Security

Microsoft on Friday said it is working on a fix for a vulnerability in the Server Message Block file-sharing protocol in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 Release 2 that could be used to remotely crash a computer.

The software giant had said on Wednesday that it was looking at the bug, discovered by researcher Laurent Gaffié, who published proof-of-concept code on a blog.

"Microsoft is aware of public, detailed exploit code that would cause a system to stop functioning or become unreliable. If exploited, this [denial-of-service] vulnerability would not allow an attacker to take control of, or install malware on, the customer's system but could cause the affected system to stop responding until manually restarted," Dave Forstrom, group manager for public relations at Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, said in a statement. "It is important to note that the default firewall settings on Windows 7 will help block attempts to exploit this issue."

Microsoft is not aware of attacks to exploit the hole at this time, he said.

In an advisory, Microsoft criticized the way Gaffié handled the discovery.

"Microsoft is concerned that this new report of a vulnerability was not responsibly disclosed, potentially putting computer users at risk," the advisory said. "We continue to encourage responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities."

The advisory suggests that customers block Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, ports 139 and 445 at the firewall, as a workaround until a patch is ready.

RSA FraudAction Research Lab has uncovered the workings behind a recent re-shipping scam in which U.S. residents were used as mules to send goods purchased with stolen credit card numbers overseas.

The operation began a year ago and received applications from more than 1,900 people, though only 33 people were "hired," according to an RSA FraudAction Research Lab blog post on Thursday.

Laptops, iPods, iPhones, Nokia smartphones, digital cameras, Sony PlayStation 3 devices, and DJ equipment were among the items shipped to addresses in Russia and Belarus. RSA estimates that more than $36,000 worth of merchandise was cashed out every month before the scam ended earlier this year.

The operation masqueraded as a company called "Air Parcel Express," and it had an authentic-looking Web site, RSA said. However, there is a legitimate shipping firm with the same name that is completely unassociated with the scam.

The use of unwitting accomplices to re-ship items purchased fraudulently in the U.S. to other countries is not new. However, the degree to which the scammers went in creating the illusion of legitimacy is noteworthy, RSA said.

"They had a really professional, highly executed effort in recruiting the re-shippers, which is fairly novel," said Sean Brady, senior manager of identity protection and verification at RSA. "The average re-shipping campaign is based on e-mail or ads that direct people to a crude location" on the Web, he added.

Here's how the scams work. Criminals get credit card numbers through phishing, Trojan attacks, and hacking databases, like that of Heartland Payment Systems and RBS WorldPay. They use the information to make online purchases of items, typically electronics goods that they can resell at a high profit and typically purchased in the U.S., where they are cheaper.

The criminals recruit U.S. residents to receive and re-ship the goods out. Re-shippers are asked to unpack the item from the merchant's box and put it in a plain box, probably so the boxes face less scrutiny at customs, Brady said.

To find the mules, the criminals advertise on legitimate employment Web sites and on search engines. Usually, the re-shippers don't get paid as promised, RSA said.

"What's interesting is that criminals in Eastern Europe can orchestrate the campaign, recruit in the U.S., and ship to Europe without ever needing to have any level of personal contact" with the re-shippers, Brady said.

More information on how job seekers can detect scams is available from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, as well as Monster.com and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

The Web site for the re-shipping operation (shown here) looked legitimate, RSA says.

(Credit: RSA)

Updated 1:49 p.m. PST to clarify that Gmail issue was fixed and any attack would be theoretically possible but extremely difficult to accomplish.

A lax security policy in Adobe Flash puts visitors to user-generated content sites at risk, says a researcher who has found a technique exploiting the way browsers handle Flash files.

The problem stems from the origin policy of Adobe Flash, Mike Bailey, a senior security researcher at Foreground Security, said in an interview on Wednesday. "Adobe should change the way Flash Player handles the security policy so it doesn't allow arbitrary content to access the application without permission."

By default, Flash Player trusts anything, but it should only trust what is allowed," he said, providing more technical discussion in a blog post.

For example, someone could upload what appears to be a picture to a social-networking site but which is actually a Flash file designed to execute malicious code in the browser when the file is opened. Anyone who views that picture could be compromised, said Mike Murray, chief information security officer at Foreground Security.

