told the press. The attack was first reported by the conservative blog Free Beacon. Spear phishing involves the use of messages disguised to appear as valid; in fact, they contain targeted, malicious attempts to access sensitive or confidential information. 

While talking about this breach, we would like to remind you that just few days ago Chinese hackers breached Telvent's corporate network & gained control of US Power Grid. Couple of months ago we have seen that Chinese hackers have broken into Indian Navy's Computer System & stolen sensitive data. Few months before this hack, Tokyo based computer security firm Trend Micro confirmed that Chinese hackers were responsible for biggest cyber-espionage in India, Japan & Tibet. Also the director of National Security Agency (NSA) General Keith Alexander confirmed that hackers from China was responsible for the serious attack on one of the leading IT security & cyber security company RSA. Also in 2011 China was responsible behind the attack on US Chamber of Commerce, Satellite System of U.S, Nortel Network & so on.  But few days ago National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC), China's primary computer security monitoring network claimed that China fallen victim of one of biggest cyber attacks originated from US, Japan & South Korea. We must have to say that this statement is truly irrelevant. Cyber crime investigator have found that China was directly responsible for the hack into Japan's Biggest Defense Contractor Mitsubishi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) & Parliament of Japan. In case of South Korea  more than 13 Million of MapleStory players data has been stolen, there also hackers from China was responsible. 

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Hackers Breached Adobe Server in Order to Compromise Certificate to Sign malware

Hackers Breached Adobe Server in Order to Compromise Certificate to Sign malware

Few advanced hackers have managed to break into an internal server at Adobe to compromise a digital certificate that allowed them to create at least two files that appear to be legitimately signed by the software maker, but actually contain malware. This security breach took place on Thursday and the software giant Adobe confirmed that the attackers signed at least two malicious utility programs with the valid Adobe certificate. The company traced the problem to a compromised build server that had the ability to get code approved from the company’s code-signing system. As a result of the breach, which appears to date back to early July, Adobe on Oct. 4 expects to revoke the compromised certificate that was used to sign the malicious files. According to Brad Arkin, senior director of product security and privacy for Adobe “This only affects the Adobe software signed with the impacted certificate that runs on the Windows platform and three Adobe AIR applications that run on both Windows and Macintosh,” 

Arkin wrote. “The revocation does not impact any other Adobe software for Macintosh or other platforms.” The company uncovered the breach after coming across two malicious "utilities" that appeared to be digitally signed with a valid Adobe cert. It is unclear how or whether those files were used in the wild to target anyone. "Sophisticated threat actors use malicious utilities like the signed samples during highly targeted attacks for privilege escalation and lateral movement within an environment following an initial machine compromise," Arkin wrote

In another blog posted by Arkin, he said that, generally speaking, most Adobe users won't be affected. "Is your Adobe software vulnerable because of this issue?" he wrote. "No". This issue has no impact on the security of your genuine Adobe software. Are there other security risks to you? We have strong reason to believe that this issue does not present a general security risk. The evidence we have seen has been limited to a single isolated discovery of two malicious utilities signed using the certificate and indicates that the certificate was not used to sign widespread malware."

The "build" server that was compromised was not configured according to Adobe's corporate standards, but that shortfall wasn't caught during the provisioning process, Arkin said. He added that the affected server did not provide the adversaries with access to any source code for other products, such as the popular Flash Player and Adobe Reader and Acrobat software. 

Here we would like to give you reminder that in the last few months we have been a slew of attacks against the following sites: Guild Wars 2, Gamigo, Blizzard, Yahoo, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Formspring, Android Forums, Gamigo,  Nvidia,Blizzard and  Philips. And after this breach Adobe also enlisted its name among those who was fallen victim to cyber criminals in this year. For all the latest on cyber security and hacking related stories; stay tuned with VOGH. 

UPDATE: Recently we got an update, where Adobe denies the breach. In their later press release an Adobe spokeswoman said the certificate was not actually stolen: "Adobe has stringent security measures in place to protect its code signing infrastructure. The private keys associated with the Adobe code signing certificates were stored in Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) kept in physically secure facilities. We confirmed that the private key associated with the Adobe code signing certificate was not extracted from the HSM."

-Source (Adobe, SC Magazine, WIRED)

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