Trend Micro recently announced, along with the FBI, the dismantling of a cyber criminal gang based out of Estonia. The gang was allegedly responsible for compromising millions of computers and redirecting them to online ads through the implementation of rogue DNS servers.

Over four million computers across 100 countries had inadvertently downloaded malware onto their systems, many through installing what they thought was a needed codec to view certain movies online. Compromised systems would then have their DNS settings altered to use servers controlled by the gang, rerouting the end users to locations on the Internet they never intended to visit.

These locations contain ads which, upon click-through or even viewing, generated revenue for the gang, resulting in over $14 million made through advertising fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is seeking to extradite the gang for prosecution, likely due to the large number of U.S. government and businesses systems compromised by the gang and the fact that some of the rogue DNS servers were based in Chicago and New York.

DNS provides the IP address location of a website so a user who types “google.com” into a browser is actually taken to “72.14.204.103” (or one of their other IP locations). By forcing a system to use a specific DNS server, like this gang did, users would receive false IP address locations for websites they were trying to visit or ads they normally would have viewed, benefiting the gang while not maliciously harming the user. Examples provided during the indictment of the six Estonian members of the gang included:

“When the user of an infected computer clicked on a domain name link for Netflix, the user was instead taken to a website for an unrelated business called ‘BudgetMatch.'”

“When the user of an infected computer visited the home page of the Wall Street Journal, a featured advertisement for the American Express ‘Plum Card’ had been fraudulently replaced with an ad for ‘Fashion Girl LA.'”

The malware which compromised these systems also prevented updates to anti-virus software and the operating system. This helped the malware stay on the compromised systems over an extended period of time. For those concerned that they may be compromised the FBI has provided a document which aids in understanding the malware and how to check for DNS settings changes on your computer, for both Windows and Mac systems.
The FBI doc

In this document the IP address ranges of the known rogue DNS servers are listed, indicating server locations in Russia, Ukraine, U.S., and Amsterdam. You can see the ranges below:

I have backlogs everywhere and am probably the worst person in the world at keeping up with my social networking updates. If people only knew about my life through my sporadic social updates, they’d think I was still “Having a good time at Steak and Ale, about to go see this new Gladiator movie.”

In one of my few and far between surfacings for air, I saw some important offerings in the blogging world addressing privacy and security issues of our currently beloved social tools, Twitter and Linkedin.

Graham Cluley put out a blog this morning about Twitter’s efforts to begin default HTTPS usage, starting with a small percentage of users. The option to choose an HTTPS connection, however, is available to all Twitter users, and can be enabled through the settings page (at the bottom).

HTTPS encrypts your normal HTTP traffic across the network, protecting the data being exchanged and the identification of the exchanging parties. This was publicly popularized for banking and purchasing transactions but is making its way into other facets of the internet.

It’s always a smart move to choose HTTPS for your connections into social networking sites. No matter who you are or what sort of details you share with others, every user should be concerned about their privacy and protection of the ownership over their own accounts. For those who like to connect to public wi-fi spots, this is especially important, as open wi-fi leaves you vulnerable to eavesdropping by others.

Facebook offers HTTPS as well, so search out this setting and enable it if it isn’t already enabled. HTTPS is of course important to your security, but there are plenty more settings on Facebook and elsewhere that may be of concern to you regarding usage of your private data.

Rik Ferguson recently blogged about Linkedin settings dealing with social advertising, which would use your own personal information in some of the ads put out across the Linkedin site. This would include your name and profile photo integrated right into the advertisement, giving the appearance that you personally endorse a product or service. I already have a big enough issue with buying shirts smeared with the name of the department store. Where’s my discount for free advertising? They should pay ME to wear these shirts.

To disable these advertising options on Linkedin, go to your settings page and click on “account” in the bottom left. Rik walks you through it on his blog here.

Spend some time today, and periodically (new defaults pop up all the time), digging through your social networking settings and opt out of what you don’t want. Pay attention to what you’re agreeing to when you sign up for a new service. Your safety and privacy could be at risk. And stop buying T-shirts with the store name on them. That’s just wrong.

Matt Sully

That’s right, it isn’t important.  I realize that it matters to most of the people reading this.  What I have  recently realized, however, is that it really doesn’t matter to most.  We in the industry are in denial about our place in the scheme of things.  It’s self-evident to us that information security is of vital importance.  We talk about the massive market for IT security, the amount of press breaches are given, and the big push for compliance and increased security across all standards.  Still, it’s just not that important to enough people.  Symantec had roughly $6b in revenue last year.  While they were doing that, Avon sold $11b worth of cosmetics using a network of door to door salespeople.  Think about it.

