SMS Trojan

More Supply Chain Woes: DeathRing Is Factory-Loaded Smartphone Malware

The folks over at Lookout Security have an interesting blog piece on “DeathRing,” a Chinese Trojan that comes pre-installed on a number of smartphones most popular in Asian and African countries. According to the bulletin, the Trojan masquerades as a ringtone app, but downloads an SMS and WAP (or “wireless access protocol” ) content from a command and control server to the victim’s phone once it is installed. That downloaded content can be used for various malicious, money-making schemes, according to Lookout. For example, DeathRing can use the SMS content to send phishing text messages to the phone to elicit sensitive information from the user. The WAP content to manipulate a mobile user’s web browsing session. For example: the attackers might prompt victims to download additional mobile applications or add-ons, potentially extending their reach over the victim’s device and data. [Read more Security Ledger coverage of supply chain risks.] Lookout […]

NSA Toolbox Included Hacks For Juniper, Cisco, Dell

The German magazine Der Spiegel made headlines this week with its story detailing the US National Security Agency’s (NSAs) offensive hacking capabilities. The story is based on classified NSA documents absconded with by former contractor Edward Snowden and lays bare a Webster’s Dictionary full of classified hacking tools and programs.   Among the highlights of the story: + The NSA developed and deployed a wide range of hacking tools that could compromise hardware from leading IT and networking equipment makers including Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and the Chinese vendor Huawei and Dell Inc.   + The NSA tools were designed to provide persistent access that allowed the NSA to monitor activity on the compromised endpoint, avoid detection by third party security software and survive software and firmware updates. One such tool, DEITYBOUNCE, provided persistent access to Dell’s PowerEdge servers by “exploiting the system BIOS” and using “System Management Mode to […]

mark stanislav duo security

Prediction: Rough Road Ahead in 2014 For Security and Internet of Things

With the New Year fast approaching, it’s (unofficially) ‘prediction season,’ when everyone worth their salt stares into the crystal ball and tries to imagine what the world will look like 12 months hence. To sort through our 2014 predictions, we called on Mark Stanislav, the chief Security Evangelist at Duo Security. Mark is a seasoned security researcher who has taken an interest in the security of the Internet of Things. Earlier this year, we wrote about research Mark did on the IZON Camera, an IP-enabled home surveillance camera that is sold by big-box retail stores like Best Buy, as well as by the Apple Store. Beneath the IZON’s polished exterior, the IZON was a mess of sloppy coding and poor security implementation, Stanislav discovered. Like many IoT devices, IZON cameras punted security to those responsible for the wireless network that it was deployed on – essentially trusting any connection from […]

BadNews Android Applications

New Mobile Malware Taps Ad Networks To Spread

It was only a couple weeks back that we wrote about new research from the folks at WhiteHat Security that posited a way for mobile ad networks to be gamed and used to distribute malicious code. Now it looks as if the bad guys were one step ahead, as researchers at Palo Alto Networks reveal new type of malicious Android malware that uses mobile ad networks to infect vulnerable devices. Palo Alto described the new, malicious mobile software, dubbed “Dplug,” in a blog post on Monday. The company said the malware authors appear to be leveraging second tier mobile ad networks, mostly in Russia and the former Soviet Republics), to distribute their wares. The Dplug malware takes advantage of the deep integration between mobile applications and mobile advertising networks to gain a foothold on infected devices, then send out messages to premium SMS services to generate money for the fraudsters, according […]

BadNews Android Applications

Update: Google Says BadNews Malware Not-So-Bad After All?

Editor’s Note: Updated to add comments from Lookout Mobile Security. – PFR  6/10/2013 When reports surfaced about “BadNews,” a new family of mobile malware that affected Google Android devices the news sounded…well…bad. BadNews was described as a new kind of mobile malware for the Android platform-one that harness mobile ad networks to push out malicious links, harvest information on compromised devices and more. Now, six weeks later, a senior member of Google’s Android security team claims that BadNews wasn’t really all that bad, after all. Speaking at an event in Washington D.C. sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission, Google employee and Android team member Adrian Ludwig threw cold water on reports linking BadNews to sites that installed malicious programs. The search giant, he said, had not found any evidence linking BadNews to so-called SMS “toll fraud” malware. “We’ve observed the app(lication) and we’ve reviewed all the logs we have access […]