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The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added a critical security bug in Linux to its list of vulnerabilities known to be actively exploited in the wild.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-1086 and carrying a severity rating of 7.8 out of a possible 10, allows people who have already gained a foothold inside an affected system to escalate their system privileges. It’s the result of a use-after-free error, a class of vulnerability that occurs in software written in the C and C++ languages when a process continues to access a memory location after it has been freed or deallocated. Use-after-free vulnerabilities can result in remote code or privilege escalation.

The vulnerability, which affects Linux kernel versions 5.14 through 6.6, resides in the NF_tables, a kernel component enabling the Netfilter, which in turn facilitates a variety of network operations, including packet filtering, network address [and port] translation (NA[P]T), packet logging, userspace packet queueing, and other packet mangling. It was patched in January, but as the CISA advisory indicates, some production systems have yet to install it. At the time this Ars post went live, there were no known details about the active exploitation.

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An international cast of law enforcement agencies has struck a blow at a cybercrime linchpin that’s as obscure as it is instrumental in the mass-infection of devices: so-called droppers, the sneaky software that’s used to install ransomware, spyware, and all manner of other malware.

Europol said Wednesday it made four arrests, took down 100 servers, and seized 2,000 domain names that were facilitating six of the best-known droppers. Officials also added eight fugitives linked to the enterprises to Europe’s Most Wanted list. The droppers named by Europol are IcedID, SystemBC, Pikabot, Smokeloader, Bumblebee, and Trickbot.

Droppers provide two specialized functions. First, they use encryption, code-obfuscation, and similar techniques to cloak malicious code inside a packer or other form of container. These containers are then put into email attachments, malicious websites, or alongside legitimate software available through malicious web ads. Second, the malware droppers serve as specialized botnets that facilitate the installation of additional malware.

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One day last October, subscribers to an ISP known as Windstream began flooding message boards with reports their routers had suddenly stopped working and remained unresponsive to reboots and all other attempts to revive them.

“The routers now just sit there with a steady red light on the front,” one user wrote, referring to the ActionTec T3200 router models Windstream provided to both them and a next door neighbor. “They won't even respond to a RESET.”

In the messages—which appeared over a few days beginning on October 25—many Windstream users blamed the ISP for the mass bricking. They said it was the result of the company pushing updates that poisoned the devices. Windstream’s Kinetic broadband service has about 1.6 million subscribers in 18 states, including Iowa, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky. For many customers, Kinetic provides an essential link to the outside world.

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The US Treasury Department has sanctioned three Chinese nationals for their involvement in a VPN-powered botnet with more than 19 million residential IP addresses they rented out to cybercriminals to obfuscate their illegal activities, including COVID-19 aid scams and bomb threats.

The criminal enterprise, the Treasury Department said Tuesday, was a residential proxy service known as 911 S5. Such services provide a bank of IP addresses belonging to everyday home users for customers to route Internet connections through. When accessing a website or other Internet service, the connection appears to originate with the home user.

In 2022, researchers at the University of Sherbrooke profiled 911[.]re, a service that appears to be an earlier version of 911 S5. At the time, its infrastructure comprised 120,000 residential IP addresses. This pool was created using one of two free VPNs—MaskVPN and DewVPN—marketed to end users. Besides acting as a legitimate VPN, the software also operated as a botnet that covertly turned users’ devices into a proxy server. The complex structure was designed with the intent of making the botnet hard to reverse engineer.

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A previously unknown piece of ransomware, dubbed ShrinkLocker, encrypts victim data using the BitLocker feature built into the Windows operating system.

BitLocker is a full-volume encryptor that debuted in 2007 with the release of Windows Vista. Users employ it to encrypt entire hard drives to prevent people from reading or modifying data in the event they get physical access to the disk. Starting with the rollout of Windows 10, BitLocker by default has used the 128-bit and 256-bit XTS-AES encryption algorithm, giving the feature extra protection from attacks that rely on manipulating cipher text to cause predictable changes in plain text.

Recently, researchers from security firm Kaspersky found a threat actor using BitLocker to encrypt data on systems located in Mexico, Indonesia, and Jordan. The researchers named the new ransomware ShrinkLocker, both for its use of BitLocker and because it shrinks the size of each non-boot partition by 100 MB and splits the newly unallocated space into new primary partitions of the same size.

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A software maker serving more than 10,000 courtrooms throughout the world hosted an application update containing a hidden backdoor that maintained persistent communication with a malicious website, researchers reported Thursday, in the latest episode of a supply-chain attack.