Bailey said that as far as he knows the technique has not been used in the wild as an attack, but that a "huge number of sites are vulnerable." (Gmail previously had an issue that could allow for this type of attack, but that has been fixed. Flash payload could "theoretically" still be executed, but it would be incredibly difficult to do, Baily wrote in his post.)

Adobe has known about the issue for a while but says it can't fix it or risk breaking a lot of existing Flash content and applications around the Web, he said.

Administrators make configuration changes to each Web site to mitigate the risk, Bailey said.

Meanwhile, users should disable Flash completely or use NoScript, a browser plug-in that blocks Flash and Java from untrusted sites, he said.

Asked to comment, an Adobe representative provided this statement:

"Generally speaking, by nature, Flash (SWF) content is powerful, active content and should be handled with the same care as other active content technologies, such as JavaScript, to ensure a site's design does not become vulnerable to abuse scenarios. Adobe has always advised that allowing arbitrary uploads or attachments of Flash (SWF) content to trusted domains should not be performed due to potential abuse scenarios, such as the ones outlined by Mike Bailey. Adobe has published several best practice advisories and blog posts for developers and site owners on how to safely host Flash content. For example, our Flash Player security white paper describes our model in great detail."

This screenshot shows an e-mail attachment executed in the context of a Squirrelmail client session, which leads to compromise of the Web-based e-mail account.

(Credit: Foreground Security)

Apple released a security update for its Safari Web browser on Wednesday. Available for Windows and Mac, Safari 4.0.4 plugs what sound like moderate to severe security holes. Unlike competitors Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, Apple doesn't rate the severity of its security fixes.

The security fixes address a wide range of problem points. On both Windows and Mac, parsing maliciously written XML content could have led to a browser crash, using shortcut menu options within a maliciously created Web site could have led to the disclosure of local information, and visiting a maliciously built Web site could have resulted in unexpected actions on other opened Web sites.

For Windows only, viewing a maliciously made image with an embedded color profile that could lead to a browser crash or running arbitrary code is no longer a threat, nor is accessing a maliciously crafted FTP server, which could have led to an unexpected crash, information disclosure, or arbitrary code execution. For Mac only, an exploit that could have allowed e-mail to remotely load audio and video content when loading a remote image has been disabled.

Although it's good practice to update a program whenever a security fix has been released, more transparency from Apple on the matter would pull the company up to competitors' standards.

Click here to read the full changelog for Safari 4.0.4.

Microsoft said on Wednesday it is looking into a report of a vulnerability in Windows 7 and Server 2008 Release 2 that could be used by an attacker to remotely crash the computer.

The company is investigating claims of a "possible denial-of-service vulnerability in Windows Server Message Block (SMB)," the Microsoft spokesperson said, adding that the company was unaware of any attacks trying to exploit the hole.

The bug triggers an infinite loop on the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol used for sharing files in Windows, researcher Laurent Gaffié wrote in a posting on the Full-Disclosure mailing list and on a blog.

"Whatever your firewall is set to, you can get remotely smashed via IE or even via some broadcasting NBNS [NetBIOS Naming Service] tricks," Gaffié wrote.

Gaffié also posted proof-of-concept code for the "Windows 7, Server 2008R2 Remote Kernel Crash."

On Tuesday, Microsoft issued six patches to fix 15 vulnerabilities, including a critical hole in the Windows kernel, as part of November's Patch Tuesday.

The cost benefits of virtualization are well-documented, allowing enterprises to significantly reduce the space and electrical power required to run data centers and streamline the management of an ever-growing number of servers.

Virtualization also provides means for expedient scalability. Given today's economic climate and cost-cutting mandates, it is not surprising that analyst firm Gartner recently predicted that 50 percent of workloads will run inside virtual machines by 2012.

What many organizations fail to understand, according to Amir Ben-Efraim, CEO of virtualization security provider Altor Networks, is that collapsing multiple servers into a single one with several virtual machines inside eliminates all firewall, intrusion detection, and other protections in existence. Physical security measures literally become "blind" to traffic between VMs, since they are no longer in the data path.

This echoes comments made by Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald, who wrote in a recent presentation titled "Securing the Next-Generation Virtual Data Center" (subscription required), that "most virtual machines you deploy will be less secure than the physical systems they replace," and that "virtualization will radically change how you secure and manage computing environments."

