Internet of Things | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

An updated version of a botnet malware called  KmsdBot  is now targeting Internet of Things (IoT) devices, simultaneously branching out its capabilities and the attack surface. "The binary now includes support for  Telnet scanning  and support for more CPU architectures," Akamai security researcher Larry W. Cashdollar  said  in an analysis published this month. The latest iteration, observed since July 16, 2023, comes months after it emerged that the botnet is being offered as a  DDoS-for-hire service  to other threat actors. The fact that it's being actively maintained indicates its effectiveness in real-world attacks. KmsdBot was  first documented  by the web infrastructure and security company in November 2022. It's mainly employed to target private gaming servers and cloud hosting providers, although it has since set its eyes on some Romanian government and Spanish educational sites. The malware is designed to scan random IP addresses for open SSH ports and

Internet-facing Linux systems and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are being targeted as part of a new campaign designed to illicitly mine cryptocurrency. "The threat actors behind the attack use a backdoor that deploys a wide array of tools and components such as rootkits and an IRC bot to steal device resources for mining operations," Microsoft threat intelligence researcher Rotem Sde-Or  said . "The backdoor also installs a patched version of OpenSSH on affected devices, allowing threat actors to hijack SSH credentials, move laterally within the network, and conceal malicious SSH connections." To pull off the scheme, misconfigured Linux hosts are brute-forced to gain initial access, following which the threat actors move to disable shell history and fetch a trojanized version of OpenSSH from a remote server. The rogue OpenSSH package is configured to install and launch the backdoor, a shell script that allows the attackers to distribute additional payloads a

If forecasters are right, over the course of today, consumers will spend  $13.7 billion . Just about every click, sale, and engagement will be captured by a CRM platform. Inventory applications will trigger automated re-orders; communication tools will send automated email and text messages confirming sales and sharing shipping information.  SaaS applications supporting retail efforts will host nearly all of this behind-the-scenes activity. While retailers are rightfully focused on sales during this time of year, they need to ensure that the SaaS apps supporting their business operations are secure. No one wants a repeat of one of the biggest retail cyber-snafus in history, like when one U.S.-based national retailer had 40 million credit card records stolen.  The attack surface is vast and retailers must remain vigilant in protecting their entire SaaS app stack. For example, many often use multiple instances of the same application. They may use a different Salesforce tenant for eve

The second generation version of Belkin's Wemo Mini Smart Plug has been found to contain a buffer overflow vulnerability that could be weaponized by a threat actor to inject arbitrary commands remotely. The issue, assigned the identifier  CVE-2023-27217 , was discovered and reported to Belkin on January 9, 2023, by Israeli IoT security company Sternum , which reverse-engineered the device and gained firmware access. Wemo Mini Smart Plug V2 ( F7C063 ) offers convenient remote control, allowing users to turn electronic devices on or off using a companion app installed on a smartphone or tablet. The heart of the problem lies in a feature that makes it possible to rename the smart plug to a more " FriendlyName ." The default name assigned is " Wemo mini 6E9 ." "The name length is limited to 30 characters or less, but this rule is only enforced by the app itself," security researchers Amit Serper and Reuven Yakar  said  in a report shared with The Hac

Researchers are warning about a spike in exploitation attempts weaponizing a now-patched critical remote code execution flaw in Realtek Jungle SDK since the start of August 2022. According to Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, the ongoing campaign is said to have recorded 134 million exploit attempts as of December 2022, with 97% of the attacks occurring in the past four months. Close to 50% of the attacks originated from the U.S. (48.3%), followed by Vietnam (17.8%), Russia (14.6%), The Netherlands (7.4%), France (6.4%), Germany (2.3%0, and Luxembourg (1.6%). What's more, 95% of the attacks leveraging the security shortcoming that emanated from Russia singled out organizations in Australia. "Many of the attacks we observed tried to deliver malware to infect vulnerable IoT devices," Unit 42 researchers  said  in a report, adding "threat groups are using this vulnerability to carry out large-scale attacks on smart devices around the world." The vulnerability in q

NOTE: In this blog, Zerobot refers to a botnet that spreads primarily through IoT and web application vulnerabilities. It is not associated with the chatbot ZeroBot.ai. A novel Go-based botnet called  Zerobot  has been observed in the wild proliferating by taking advantage of nearly two dozen security vulnerabilities in the internet of things (IoT) devices and other software. The botnet "contains several modules, including self-replication, attacks for different protocols, and self-propagation," Fortinet FortiGuard Labs researcher Cara Lin  said . "It also communicates with its command-and-control server using the WebSocket protocol." The campaign, which is said to have commenced after November 18, 2022, primarily singles out Windows and Linux operating systems to gain control of vulnerable devices. Zerobot gets its name from a propagation script that's used to retrieve the malicious payload after gaining access to a host depending on its microarchitecture

