Showing posts with label security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label security. Show all posts

VOGH Exclusive: URL Redirection Vulnerability Found In Facebook

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 1/02/2014 11:10:00 pm

VOGH Exclusive: URL Redirection Vulnerability Found In Facebook [The Vulnerability Still Active & Not Been Patched]
Facebook -the world's largest social networking site with registered users of more than one billion, is considered among one of the safest site of the cyber space. To maintain such reputation Facebook Inc has done all the required steps, that one could possibly take. Like other high profile and very popular websites, Facebook also stand as one of the hot target of almost every cyber criminals of the world. To get rid of this and make FB safe and secure, the company have introduced what it called 'Bug Bounty' offer; where you can submit vulnerabilities to FB and get rewarded. We have seen many security researchers and hackers across the globe has done this and get their award. But not every time, and today I will talk about that- few days ago a reader of VOGH, who also goes by the nick name of 'Dr41DeY' has figured out a URL redirection vulnerability in Facebook. One of the link in Facebook App which is apps.facebook.com is posing URL redirection vulnerability. The hacker has demonstrated how any one can use  the vulnerability  in order to manipulate millions of innocent Facebook users. Let see  

Before publishing this, one of our VOGH representative have talked with Facebook Security regarding this security vulnerability, but due to some reason FB might overlooked this issue. Finally after waiting for almost a week, we the Team VOGH decided to bring this in-front of our reader. Let briefly go through with the vulnerable link- 

https://apps.facebook.com/a.php?u=http://www.voiceofgreyhat.com&mac=AQLy7nyXi5NBt31j&__tn__=*B&eid=AQLpbizR7KEf3cyD0VTN7fNtv99fMZABDp2gdWhvL-MQocJIPy3w4hUG7_7hrmSMqDq7QLCI9k_0LbB95NEz_6GUDHGNgTDsGP_rX-VWRHxfg5a--VlnN1K9FdG3NAek8r2JPWENkb2Mu56EckbZCGXcPie27OnHxE-H7MBufQel0Pr-ZjpCWB6QF5xHeWsdKqyHzjK2woBGGrjk9Dlgnzcw3d9ZWPzrwbGpm6MSkpks3mqEphXnTP2Vd9UDQxIs68NnTaO35XIwKq5t3CSdb11iU_34gzjfLgvvDo_BYbgtrGe0Juc5CpRSwd5nImw9oPPvn6Za9rrxO_ivROtOGc2b2S3bYzNLWpbDwt3cFN2rJ3JElyIR0vjB4R859PpE9SrZx6AD3s_liikzPh30YLVb8XvPABk7r9MShk6OrVFPiAWZnEvPx49UzPDSF-nEl188rEPAi0KGJ4u1zb10hhzmHUCjH04SezDByUkyNituMb2lgiQz-Xlpgy_tkVYR-U7plDa38N9VzdAj_Bwefd7B85ykZCAy9ZQOt48Ql8KQeKfivk3sThZIkLwWPiju7R28Sw6bj09vS_Y28kFSqanGe9tYAPfKIe4zOzQt9-Q1CC_EwX3ypOlyQ2yXMiU3lwp7M9EriKHRFDsTgsuzzF-uvlpx3UrWh8M55-NX0ULjr4kxjAR5g_1wU-luUyn_Ot6Ly1_ZbBdahyb5uSmCDNvF5kMuIH8Gxvpql45dNffGzKau9oZGn6r1OmsG47JIGipznCVaZnWjXAakDnEMX6X8ZtI-M-db1olzbBpJdj5sZe-x2VM02S5XsXJWe_QLxFDOupjbz8I82HETHQ9PbzSIMsJboll4E3-f_JQFfdzwEguLa8SC_ImRahWBCwKNJeSlmRv91FqWpQaChe5-UyAoqcblvK4jPuRO3qC7o-qMTQ2jEJqqUW46koulOmgNJpMYXPgRxjNGcwjyTPS59Nr08zq6eCNd1aYLh2E4s5MYXBtVUTF8l0uhQ2wYSoR66xZsI2tK0DD1KiQHyTO1QieBwPtCN3eWgRzUTg3lM3ttkuwYKRPPLDvtUOPWmZhYUzUFcbfPM2kXdpqyGlrGx9-ErKGygYKATx2xzrTzktjgW4q0L5wfO3CSKAOCAoKfi_pfz-zIHSNE8ZAjZDtpbC_chgkvbHWJYYIs7pnE1riWJYORACjkkRr6nZoivC3z_g-8JBahghwy2C34kJYZJ6cBC8LKoB6KCTbj_F1tArQAzcSUij4vrJNUATzsdlO_ol6HwUQb8FjoWa38Bhtx81stxB328sgC9IGu1omPG0QeNJVhcJwh6HyEwtgycBLrlcdedaWbkwvnjv3F3BWuJIi763nBeYuAgNUaEUYHaXu_ZJzXW8fQ72nz_hddGT_GH50&sig=89099

