If you want to import beef, eggs or chicken into the U.S., you need to get your cargo past inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Not so hardware and software imported into the U.S. and sold to domestic corporations. But a spate of stories about products shipping with malicious software raises the question: is it time for random audits to expose compromised supply chains? Concerns about ‘certified, pre-pwned’ hardware and software are nothing new. In fact, they’ve permeated the board rooms of technology and defense firms, as well as the halls of power in Washington, D.C. for years. The U.S. Congress conducted a high profile investigation of Chinese networking equipment maker ZTE in 2012 with the sole purpose of exploring links between the company and The People’s Liberation Army, and (unfounded) allegations that products sold by the companies were pre-loaded with spyware. Of course, now we know that such […]
China
Must Read: How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq – Businessweek
If there’s one story you should read this week, its Michael Riley’s extensive report over at Businessweek on the 2010 compromise of systems belonging to the Nasdaq stock exchange, “How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq.” The incident was extensively reported at the time, but not in great depth. Obviously, the parties involved weren’t talking. And Nasdaq’s public statements about the compromise woefully downplayed its severity, as Riley’s report makes clear. Among the interesting revelations: the Nasdaq may have fallen victim to a third-party compromise – similar to the hack of Target earlier this year. In the case of Nasdaq, investigators from the FBI, NSA and (eventually) CIA found discovered that the website run by the building management company responsible for Nasdaq’s headquarters at One Liberty Plaza had been “laced with a Russian-made exploit kit known as Blackhole, infecting tenants who visited the page to pay bills or do other maintenance.” What’s clear is […]
Google Unveils Project Zero Hacking Team
Google has unveiled an all-star team of hackers and security researchers it is calling “Project Zero.” According to a post on Google’s security blog, the company is hoping to use its security research muscle to investigate the security of “any software depended upon by large numbers of people, paying careful attention to the techniques, targets and motivations of attackers.” Research like Google employee Neel Mehta’s, which helped expose the “Heartbleed” vulnerability in OpenSSL is a good example of the kinds of stuff Project Zero will do. Researchers will devote their time to finding and reporting software vulnerabilities and researching new exploits, mitigations and “program analysis.” The company said it plans to disclose any vulnerabilities it finds to the vendor first, then to the public in an external database. The public can monitor “time to patch” (given that the vulnerability is disclosed ahead of a patch). Project Zero brings Google’s elite hackers under […]
Zombie Zero Underscores Supply Chain Threat
A security start-up, TrapX Security, made a splash this week with the story of a new piece of malware, Zombie Zero, which wormed its way into logistics and shipping firms on shipping scanners sold by a Chinese firm. The malware was discovered during a trial demonstration of TrapX’s technology at a shipping and logistics firm. It was implanted on embedded versions of Windows XP that ran on the scanning hardware and in a software image that could be downloaded from the manufacturing firm’s website. “This malware was shipped to large logistics companies embedded in the operating system,” Carl Wright, an Executive Vice President at TrapX told The Security Ledger. TrapX declined to name the firm on whose behalf it worked or the manufacturer whose scanners were compromised. It said 16 of 64 scanners sold to the victim firm were found to contain malware. Published reports also note that malware say scanners with another variant of the same malware […]
Update: Cyber Spies Digging For Clues On Iraq?
The folks over at CrowdStrike have dug deep into a campaign of targeted cyber attacks targeting Washington D.C. think tanks and say they have evidence that whomever is behind the attacks has taken a sudden interest in U.S. policy towards Iraq. Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include comments from Adam Meyers, Vice President of Security Intelligence at CrowdStrike. – PFR July 8, 2014 14:30 Writing on Tuesday, CrowdStrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch described a new campaign by a group they dubbed “DEEP PANDA” that was targeting think tanks specializing on U.S. foreign policy and national security. Alperovitch said CrowdStrike observed a pronounced shift in targets from think tank experts on Asia to experts on Iraq and the Middle East in recent weeks. The shift corresponded with the rapid escalation of violence in Iraq as the Islamic extremist group ISIS took control of large parts of the country. “This actor, who was engaged in […]