The software, known as the JAVS Viewer 8, is a component of the JAVS Suite 8, an application package courtrooms use to record, play back, and manage audio and video from proceedings. Its maker, Louisville, Kentucky-based Justice AV Solutions, says its products are used in more than 10,000 courtrooms throughout the US and 11 other countries. The company has been in business for 35 years.

JAVS Viewer users at high risk

Researchers from security firm Rapid7 reported that a version of the JAVS Viewer 8 available for download on javs.com contained a backdoor that gave an unknown threat actor persistent access to infected devices. The malicious download, planted inside an executable file that installs the JAVS Viewer version 8.3.7, was available no later than April 1, when a post on X (formerly Twitter) reported it. It’s unclear when the backdoored version was removed from the company’s download page. JAVS representatives didn’t immediately respond to questions sent by email.

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For more than four days, a server at the very core of the Internet’s domain name system was out of sync with its 12 root server peers due to an unexplained glitch that could have caused stability and security problems worldwide. This server, maintained by Internet carrier Cogent Communications, is one of the 13 root servers that provision the Internet’s root zone, which sits at the top of the hierarchical distributed database known as the domain name system, or DNS.

Here's a simplified recap of the way the domain name system works and how root servers fit in:

When someone enters wikipedia.org in their browser, the servers handling the request first must translate the human-friendly domain name into an IP address. This is where the domain name system comes in. The first step in the DNS process is the browser queries the local stub resolver in the local operating system. The stub resolver forwards the query to a recursive resolver, which may be provided by the user's ISP or a service such as 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 from Cloudflare and Google, respectively.

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Malware recently spotted in the wild uses sophisticated measures to disable antivirus protections, destroy evidence of infection, and permanently infect machines with cryptocurrency-mining software, researchers said Tuesday.

Key to making the unusually complex system of malware operate is a function in the main payload, named GhostEngine, that disables Microsoft Defender or any other antivirus or endpoint-protection software that may be running on the targeted computer. It also hides any evidence of compromise. “The first objective of the GhostEngine malware is to incapacitate endpoint security solutions and disable specific Windows event logs, such as Security and System logs, which record process creation and service registration,” said researchers from Elastic Security Labs, who discovered the attacks.

When it first executes, GhostEngine scans machines for any EDR, or endpoint protection and response, software that may be running. If it finds any, it loads drivers known to contain vulnerabilities that allow attackers to gain access to the kernel, the core of all operating systems that’s heavily restricted to prevent tampering. One of the vulnerable drivers is an anti-rootkit file from Avast named aswArPots.sys. GhostEngine uses it to terminate the EDR security agent. A malicious file named smartscreen.exe then uses a driver from IObit named iobitunlockers.sys to delete the security agent binary.

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Federal authorities have arrested a 23-year-old Taiwanese national and charged him with running an online market that sold $100 million worth of illicit narcotics, including fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, LSD, and ketamine.

The authorities said that for almost four years, Rui-Siang Lin operated and owned the Incognito Market, an online marketplace on the dark web that users worldwide visited to buy and sell illegal narcotics. The marketplace facilitated transactions with many of the same features provided by legitimate e-commerce sites, including buyer and user registration, branding, advertising, and customer service. When registered buyers visited the site using the Tor browser, they were presented with the following graphic:

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The site allowed buyers to search through thousands of listings for narcotics of their choice. It opened in October 2020 and, as reported by KrebsOnSecurity, closed last March when its operators extorted both buyers and sellers of fees ranging from $100 to $2,000 in exchange for not revealing text messages and transaction records showing their participation in the marketplace. In the 41 months that Incognito Market was open, it facilitated the sale of more than $100 million of narcotics. By June 2023, the site was generating sales of $5 million per month.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will require some financial institutions to disclose security breaches within 30 days of learning about them.

On Wednesday, the SEC adopted changes to Regulation S-P, which governs the treatment of the personal information of consumers. Under the amendments, institutions must notify individuals whose personal information was compromised “as soon as practicable, but not later than 30 days” after learning of unauthorized network access or use of customer data. The new requirements will be binding on broker-dealers (including funding portals), investment companies, registered investment advisers, and transfer agents.

"Over the last 24 years, the nature, scale, and impact of data breaches has transformed substantially," SEC Chair Gary Gensler said. "These amendments to Regulation S-P will make critical updates to a rule first adopted in 2000 and help protect the privacy of customers’ financial data. The basic idea for covered firms is if you’ve got a breach, then you’ve got to notify. That’s good for investors."

