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New Clues In Sony Hack Point To Insiders, Away from DPRK

A strong counter-narrative to the official account of the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment has emerged in recent days, with the visage of the petulant North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, replaced by another, more familiar face: former Sony Pictures employees angry over their firing during a recent reorganization at the company. Researchers from the security firm Norse allege that their investigation of the hack of Sony has uncovered evidence that leads, decisively, away from North Korea as the source of the attack. Instead, the company alleges that a group of six individuals is behind the hack, at least one a former Sony Pictures Entertainment employee who worked in a technical role and had extensive knowledge of the company’s network and operations. [Read Security Ledger coverage of the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment.] If true, the allegations by Norse deal a serious blow to the government’s account of the incident, which placed the blame squarely on […]

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Game Networks Struggle Back After Holiday Attacks

Online gaming networks including Sony’s Playstation network were the victims of large-scale denial of service attacks that coincided with the Christmas holiday. As of Saturday, Microsoft’s X-Box gaming network had returned to full operation, while Sony’s Playstation Network was still struggling to restore service, 48 hours after attacks attributed to an online hacktivist group known as The Lizard Squad hobbled the gaming networks on their biggest day of the year: Christmas. “Update: PS4, PS3, and Vita network services are gradually coming back online – thanks for your patience,” Sony tweeted via its @AskPlayStation Twitter account early Saturday. The source of the denial of service attacks has not been confirmed. However, the group claiming responsibility for them has claimed that the attacks were more prank than anything else: an effort to irritate Playstation and X-box owners who received a new device on Christmas Day, only to find they couldn’t connect it to the […]

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Please Apply Our 10 Year-Old Patch: The Dismal State of Embedded Device Security

On Friday, the firm Allegro Software of Boxborough, Massachusetts, released an odd-sounding statement encouraging all its customers to “maintain firmware for highest level of embedded device security.” Specifically, Allegro wanted to warn customers about the need to apply a software update to address two recently discovered vulnerabilities affecting its Rom Pager embedded web server: CVE-2014-9222 and CVE-2014-9223, collectively known as the “Misfortune Cookie” vulnerabilities. That patch in question was released almost ten years ago – in 2005. As reported widely last week, the vulnerabilities affecting the Rom Pager software can be found in some 12 million broadband routers by manufacturers including Linksys, D-Link, Huawei, TP-Link, ZTE and Edimax. In short: some of the most common sellers of broadband routers in the world. The security firm CheckPoint discovered the vulnerabilities and issued a report about them. (The report web site is here and a PDF format report is here.) According to CheckPoint, the Misfortune Cookie vulnerability has to […]

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Cyberattack Inflicts Massive Damage on German Steel Factory

  A report released this week from Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security said that a German steel manufacturing plant was severely damaged by a cyber-physical attack this year. The incident was mentioned in an annual report by the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (or BSI), which provided a summary of cyber security issues and incidents affecting Germany. According to the report, a German steel manufacturing facility was the victim of a “targeted attack” that the report labeled an “APT” or “advanced persistent threat” style attack.  [Read more Security Ledger coverage of APT-style attacks.] The attackers used a sophisticated spear-phishing e-mail and social engineering to get access to the office network at the steelworks, the report claims. “From there, they worked successively to production networks.” The malicious code disrupted the function of control system components that led to a blast furnace not being able to be turned off in a regulated fashion. “The result (was) massive damage […]

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The Moral of Sony? Stop Doing Attribution

The hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which first came to light on November 24th, devolved this week into a chaotic international “whodunnit” with conflicting reports attributing the incident to everything from the government of North Korea to the government of China to global hacktivist group Anonymous to disgruntled Sony employees. For sure: those attributing the attack to hacking crews within the military of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) had their argument bolstered by reports in the New York Times and elsewhere claiming that the U.S. government now believes that the DPRK, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, was responsible for the devastating hack. Officials at Sony Pictures Entertainment clearly believe the connection is credible, ordering the cancellation of the release of the Sony Pictures film The Interview following threats of violence on theaters showing the film. That acceded to a key demand of the hackers, who have used the […]

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