VMware recently launched a partner program to help ISVs develop solutions certified as "VMsafe." VMsafe provides API sharing through a secure container, enabling partner companies to access virtual environments. This virtual security technology provides fine-grained visibility over virtual-machine resources, including monitoring every aspect of the system with the ability to address previously undetectable viruses, rootkits, and malware before they can infect a system.

I spoke to Ben-Efraim to better understand the issues around VM security and for what users should be on the lookout. According to him, there are two common approaches that use existing methods to secure virtual-network traffic: using VLANs to separate and control communication between VMs; and taking software-based firewalls and running them as agents on each VM. Unfortunately, both of these approaches fall short.

VLAN segmentation extends the notion of LAN resource segmentation to include VMs. The approach essentially requires that VMs, which can naturally be grouped (i.e. by function or user base), be isolated from other VMs by use of virtual switches and routing (i.e. the human resources VLAN contains HR-serving VMs). However, VLAN segmentation is not a permanent solution to securing environments because of networking complexities, performance degradation, and security limitations of the approach, Ben-Efraim said.

(Credit: U.S. Department of Justice)

A group of Eastern Europeans was charged with hacking into the network of payment processor RBS WorldPay and using counterfeit debit cards at ATMs around the world to steal more than $9 million, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.

Four of the defendants allegedly collaborated to break into the RBS WorldPay network on November 4, 2008, where they got access to the account numbers for prepaid payroll cards used by employees to withdraw salaries from ATMs, according to the indictment from a federal grand jury in Atlanta. The defendants allegedly reverse-engineered the PINs associated with the accounts from the encrypted data on the network.

The defendants then allegedly raised the account limits on the compromised accounts and provided a network of "cashers" with 44 fake debit cards, according to the Justice Department. The cards allegedly were used November 8, 2008, to withdraw money from more than 2,100 ATMs in at least 280 cities, including in North America, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong and Japan, in less than 12 hours.

The cashers were allegedly allowed to keep 30 percent to 50 percent of the stolen money and sent the remainder back to the hackers, according to the 16-count indictment.

"Last November, in just one day, an American credit card processor was hacked in perhaps the most sophisticated and organized computer fraud attack ever conducted," acting U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates of the Northern District of Georgia said in a statement. "Today, almost exactly one year later, the leaders of this attack have been charged. This investigation has broken the back of one of the most sophisticated computer hacking rings in the world."

Indicted on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, computer fraud, access device fraud, and identity theft charges were: Sergei Tsurikov, 25, of Tallinn, Estonia; Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, of St. Petersburg, Russia; Oleg Covelin, 28, of Chisinau, Moldova; and an unidentified defendant known only as "Hacker 3."

The alleged cashers, indicted for access device fraud, are all from Tallinn, Estonia. They are: Igor Grudijev, 31, Ronald Tsoi, 31, Evelin Tsoi, 20, and Mihhail Jevgenov, 33.

Tsurikov, the Tsois and Jevgenov were arrested earlier this year and Tsurikov faces extradition to the U.S., officials said. Two people in Hong Kong have been arrested for allegedly withdrawing funds from ATMs there.

RBS WorldPay, part of Royal Bank of Scotland, is based in Atlanta.

A story recently surfaced saying malware could plant child porn on innocent people's computers without their knowledge. Just how real is this threat? And how can you keep it from happening to you?

Being accused of possessing child pornography can ruin people's reputations, confront them with overwhelming legal bills and, if convicted, and deprive them of their freedom for years if sentenced to prison time, and perhaps for life, if they're required to register as sex offenders.

That is why, at least in part, a recent case outlined by the Associated Press raised concerns over computer viruses being used to plant child pornography on people's computers. But the innocent have little to fear, according to experts.

The AP story reported about the case of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts state employee whose state-owned work computer was found to contain illegal child pornography images. He was fired and charged with possession of child pornography which, had he been convicted, could have landed him in prison for up to five years, according to the AP.

Sexually explicit images of children--who are often being exploited--are not protected by the First Amendment because they may memorialize, celebrate, or encourage sexual crimes against children deemed defenseless victims. Although Fiola avoided a child porn conviction, he reportedly has suffered related indignities, including death threats and friend abandonment. The AP said he and his wife liquidated their savings and spent $250,000 on legal fees.