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a security vulnerability that exposes cars from Honda, Nissan, Infiniti, and Acura to remote attacks through a connected vehicle service provided by SiriusXM. The issue could be exploited to unlock, start, locate, and honk any car in an unauthorized manner just by knowing the vehicle's vehicle identification number (VIN), researcher Sam Curry said in a  Twitter thread  last week. SiriusXM's Connected Vehicles (CV) Services are  said  to be used by more than 10 million vehicles in North America, including Acura, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Nissan, Subaru, and Toyota. The system is  designed  to enable a wide range of safety, security, and convenience services such as automatic crash notification, enhanced roadside assistance, remote door unlock, remote engine start, stolen vehicle recovery assistance, turn-by-turn navigation, and integration with smart home devices, among others. The vulnerability rela

Researchers have disclosed details of three new security vulnerabilities affecting operational technology (OT) products from CODESYS and Festo that could lead to source code tampering and denial-of-service (DoS). The vulnerabilities, reported by Forescout Vedere Labs, are the latest in a long list of flaws collectively tracked under the name  OT:ICEFALL . "These issues exemplify either an insecure-by-design approach — which was usual at the time the products were launched – where manufacturers include dangerous functions that can be accessed with no authentication or a subpar implementation of security controls, such as cryptography," the researchers  said . The most critical of the flaws is  CVE-2022-3270  (CVSS score: 9.8), a critical vulnerability that affects Festo automation controllers using the Festo Generic Multicast (FGMC) protocol to reboot the devices without requiring any authentication and cause a denial of service (DoS) condition. Another DoS shortcoming i

A group of academics has devised a system that can be used on a phone or a laptop to identify and locate Wi-Fi-connected hidden IoT devices in unfamiliar physical spaces. With hidden cameras being  increasingly   used  to  snoop  on  individuals  in hotel rooms and Airbnbs, the goal is to be able to pinpoint such rogue devices without much of a hassle. The system, dubbed Lumos , is designed with this intent in mind and to "visualize their presence using an augmented reality interface,"  said  Rahul Anand Sharma, Elahe Soltanaghaei, Anthony Rowe, and Vyas Sekar of Carnegie Mellon University in a new paper. At its core, the platform works by snuffing and collecting encrypted wireless packets over the air to detect and identify concealed devices. Subsequently, it estimates the location of each identified device with respect to the user as they walk around the perimeter of the space. The localization module, for its part, combines signal strength measurements that are avail

A newly discovered suspected espionage threat actor has been targeting employees focusing on mergers and acquisitions as well as large corporate transactions to facilitate bulk email collection from victim environments. Mandiant is tracking the activity cluster under the uncategorized moniker UNC3524, citing a lack of evidence linking it to an existing group. However, some of the intrusions are said to mirror techniques used by different Russia-based hacking crews like  APT28  and  APT29 .  "The high level of operational security, low malware footprint, adept evasive skills, and a large Internet of Things (IoT) device botnet set this group apart and emphasize the 'advanced' in Advanced Persistent Threat," the threat intelligence firm  said  in a Monday report. The initial access route is unknown but upon gaining a foothold, attack chains involving UNC3524 culminate in the deployment of a novel backdoor called QUIETEXIT for persistent remote access for as long as

Three security vulnerabilities have been disclosed in the popular Wyze Cam devices that grant malicious actors to execute arbitrary code and access camera feeds as well as unauthorizedly read the SD cards, the latter of which remained unresolved for nearly three years after the initial discovery. The security flaws relate to an authentication bypass (CVE-2019-9564), a remote code execution bug stemming from a stack-based buffer overflow (CVE-2019-12266), and a case of unauthenticated access to the contents of the SD card (no CVE). Successful exploitation of the bypass vulnerability could allow an outside attacker to fully control the device, including disabling recording to the SD card and turning on/off the camera, not to mention chaining it with CVE-2019-12266 to view the live audio and video feeds. Romanian cybersecurity firm Bitdefender, which  discovered the shortcomings , said it reached out to the vendor way back in May 2019, following which Wyze released patches to fix CVE

Microsoft on Wednesday detailed a previously undiscovered technique put to use by the TrickBot malware that involves using compromised Internet of Things (IoT) devices as a go-between for establishing communications with the command-and-control (C2) servers. "By using MikroTik routers as proxy servers for its C2 servers and redirecting the traffic through non-standard ports, TrickBot adds another persistence layer that helps malicious IPs evade detection by standard security systems," Microsoft's Defender for IoT Research Team and Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)  said . TrickBot, which emerged as a banking trojan in 2016, has evolved into a sophisticated and persistent threat, with its modular architecture enabling it to adapt its tactics to suit different networks, environments, and devices as well as offer access-as-a-service for next-stage payloads like Conti ransomware. The expansion to TrickBot's capabilities comes amid reports of its  infrastructure goin