Replace voiceofgreyhat.com with any of your favorite site, and the the said vulnerability will allow you to get redirected to that very website you want to from Facebook. This loophole is still active, and any one can test that with the above url, we thought the impact of this loophole is very serious, as any malicious attacker can misuse the trust-hod of Facebook's url in order to harm regular internet users, while redirecting them to any junk or malfunctional websites.

Disclaimer:- Earlier I told that the issue has already brought into the notice of Facebook Security, but they overlooked the whole issue, so being a responsible cyber media, we VOGH are disclosing this to people. If any one misuse this vulnerability, then Voiceofgreyhat will not at all be responsible for any kind of mishap.

Update:- May be doing more that what we call late repent, but finally the above disclosed vulnerability has been patched by Facebook security team. 


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Microsoft Along With FBI & EC3 Shattered The Notorious ZeroAccess Botnet

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 12/08/2013 01:14:00 am

Microsoft Along With FBI & EC3 Shattered The Notorious ZeroAccess Botnet Responsible For Infecting More Than 2 Million Computers
Redmond based software giant Microsoft yet again got a huge success against a big racket of cyber criminals while shattering one of the world's largest and most rampant botnets named 'ZeroAccess'. The Sirefef botnet, also known as ZeroAccess, is responsible for infecting more than 2 million computers, specifically targeting search results on Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines, and is estimated to cost online advertisers $2.7 million each month. Tech giant Microsoft working alongside the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) have successfully disrupted this notorious botnet. This is Microsoft’s first botnet action since the Nov. 14 unveiling of its new Cybercrime Center — a center of excellence for advancing the global fight against cyber crime — and marks the company’s eighth botnet operation in the past three years.

“This operation marks an important step in coordinated actions that are initiated by private companies and, at the same time, enable law enforcement agencies around Europe to identify and investigate the criminal organizations and networks behind these dangerous botnets that use malicious software to gain illicit profits,” said Troels Oerting, head of the EC3. “EC3 added its expertise, information communications technology infrastructure and analytic capability, as well as provided the platform for high-level cooperation between cyber crime units in five European countries and Microsoft.”
Due to its botnet architecture, ZeroAccess is one of the most robust and durable botnets in operation today and was built to be resilient to disruption efforts, relying on a peer-to-peer infrastructure that allows cyber criminals to remotely control the botnet from tens of thousands of different computers. ZeroAccess is used to commit a slew of crimes, including search hijacking, which “hijacks” people’s search results and redirects people to sites they had not intended or requested to go to in order to steal the money generated by their ad clicks. ZeroAccess also commits click fraud, which occurs when advertisers pay for clicks that are not the result of legitimate, interested human users’ clicks, but are the result of automated Web traffic and other criminal activity. Research by the University of California, San Diego shows that as of October 2013, 1.9 million computers were infected with ZeroAccess, and Microsoft determined there were more than 800,000 ZeroAccess-infected computers active on the Internet on any given day.



How It Happened:- 
Last week, Microsoft filed a civil suit against the cyber criminals operating the ZeroAccess botnet and received authorization from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to simultaneously block incoming and outgoing communications between computers located in the U.S. and the 18 identified Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being used to commit the fraudulent schemes. In addition, Microsoft took over control of 49 domains associated with the ZeroAccess botnet. A10 Networks provided Microsoft with advanced technology to support the disruptive action.
As Microsoft executed the order filed in its civil case, Europol coordinated a multijurisdictional criminal action targeting the 18 IP addresses located in Europe. Specifically, Europol worked with Latvia, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany to execute search warrants and seizures on computer servers associated with the fraudulent IP addresses located in Europe. This is the second time in six months that Microsoft and law enforcement have worked together to successfully disrupt a prevalent botnet. It demonstrates the value coordinated operations have against cyber criminal enterprises. For more information about this botnet operation click here