Ultimately, charges were dropped after Fiola's defense showed that his computer was infected by a virus that was "programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute," something that a human couldn't do, even if he or she tried. Other reports about this case indicate that the antivirus software on Fiola's computer was out of date and therefore was not protecting him against malware.

Could it happen to you?
How likely is a case like Fiola's? If viruses are capable of putting illegal content on people's computers, aren't we all at risk of being arrested for serious crimes we never meant to commit? And if it is possible for this to happen, isn't "the virus did it" claim likely to become the mantra of every defense attorney who represents people accused of possessing child pornography?

To help answer these questions, I spoke with security experts, legal scholars, former prosecutors, and Justice Department officials. The consensus? It is indeed possible for malicious software to plant child pornography--or any other type of file, for that matter--on an innocent person's computer, but being possible doesn't mean it's likely. And forensics experts can detect intention.

"It's quite possible for a malware creator to include child pornography as part of the payload on an infected computer," according to Symantec spokeswoman Marian Merritt, but "such payloads are not typical."

Most malware authors, Merritt said, "are motivated by money, and there's no clear indication as to how planting child porn on an unsuspecting person's computer would help generate money for criminals."

One possible motive for remotely using someone else's computer to store child porn is to make it possible to access the contraband without running the risk of it showing up if your PC is seized or searched. Merritt worries that "this could become a possible use for malware, going forward," but Michael Geraghty, executive director of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Technology Services Division, said that, while possible, it's not an effective way to store child porn and remain undetected.

"If you put the images on someone else's computer, you might not be able to retrieve them when you want them," Geraghty said. He pointed out that the zombie machine storing the data would have to be turned on and connected for the malware sender to access it. If it weren't online, or the files had been deleted, the files wouldn't be there to retrieve.

Another deterrent, of course, is a potential digital trail between your computer and the one you're using to store it. Although there are ways to evade detection, forensic investigators do have ways to trace Internet Protocol addresses to catch people in the act of uploading and downloading material.

"I've never seen it where child porn was intentionally placed on someone's computer because of a virus," Geraghty said. He has, however, seen cases where "someone was redirected to a site where it could have entered the cache." If someone were to go to a legal adult porn site, it's possible that the browser would "open 100 different windows," including some that could contain child porn. "As a result of that, any images on any of these sites would be cached, and there would be a record that you had been there."

But Geraghty said investigators can tell the difference between someone who deliberately downloaded such images and someone who may have inadvertently downloaded perhaps thousands of images because of a virus or misdirected Web site.

Totality of evidence
"A good forensics expert would try to determine how (the images) got on the computer and who was responsible for putting them there," he said. "That would be determined by looking at the totality of the evidence, not just the fact that there were images there."

Things a good investigator would look into include whether the suspect was sitting at the computer at the time the images were downloaded. Was he using the computer to send e-mail or visit other Web sites at the time? "There is always some type of trail we can follow to determine if the person were likely actively involved in the process of downloading the material," Geraghty said.

Another indicator is the time lapse between image downloads. A virus or Trojan horse is likely to download multiple images at a time, sometimes faster than might be humanly possible to do manually. A person who collects child pornography typically acquires it over a period of time, and a forensic investigation of the computer should reveal that.

Phil Malone, a clinical professor at Harvard Law School and director of its Berkman Center Cyberlaw Clinic, agrees that a good forensic investigator should be able to tell the difference between files placed by a virus and ones deliberately downloaded.

"It's the excuse of the moment for defendants," he said. "Lots of child porn defendants try to blame (images found on their computers) on viruses, but it's almost never true. You can actually figure this out. In the handful of cases that have been problematic, it looks as if everyone moved too quickly. The agency discovered material and immediately jumped to conclusions." Malone added that "good, solid forensics would be able to tell in virtually every case."

Malone agreed with Geraghty, of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, that it's fairly common for someone, when viewing adult pornography on a Web site, to inadvertently receive pop-ups that may include images of child porn.

"It's possible to tell if something was opened or saved to a file from the cache," Malone said. Investigators can usually figure out if an image was downloaded intentionally, based on other activity that took place on the computer at the time, he said, adding that it's incumbent on both prosecutors and defense attorneys to launch a thorough investigation that includes analyzing a copy of the hard drive to determine not just which images are stored within, but also how they got there.

