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An EXTREMELY critical flaw in Microsoft’s RDP protocol (Remote Desktop) has been discovered and disclosed by Microsoft today. This vulnerability is about as critical as they get; especially for corporate customers. In short, any attacker who sends specially crafted code to any computer running Microsoft Windows that hat has Remote Desktop enabled can essentially take control of it. Microsoft has already released an article about it here (MS12-020).

All users are advised to update their machines as soon as possible, as this nasty exploit has the potential to become very nasty, very fast.

Related articles

• Microsoft to patch Windows bug called ‘Holy Grail’ by one researcher (networkworld.com)
• KB 2671387 (support.microsoft.com)
• March 2012 Microsoft Black Tuesday, (Tue, Mar 13th) (isc.sans.edu)
• Microsoft Issues Urgent Patch for ‘Wormable’ RDP Vulnerability (pcworld.com)

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According to DreamHost’s Status and Blog, staff noticed some unusual activity on one of their databases that held user login information for shell accounts. While the passwords were mostly  encrypted, hackers “hacker found a legacy pool of unencrypted FTP/shell passwords in a database table that we had not previously deleted,” according to  DreamHost CEO Simon Anderson.

As a precaution, ALL shell/FTP account passwords were reset by DreamHost. While it will cause some inconvenience for users trying to access their sites over SSH/FTP, the implications are much more serious. A lot of CMS systems store their database username and passwords in plaintext on configuration files. If whoever gained access to DreamHost’s shell account database and managed to decrypt the information, then they would have unmitigated access to not only sites’ files, but they could potentially (and most likely) gain access to the back-end database driving those sites with all user data. This could be a very major breach of user data from one of the largest web hosts in the United States.

DreamHost is being unusually mum about the technical details about the hack and is angering customers over their negligence regarding out-dated server software. While most front-end software is kept up-to-date, their back-end software is grossly outdated and there appears to be no real effort nor care by DreamHost to keep OS and back-end software updated. What makes things worse is that DreamHost’s official stance on their security solution is to not disclose what technologies they use. Rather than taking a proactive and relatively transparent stance to their own security systems, the company has decided to take-up a reactive and a “security through obscurity” stance.

Related articles

• DreamHost Security Issue Prompts FTP Password Resets (sucuri.net)
• Changing Shell/FTP Passwords due to Security Issue (dreamhoststatus.com)
• Security Update (dreamhost.com)

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I first took attention to Carrier IQ when it was discovered by custom ROM developers for the phone I personally have; the Sprint Epic4G made by Samsung. The device is part of the massively popular Galaxy S line of Android-powered devices that virtually every major cellular carrier in the world sells. Around June, it was discovered that this software records virtually everything a user does with their phone from each screen-tap to every site they visit to recording audio and even the physical orientation of the device itself.

A thread (which I now cannot find on XDA-Developers) outlined this “middleware” and it was surmised that individual Carriers like Sprint used it solely for coverage and troubleshooting issues. An effort was undertaken to remove this software from the Android Linux kernel as it was discovered to hinder the device’s performance. Developers notably had a very difficult time removing Carrier IQ, but managed to eventually remove it for their custom Android ROMs.

Fast forward to Fall of 2011 where a developer named Trevor Eckhart decided to look into Carrier IQ a bit deeper and found that Carrier IQ was essentially a rootkit and actually recorded almost all actions performed with a device it was installed on and phoned home with that information. He has released a video showing proof of Carrier IQ recording his location with location turned off, un-encrypted HTTPS streams, all SMS messages sent/received, and even EVERY touch of the device screen he makes.

Carrier IQ Part #2

Essentially what everything boils down to is that carriers can spy on literally everything you do with your phone. This is obviously a blatant violation of privacy rights and repercussions are sure to come. Developing…

Related articles

• Carrier IQ Rootkit Reportedly Logs Everything On Millions Of Phones (pcworld.com)
• You Can Test Your Android For Carrier IQ (Sort Of) [Carrier Iq] (gizmodo.com)
• People Are Freaking Out About Carrier IQ, The Hidden Smartphone Program That Tracks Everything You Do (businessinsider.com)
• Carrier IQ: How To Find It, And How To Deal With It – TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: RIM: We Do Not Authorize Carrier IQ On BlackBerry Phones (RIMM) (businessinsider.com)
• Verizon: No CarrierIQ, No way (gigaom.com)
• So, there’s a rootkit hidden in millions of cellphones (zdnet.com)
• Phone ‘Rootkit’ Maker Carrier IQ May Have Violated Wiretap Law In Millions Of Cases (textually.org)

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NetworkWorld has a very interesting writeup about a report that six German Information Security researchers published outlining very massive and highly exploitable flaws in Cloud Computing services; specifically Amazon’s EC2 and S3 as well as Eucalyptus Cloud Computing Software. Old concepts like XSS and what is referred to as XML Signature Wrapping attacks on the SOAP interfaces of the aforementioned cloud services. Very troubling and a large blow to the legitimacy of  security in the cloud.

The full PDF of the German researchers’ findings can be found here.

NetworkWorld Article

Related articles

• Researchers Demo Cloud Security Issue With Amazon AWS Attack (pcworld.com)
• Researchers demo cloud security issue with Amazon AWS hijacking attack (infoworld.com)
• Cloud computing: Gaps in the ‘cloud’ (physorg.com)
• Researchers demo cloud security issue with Amazon AWS attack (networkworld.com)

Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet.

 The firm described the data theft as "significant" saying names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth were all taken on 3 June.

The company has since taken its website offline and visitors are now directed to Codemasters’ Facebook page for the meantime. This is yet another example of companies learning the hard way that IT security infrastructure is not something that should be neglected.

Details on who was responsible for the theft and methods used to carry out the attack are as of yet unknown.

The targeting of Sony stems from their legal assault on George Hotz, otherwise known as GeoHotz, who had found and published a way to circumvent protection mechanisms on the PlayStation 3. This was a big deal after the company removed the “Other OS” feature through a firmware update that allowed the installation of Linux on the console to use the powerful IBM Cell processor that powers the machine. The PS3 has been known to be used by organizations like the US Air Force in supercomputer clusters due to the Cell processor’s vastly superior floating-point performance which is highly desired for processing large amounts of data for modeling.

Stay tuned…

More Info Over at SANS ISC and thanks goes to Briareos over at BroadBand Reports for the quick fact-finding and possible discovery.

June Security Advisory posted by F5 on identifying any suspicious activity and mitigating the exploit