The IT security market is considerable.  Gartner estimates it to be in the realm of $85b a year.  $85b is a lot of money.  Having said that, there was more money spent on commercial cleaning and garbage removal last year than there was on IT security.  So really, how important are we?  While the threat of a dirty office is no laughing matter, I don’t think it is quite as important as keeping your data secure.

We talk a lot about user awareness and training, and yet I think we’ve failed in that it’s something that we mention to people and then forget.  It’s very much a “do as I say and not as I do” mentality.  We speak to organizations and groups about awareness, but do little ourselves to spread that awarenes.  I’m as guilty as anyone in this regard.  Three years in, and the most my friends and family can say of my business is that I do “fancy anti-virus or something”.  This is usually followed up by a request to “speed their computer up”.  The number one question I get from the average consumer?  “Is it safe to use my credit card online?”  Nearly twenty years on, and we still haven’t answered a single question for the general public.

Most people have a very good knowledge of “real world” crimes.  It makes sense, they’ve been around longer and get all the good TV shows.  What we need to do is translate cyber crimes into “real world” crimes.  Most people think they know what a virus is, or what a hacker does.  Mostly though, they just don’t.  I have had far too many conversations with C-level execs and VPs who have absolutely no clue.  It’s disheartening when you speak to the CIO of a Fortune 50 company who doesn’t know what a botnet is.  It’s disheartening, but it’s also enlightening. We need people to understand that what happens online affects the real world, and them directly.  In short, we need to make information security important to them personally.

It’s up to us as security professionals to make it important to everyone.  It’s up to us to help people understand.  We need to step outside of the security groups and the IT crowd.  We need to talk to the business leaders, the financial teams, the HR groups, all of them.  We should be talking to our friends, our colleagues, that aunt that keeps sending out the cute slideshows.  If we ever want the average user to “get it”, we need to help them do so.  Until then, it just won’t be important.

While we need to exchange ideas and information with our peers, what I think is even more crucial is that we spend more time talking to the uninitiated.  It’s great to see all the experts at an event, but what would help our industry more is to see the non-experts at these events. If we keep talking to other experts and rely on them to spread the word, we’ll continue to fail.

So do we start at the top?  Should we try to get the government to mandate the hell out of security and force people’s hands?  Do we harass CEOs to institute appropriate policies and then enforce them?  I don’t think so.  Good policy is important, but even the best policy is easily ignored by those who care little for it.  I think we all know enough users who skirt their employers facebook policy.  If people don’t understand the policy and the reasoning behind it, they will never back it, and they will never adhere to it.

Defence Intelligence has run a number of informational seminars in the past.  These have mostly been aimed at specific threats or technologies, and were designed for security experts.  What I’m asking myself now is, why have we never done a far more basic seminar for the layman?  We feel the pain of the security staff while they try to justify their budget, but what have we done to help them?  I’ve been frustrated many times while trying to explain why “we have a firewall” is not a legitimate security stance.  Really, though, how much have I done to correct it?

We’re going to change.  We’re going to start offering basic informational seminars and training to both our clients and our potential clients.  No fees, no product pitch, just basic information, awareness and policy for anyone who might be interested.  At least then we’ll be able to say that we’re doing our part to make security important.

Part 2 coming soon – Why IT Security Isn’t Important

Google never rests, and is always mixing up something new to try out on its users. Some efforts have been failures and others have been welcomed by many. Recently, Google announced a seemingly one-time attempt at informing specific users of a possible malware compromise on their systems.

Currently they are a bit vague on the malware involved, but state in their blog that this particular malware uses a limited number of proxies to send traffic to Google. When a user compromised by this malware visits Google they are displayed a message at the top of their browsers saying, “Your computer appears to be infected.”

It must really be a very specific and limited means of terminating traffic that ends up at Google through these proxies for the company to display these messages with confidence. A wide range of malware utilizes Google in some way to carry out functions or as a form of communication. Some use Google resources as a way to spread malware, through fake Blogspot pages or highjacked web searches. Some malware just checks Google to make sure the compromised system has an internet connection. 

This may only be a one time event, but I wouldn’t put it past Google that this is an introduction into future areas of exploration into the anti-virus field. Why not? They dip their fingers into every other internet pot. Google safe browsing is already a sight people have grown accustomed to and understand as well as embrace.  Is Google going to capitalize on their already existing involvement in the malware world by taking the extra step toward their end users? Is Google AV on the horizon?

Matt Sully