ZeroAccess is counted as a very sophisticated malware, blocking attempts to remove it, therefore recommended for every Microsoft user to click Here for detailed instructions on how to remove this threat. As Microsoft found that the ZeroAccess malware disables security features on infected computers, leaving the computer susceptible to secondary infections, it is critical that victims rid their computers of ZeroAccess by using malware removal or antivirus software as quickly as possible. 
In conversation with press David Finn, executive director and associate general counsel of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit said -“Microsoft is committed to working collaboratively — with our customers, partners, academic experts and law enforcement — to combat cybercrime. And we’ll do everything we can to protect computer users from the sinister activities and criminal networks that victimize innocent people and businesses around the world.” 

While talking about ZeroAccess botnet take down, I would like to remind you that in Match, last year Microsoft has successfully shutdown two command and control (C&C) server of world's of the most dangerous banking trojan Zeus.


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Twitter & Yahoo Tightening Their Security to Prevent Eavesdropping of NSA

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 11/30/2013 03:33:00 am

Twitter & Yahoo Tightening Their Security to Prevent Eavesdropping of NSA & Other Govt Agencies 
Last month a untold and sensational story came to light, when the whistle blowers Edward Snowden unveiled one of the top secret program of NSA called called “Muscular” Former NSA contractor Snowden himself disclosed that the National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world in order to collect and snoop the private data of millions of internet users. NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video. Both Yahoo & Google said that they had never gave access to nay Govt agency to their data centers. Yahoo spokeswoman said, “We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.” Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond said “We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform,” 

 But the matter of fact is that NSA has indeed sniffed the personal & private communication of million internet users of tech giants like Yahoo and Google. To get rid of this kind of privacy breach, now the tech giants who hold the personal record and credential of mass, are tightening and enhancing their existing security system. According to Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo "We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it." Yahoo also says it will encrypt all information moving between its data centers by the end of the first quarter, and it will work on getting international partners to enable HTTPS encryption in Yahoo-branded Mail services.Yahoo says it will give users an option to encrypt all data flow to and from Yahoo. "Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency ever. There is nothing more important to us than protecting our users’ privacy. To that end, we recently announced that we will make Yahoo Mail even more secure by introducing https (SSL - Secure Sockets Layer) encryption with a 2048-bit key across our network by January 8, 2014." added Marissa Mayer.

Not only Yahoo, but the social networking giant Twitter, who have registered users of almost 550 million with an active user of 250 million across the globe has also taken immediate steps after this breathtaking story of spying by NSA get the spot light. Twitter is implementing new security measures that should make it much more difficult for anyone to eavesdrop on communications between its servers and users. The entire security mechanism has been taken to tighten the data privacy of its users. According to a blog post of twitter the company has implemented "perfect forward secrecy" on its Web and mobile platforms, which made eavesdropping almost impossible. "As part of our continuing effort to keep our users’ information as secure as possible, we’re happy to announce that we recently enabled forward secrecy for traffic on twitter.com, api.twitter.com, and mobile.twitter.com. On top of the usual confidentiality and integrity properties of HTTPS, forward secrecy adds a new property. If an adversary is currently recording all Twitter users’ encrypted traffic, and they later crack or steal Twitter’s private keys, they should not be able to use those keys to decrypt the recorded traffic." -said the blog post.

While talking about Muscular program of NSA, we would also like to remind you that couple weeks ago we came to know about 'Royal Concierge' another secret program of GCHQ & NSA to spy foreign diplomats through hotel bookings uncovered by Edward Snowden.

-Source (CIO & PC World) 


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'Kali Linux' The Most Advanced & Stable Penetration Testing Distribution

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 3/15/2013 12:49:00 am

From The Makers of BackTrack We Got 'Kali Linux' The Most Advanced & Stable Penetration Testing Distribution 

Fans of world famous penetration testing distribution 'BackTrack' can now taste another flavor as the developer at BackTrack and Offensive Security has introduced a new Linux distribution targets enterprise security, offering a suite of helpful tools for rigorous testing calling it "Kali Linux." In the official release note Offensive-Security claimed that Kali Linux is the most advanced, robust, and stable penetration testing distribution to date. From that note we also came to know that this new distribution is a product of seven years long knowledge and experience which make Kali Linux the “next generation” penetration testing distribution. Now lets look at the main features of Kali Linux at a glance: 