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An Arizona woman has been accused of helping generate millions of dollars for North Korea’s ballistic missile program by helping citizens of that country land IT jobs at US-based Fortune 500 companies.

Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Litchfield Park, Arizona, raised $6.8 million in the scheme, federal prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed Thursday. Chapman allegedly funneled the money to North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department, which is involved in key aspects of North Korea’s weapons program, including its development of ballistic missiles.

Part of the alleged scheme involved Chapman and co-conspirators compromising the identities of more than 60 people living in the US and using their personal information to get North Koreans IT jobs across more than 300 US companies.

Enlarge / The front page of BreachForums.

The FBI and law enforcement partners worldwide have seized BreachForums, a website that openly trafficked malware and data stolen in hacks.

The site has operated for years as an online trading post where criminals could buy and sell all kinds of compromised data, including passwords, customer records, and other often-times sensitive data. Last week, a site user advertised the sale of Dell customer data that was obtained from a support portal, forcing the computer maker to issue a vague warning to those affected. Also last week, Europol confirmed to Bleeping Computer that some of its data had been exposed in a breach of one of its portals. The data was put up for sale on BreachForums, Bleeping Computer reported.

On Wednesday, the normal BreachForums front page was replaced with one that proclaimed: “This website has been taken down by the FBI and DOJ with assistance from international partners.” It went on to say agents are analyzing the backend data and invited those with information about the site to contact them. A graphic shown prominently at the top showed the forum profile images of the site's two administrators, Baphomet and ShinyHunters, positioned behind prison bars.

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Infrastructure used to maintain and distribute the Linux operating system kernel was infected for two years, starting in 2009, by sophisticated malware that managed to get a hold of one of the developers’ most closely guarded resources: the /etc/shadow files that stored encrypted password data for more than 550 system users, researchers said Tuesday.

The unknown attackers behind the compromise infected at least four servers inside kernel.org, the Internet domain underpinning the sprawling Linux development and distribution network, the researchers from security firm ESET said. After obtaining the cryptographic hashes for 551 user accounts on the network, the attackers were able to convert half into plaintext passwords, likely through password-cracking techniques and the use of an advanced credential-stealing feature built into the malware. From there, the attackers used the servers to send spam and carry out other nefarious activities. The four servers were likely infected and disinfected at different times, with the last two being remediated at some point in 2011.

Stealing kernel.org’s keys to the kingdom

An infection of kernel.org came to light in 2011, when kernel maintainers revealed that 448 accounts had been compromised after attackers had somehow managed to gain unfettered, or “root,” system access to servers connected to the domain. Maintainers reneged on a promise to provide an autopsy of the hack, a decision that has limited the public’s understanding of the incident.

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Federal agencies, health care associations, and security researchers are warning that a ransomware group tracked under the name Black Basta is ravaging critical infrastructure sectors in attacks that have targeted more than 500 organizations in the past two years.

One of the latest casualties of the native Russian-speaking group, according to CNN, is Ascension, a St. Louis-based health care system that includes 140 hospitals in 19 states. A network intrusion that struck the nonprofit last week ​​took down many of its automated processes for handling patient care, including its systems for managing electronic health records and ordering tests, procedures, and medications. In the aftermath, Ascension has diverted ambulances from some of its hospitals and relied on manual processes.

“Severe operational disruptions”

In an Advisory published Friday, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Black Basta has victimized 12 of the country’s 16 critical infrastructure sectors in attacks that it has mounted on 500 organizations spanning the globe. The nonprofit health care association Health-ISAC issued its own advisory on the same day that warned that organizations it represents are especially desirable targets of the group.

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Google has updated its Chrome browser to patch a high-severity zero-day vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code on end user devices. The fix marks the fifth time this year the company has updated the browser to protect users from an existing malicious exploit.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-4671, is a “use after free,” a class of bug that occurs in C-based programming languages. In these languages, developers must allocate memory space needed to run certain applications or operations. They do this by using “pointers” that store the memory addresses where the required data will reside. Because this space is finite, memory locations should be deallocated once the application or operation no longer needs it.

Use-after-free bugs occur when the app or process fails to clear the pointer after freeing the memory location. In some cases, the pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to a new memory location storing malicious shellcode planted by an attacker’s exploit, a condition that will result in the execution of this code.