Tag: vulnerabilities

Study Finds Unrelenting Cyber Attacks Against China’s Uyghurs

A group representing the Uyghurs,a  persecuted religious minority in China, faces unrelenting, targeted cyber attacks that appear aimed at stealing sensitive data and otherwise undermining the group’s activity, according to a new study by researchers at Northeastern University in Boston as well as the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and the National University of Singapore.   A study of more than 1,400 suspicious email messages sent to members of groups representing the Uyghur minority found that more than three quarters of the messages contained malicious attachments. The messages targeted 724 individuals at 108 separate organizations. Moreover, researchers found overlap between the individuals associated with the Uyghur World Contress (UWC) and western targets such as the New York Times and U.S. embassies. The study, “A Look at Targeted Attacks Through the Lense of an NGO” is being presented at the UNENIX Security Conference in San Diego on August 21. (A copy of the full paper is […]

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Punch Out: Security Holes In Time Clock Bite TSA, Others

A common time clock that is used by companies and government agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) contains pre-programmed “back door” user accounts that could allow malicious attackers to gain access to sensitive networks, according to research by a security researcher at Qualys Inc. Speaking before an audience at the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Billy Rios, the Director of Threat Intelligence at Qualys Inc., revealed research on the Kronos 4500, a “time and attendance” product (aka time clock) that employees use to ‘punch in’ and ‘punch out’ from work. Rios said that an in-depth analysis of the Kronos equipment and the software that it runs revealed two types of backdoor accounts (user names and passwords) that will provide access to any deployed 4500 device. The accounts are particularly worrying because some vulnerable devices can be discovered using Internet searches, and because TSA is known to use Kronos attendance […]

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Vulnerable Mobile Software Management Tool Reaches Into IoT

You could be forgiven for never having heard of Red Bend Software. The company is small – just 250 employees- and privately held. Red Bend’s headquarters is a suite of offices in a nondescript office park in Waltham, Massachusetts, just off Route 128 – America’s “Silicon Highway.” But the company’s small profile belies a big footprint in the world of mobile devices. Since 2005, more than 2 billion devices running the company’s mobile management software have been sold worldwide. Today, the Red Bend is believed to control between 70 and 90 percent of the market for mobile software management (MSM) technology, which carriers use to service mobile devices. The software enables mobile carriers to do critical tasks, including firmware-over-the-air (FOTA) software updates, mobile device configuration and other on-device changes.  Red Bend counts many of the world’s leading companies in the mobile, enterprise and manufacturing sectors as clients, including Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp, LG, Sony, Huawei, China Mobile and Lenovo. For the most part, Red […]

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Dan Geer’s Other Keynote: Embedded Devices Need A Time To Die

With the Black Hat Conference well under way and DEFCON starting later this week, the security world’s attention will turn to Las Vegas, where some of the cyber security industry’s top researchers and thinkers will be holding court. One of the most anticipated talks is the Black Hat Briefings opening keynote. This year, the honor goes to none other than Dr. Dan Geer, the CISO of In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the U.S. intelligence sector. Geer’s talk  on Wednesday, August 6, 2014 is entitled “Cybersecurity as Realpolitik.” In anticipation of Dr. Geer’s Black Hat, we’re releasing another recent talk he gave: this one a keynote speech at our May, 2014 Security of Things Forum in Cambridge, MA. In this talk, Dan focused on the security of embedded devices and the fast-emerging Internet of Things. (A full transcript of the talk is available here.) “The embedded systems space, already bigger than what is normally thought of as […]

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Report: CIA Fears the Internet of Things | Nextgov.com

A story by Patrick Tucker over at Nextgov.com picks up on some comments from Dawn Meyerriecks, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s directorate of science and technology regarding the agency’s thinking about the Internet of Things. Meyerriecks was speaking at The Aspen Institute’s Security Forum on Thursday of last week in a panel on “The Future of Warfare.” Speaking about the topic of cyber warfare, she said that current debates about the shape of cyber war don’t address the “looming geo-security threats posed by the Internet of Things.” Meyerriecks cited the now-debunked Proofpoint report about smart refrigerators being used in spam and distributed denial of service attacks.” She also mentioned “smart fluorescent LEDs [that are] are communicating that they need to be replaced but are also being hijacked for other things.” Those might be some sensational (and dubious) examples, but Meyerriecks main point was more pedestrian: that we’re on the cusp of disruptive […]

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