Kali Linux Features:-

Kali is a complete re-build of BackTrack Linux, adhering completely to Debian development standards. All-new infrastructure has been put in place, all tools were reviewed and packaged, and we use Git for our VCS.
  • More than 300 penetration testing tools: After reviewing every tool that was included in BackTrack, we eliminated a great number of tools that either did not work or had other tools available that provided similar functionality.
  • Free and always will be: Kali Linux, like its predecessor, is completely free and always will be. You will never, ever have to pay for Kali Linux.
  • Open source Git tree: We are huge proponents of open source software and ourdevelopment tree is available for all to see and all sources are available for those who wish to tweak and rebuild packages.
  • FHS compliant: Kali has been developed to adhere to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, allowing all Linux users to easily locate binaries, support files, libraries, etc.
  • Vast wireless device support: We have built Kali Linux to support as many wireless devices as we possibly can, allowing it to run properly on a wide variety of hardware and making it compatible with numerous USB and other wireless devices.
  • Custom kernel patched for injection: As penetration testers, the development team often needs to do wireless assessments so our kernel has the latest injection patches included.
  • Secure development environment: The Kali Linux team is made up of a small group of trusted individuals who can only commit packages and interact with the repositories while using multiple secure protocols.
  • GPG signed packages and repos: All Kali packages are signed by each individual developer when they are built and committed and the repositories subsequently sign the packages as well.
  • Multi-language: Although pentesting tools tend to be written in English, we have ensured that Kali has true multilingual support, allowing more users to operate in their native language and locate the tools they need for the job.
  • Completely customizable: We completely understand that not everyone will agree with our design decisions so we have made it as easy as possible for our more adventurous users tocustomize Kali Linux to their liking, all the way down to the kernel.
  • ARMEL and ARMHF support: Since ARM-based systems are becoming more and more prevalent and inexpensive, we knew that Kali’s ARM support would need to be as robust as we could manage, resulting in working installations for both ARMEL and ARMHF systems. Kali Linux has ARM repositories integrated with the mainline distribution so tools for ARM will be updated in conjunction with the rest of the distribution. Kali is currently available for the following ARM devices:
Kali is specifically tailored to penetration testing and therefore, all documentation on this site assumes prior knowledge of the Linux operating system. For more information, I would like to request you to visit the official website of Kali Linux. 




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NSA Refused to Disclose Obama's Secret Cyber Security Directive

Posted by Avik Sarkar On 11/27/2012 12:33:00 am

NSA Refused to Disclose Obama's Secret Cyber Security Directive

The cyber security directive of United States President Barack Obama has been twisted a little as the National Security Agency (NSA) has refused to release details of a secret presidential directive document that would establish a broader set of standards that would guide federal agencies in confronting Cyber threats. Several experts are presuming that the cyber security directive could allow the military and intelligence agencies to operate on the networks of private companies, such as Google and Facebook. According to the last week report by Washington Post, cited several U.S. officials saying that Obama signed off on the secret cyber security order, believed to widely expand NSA’s spying authorities, in mid-October. “The new directive is the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an “offensive” and a “defensive” action in the rapidly evolving world of cyber war and cyber terrorism,” the report states.  
The Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to make the document public because it said the measure could expand NSA’s Cyber security authority. “Transparency is crucial to the public’s ability to monitor the government’s national security efforts and ensure that federal agencies respect privacy rights and comply with their obligations under the Privacy Act,” said EPIC’s request.
EPIC said that NSA denied the request on Nov. 21 arguing that it doesn’t have to release the document because it is a confidential presidential communication and contains information that is classified “Secret” and “Top Secret” by the agency. NSA said disclosure of the order could “reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” The agency said EPIC could file an appeal with the NSA/Central Security Service denial and EPIC said it plans to do so. The privacy group said it is litigating similar FOIA requests with NSA, including the release of NSPD 54, a 2008 presidential directive setting out the NSA’s cyber security authority. The group called NSA a “black hole for public information about cyber security” in an official statement to Congress earlier this year. National Security Agency whistle blower William Binney said in Mid July that the U.S. government is secretly gathering information “about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country”, in “a very dangerous process” that violates Americans’ privacy.
Former President George W. Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor without a warrant the international (and sometimes domestic) telephone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds or thousands of citizens and legal residents inside the United States. The program eventually came to include some purely internal controls -- but no requirement that warrants be obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and the foreign intelligence surveillance laws require.



-Source (GSN Magazine & Press TV)





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