 Less than two weeks ago, U.S. Cyber Command launched an offensive on Iran to disable computer systems used by the country's Revolutionary Guard Corps to control rocket and missile launches. Now, the agency has issued an unprecedented public warning that is has discovered the "active malicious use" of a Microsoft Outlook vulnerability that appears to be linked to Iran. When the U.S. opted for an offensive cyber strike instead of a more conventional missile strike in retaliation for the downing of a U.S. drone, it was painted as a backtrack but, as I reported at the time, it was actually a game changer. If the U.S. has used offensive cyber to compromise Iran's core command and control systems, it completely changes the battlefield dynamic. It was also notable that the U.S. decided to put the cyber strike into the public domain. Iran does not play in the same league as Russia or China when it comes to cyber capabilities. The country's ability to retaliate against the U.S. government is limited. But, for Iran, there are many easier targets. And one of the fears expressed by analysts after the military cyber strike was that Iran might elect to increase its cyber activity in the broader non-governmental sector. And so to this warning, and Cyber Command tweeting that it has discovered the "use of CVE-2017-11774 and recommends immediate patching," adding a disabled link to the suspected delivery URL. The vulnerability was first discovered by Sensepost and patched in 2017—so if an Outlook install has been patched there is no concern. But we all know—and countless press articles have run this year alone—that many systems remain unpatched and vulnerable, opening up entire networks to potential bad actors. The bug essentially opens a door for malicious code to escape from Outlook into the underlying operating system. And, the point at issue here is that this vulnerability has been linked to Iran before. As reported by ZDNet, the bug was first exposed in 2017, "but by 2018, it had been weaponized by an Iranian state-sponsored hacking group known as APT33 (or Elfin), primarily known for developing the Shamoon disk-wiping malware." For more turn to OUR FORUM.  Google recently generated a flurry of coverage about its supposed privacy pivot, including an op-ed in The New York Times by chief executive Sundar Pichai. “We feel privileged that billions of people trust products like Search, Chrome, Maps, and Android to help them every day,” Pichai wrote. It’s not that we necessarily trust Google. It’s that, as a near monopoly, we have no choice. In fact, the crisis of trust — after a year of data breaches and congressional appearances — has led all the major tech companies to launch public relations campaigns around privacy. This is a smokescreen to satisfy regulators and pacify consumers while continuing their data exploitation activities. While some of the changes they have made are positive, they have no intention to give up their lucrative business model of ads powered by surveillance, which is fundamentally at odds with privacy. There was a time when we had meaningful privacy on the Internet. In the early days, dot-com barons weren’t interested in surveillance and data mining. The business model was subscriptions, led by companies like America Online, which dominated the space. As more users moved away from proprietary portals like America Online toward the open Internet, browsers and search replaced subscriber services as the gateway to the web. Clicks and user data seeded the beginnings of what is now called surveillance capitalism. By the end of the decade, a science project at Stanford was on pace to supplant “search” as a verb. Ironically, Google is an ad-funded doppelganger of the subscriber services it replaced. Instead of charging users for access, it simply spies on their online activity, location history, and behaviors to give advertisers (their true customers) unprecedented power to manipulate consumer behavior. For more navigate to OUR FORUM. An extortion scam is being distributed that claims a Remote Access Trojan, or RAT, was installed on your computer using the EternalBlue exploit. The scammers then go on to say that they used the RAT to take videos of you on adult web sites and that you must pay a ransom or they will send it to all of your contacts. EternalBlue is an exploit allegedly created by the NSA that targets a vulnerability in the SMBv1 protocol. This vulnerability allows attackers to execute commands on a vulnerable computer that can be used to install malware. The extortion emails being distributed have a subject of "Security Alert. Your account was compromised. Password must be changed" and spins a tale that while visiting a porn site, the EternalBlue exploit was triggered to install a Remote Access Trojan on your computer. This Trojan was then allegedly used to take videos of you, steal your contacts, and your passwords. It goes on to say if you do not pay a $600 extortion demand, the attacker will send your video to all of your contacts. The reality is that this is just a scam and the senders have not utilized any exploits on your computer, there is no RAT installed, and there are no videos of you while using an adult web site. Any passwords or email addresses listed in the email are simply from data breaches where your account info was publicly disclosed. While you now know this is a scam, unfortunately not everyone else does and some people actually pay the extortion demand. Visit OUR FORUM for more. |
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