There are plenty of pop culture references to rogue AI and robots, and appliances turning on their human masters. It is the stuff of science fiction, fun, and fantasy, but with IoT and connected devices becoming more prevalent in our homes, we need more discussion around cybersecurity and safety. Software is all around us, and it's very easy to forget just how much we're relying on lines of code to do all those clever things that provide us so much innovation and convenience. Much like web-based software, APIs, and mobile devices, vulnerable code in embedded systems can be exploited if it is uncovered by an attacker.  While it's unlikely that an army of toasters is coming to enslave the human race (although, the  Tesla bot  is a bit concerning) as the result of a cyberattack, malicious cyber events are still possible. Some of our cars, planes, and medical devices also rely on intricate embedded systems code to perform key tasks, and the prospect of these objects being compromised i

A critical vulnerability has been disclosed in hardware random number generators used in billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices whereby it fails to properly generate random numbers, thus undermining their security and putting them at risk of attacks. "It turns out that these 'randomly' chosen numbers aren't always as random as you'd like when it comes to IoT devices," Bishop Fox researchers Dan Petro and Allan Cecil  said  in an analysis published last week. "In fact, in many cases, devices are choosing encryption keys of 0 or worse. This can lead to a catastrophic collapse of security for any upstream use." Random number generation ( RNG ) is a  crucial process  that undergirds several cryptographic applications, including key generation, nonces, and salting. On traditional operating systems, it's derived from a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG) that uses entropy obtained from a high-quality seed source.

Microsoft researchers on Thursday disclosed two dozen vulnerabilities affecting a wide range of Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT) devices used in industrial, medical, and enterprise networks that could be abused by adversaries to execute arbitrary code and even cause critical systems to crash. "These remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities cover more than 25 CVEs and potentially affect a wide range of domains, from consumer and medical IoT to Industrial IoT, Operational Technology, and industrial control systems,"  said  Microsoft's 'Section 52' Azure Defender for IoT research group. The flaws have been collectively named " BadAlloc ," for they are rooted in standard  memory allocation functions  spanning widely used real-time operating systems (RTOS), embedded software development kits (SDKs), and C standard library (libc) implementations. A lack of proper input validations associated with these memory allocation functions

Attention! If you use Amazon's voice assistant Alexa in you smart speakers, just opening an innocent-looking web-link could let attackers install hacking skills on it and spy on your activities remotely. Check Point cybersecurity researchers—Dikla Barda, Roman Zaikin and Yaara Shriki—today disclosed severe security vulnerabilities in Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant that could render it vulnerable to a number of malicious attacks. According to a new report released by Check Point Research and shared with The Hacker News, the "exploits could have allowed an attacker to remove/install skills on the targeted victim's Alexa account, access their voice history and acquire personal information through skill interaction when the user invokes the installed skill." "Smart speakers and virtual assistants are so commonplace that it's easy to overlook just how much personal data they hold, and their role in controlling other smart devices in our homes,"

The Department of Homeland Security and CISA ICS-CERT today issued a critical security advisory warning about over a dozen newly discovered vulnerabilities affecting billions of Internet-connected devices manufactured by many vendors across the globe. Dubbed " Ripple20 ," the set of 19 vulnerabilities resides in a low-level TCP/IP software library developed by Treck, which, if weaponized, could let remote attackers gain complete control over targeted devices—without requiring any user interaction. According to Israeli cybersecurity company JSOF—who discovered these flaws—the affected devices are in use across various industries, ranging from home/consumer devices to medical, healthcare, data centers, enterprises, telecom, oil, gas, nuclear, transportation, and many others across critical infrastructure. "Just a few examples: data could be stolen off of a printer, an infusion pump behavior changed, or industrial control devices could be made to malfunction. An

Academics from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) disclosed a security vulnerability in Bluetooth that could potentially allow an attacker to spoof a remotely paired device, exposing over a billion of modern devices to hackers. The attacks, dubbed Bluetooth Impersonation AttackS or BIAS, concern Bluetooth Classic, which supports Basic Rate (BR) and Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) for wireless data transfer between devices. "The Bluetooth specification contains vulnerabilities enabling to perform impersonation attacks during secure connection establishment," the researchers outlined in the paper. "Such vulnerabilities include the lack of mandatory mutual authentication, overly permissive role switching, and an authentication procedure downgrade." Given the widespread impact of the vulnerability, the researchers said they responsibly disclosed the findings to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the organization that oversees the development o

Researchers have uncovered a potential means to profile and track online users using a novel approach that combines device identifiers with their biometric information. The details come from a newly published research titled "Nowhere to Hide: Cross-modal Identity Leakage between Biometrics and Devices" by a group of academics from the University of Liverpool, New York University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and University at Buffalo SUNY. "Prior studies on identity theft only consider the attack goal for a single type of identity, either for device IDs or biometrics," Chris Xiaoxuan Lu, Assistant Professor at the University of Liverpool, told The Hacker News in an email interview. "The missing part, however, is to explore the feasibility of compromising the two types of identities simultaneously and deeply understand their correlation in multi-modal IoT environments." The researchers presented the findings at the Web Conference 2020 held

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