Geraghty said it's important to look at other factors. "The computer holds a lot of information about the searches that someone runs. If there were none of those searches and nothing else but some images in the cache, you would question how they got there. You would look for collaborating evidence such as intent to visit the site (and capability) of visiting the site. Did he have knowledge?"

A good investigation will look for exculpatory evidence to see if there are other explanations for the images. That investigation, Geraghty said, should start with making one or more exact copies of the suspect's hard drive and examining those copies to look for evidence of malicious software that could be responsible for the images. Defense attorneys can also gain access to a copy of the drive, but because it may contain illegal child porn images, their experts will probably have to examine the drive at the police station or prosecutor's office; possession of those images--regardless of the reason--is illegal for anyone other than personnel granted immunity.

Burden of proof
"In each case, the prosecution will need to prove (that) the defendant knowingly and intentionally possessed, received, or distributed child pornography," according to Drew Oosterbaan, chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity section of the Justice Department. "The proof starts with establishing that the images involved are child pornography and ends with establishing that the person charged is criminally responsible for it. We prove the latter in myriad ways."

Oosterbaan said that when someone is charged with possessing child pornography on his computer, "the computer is, in many ways, a crime scene, and the forensic examination of that computer is critical to meeting the elements of proof in the prosecution." He added that "it's important to remember that in every case, the government carries the burden of proof."

Oosterbaan said he is not aware of any cases in which botnets were used to plant child porn on other people's computers.

A former federal prosecutor now working for a technology company, who requested anonymity, said this may become a bigger issue as we enter the era of cloud computing, in which more and more data is stored on Internet servers instead of hard drives.

"There is no question that perpetrators are going to look for places to hide their criminal activity, including child porn, because they're increasingly aware that if law enforcement comes to their house, they will see the material," the former prosecutor said, adding that companies in the cloud storage business need to be aware that their systems could be used for illegal purposes. "They should reach out to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to implement a system to compare uploaded files against hash marks (digital fingerprints) of known child porn images."

As with any other security issue, the best defense is to protect your machine against intrusions. This includes:

• Making sure that your operating system and regularly used software are up-to-date.
• Using good software addressing malware, phishing attacks, and/or spam, and keeping it up to date. Subscriptions to paid programs should be renewed.
• Being cautious about spam and about providing information to sites you navigate to from links within even the most legitimate-appearing e-mails.

Disclosure: I serve without compensation as a board member at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which deals with child porn cases. Still, I don't necessarily agree with all NCMEC policies, nor do I speak on behalf of the organization.

Microsoft on Tuesday issued six security bulletins fixing 15 vulnerabilities, including a critical patch for holes in the Windows kernel and other Windows and Office components that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer.

The critical bulletin affecting the Kernel-Mode Drivers was publicly disclosed and could be used to create a Web page with malware designed to exploit the hole on systems that visit the page, Microsoft said in a blog posting.

"MS09-065, a bug in the Windows kernel, is this month's most serious issue," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle. "The vulnerability allows for remote code execution, and the attack code can be embedded inside MS Office files or be hosted on websites. Simply browsing an infected website will compromise unsuspecting users -- not great for all the holiday shoppers looking to get a jump on their shopping. The novelty value of this bug is likely to attract many researchers. A lot of people will try to be the first to publicly post exploit code."

The two other critical bulletins fix holes in Web Services on Devices API and in License Logging Server. Two bulletins ranked "important" fix holes that pose risk of remote code execution if a user opened a maliciously crafted Excel or Word file.

"It is interesting that a new service that helps with the 'user experience' can cause so much harm," said Jason Miller, data and security team leader at Shavlik Technologies. "The WSDAPI service allows users to easily find devices such as printers and cameras on their network. This vulnerability is also not publicly known at this time."

Software affected by the patches includes Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, Office XP, Office 2003, 2007 Microsoft Office System, Office 2004 for Mac, and Office 2008 for Mac, according to the bulletin.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft Malware Protection Center team added two rogue antivirus families to the Malicious Software Removal Tool -- Win32/FakeVimes, which calls itself "Windows System Defender" and "Windows Enterprise Suite," and Win32/PrivacyCenter, which calls itself "Safety Center."