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ConnectWise, which offers a self-hosted, remote desktop software application that is widely used by Managed Service Providers (MSPs), is warning about an unusually sophisticated phishing attack that can let attackers take remote control over user systems when recipients click the included link. The warning comes just weeks after the company quietly patched a vulnerability that makes it easier for phishers to launch these attacks.
A phishing attack targeting MSP customers using ConnectWise.
ConnectWise Control is extremely popular among MSPs that manage, protect and service large numbers of computers remotely for client organizations. Their product provides a dynamic software client and hosted server that connects two or more computers together, and provides temporary or persistent remote access to those client systems.
When a support technician wants to use it to remotely administer a computer, the ConnectWise website generates an executable file that is digitally signed by ConnectWise and downloadable by the client via a hyperlink.
When the remote user in need of assistance clicks the link, their computer is then directly connected to the computer of the remote administrator, who can then control the client’s computer as if they were seated in front of it.
While modern Microsoft Windows operating systems by default will ask users whether they want to run a downloaded executable file, many systems set up for remote administration by MSPs disable that user account control feature for this particular application.
In October, security researcher Ken Pyle alerted ConnectWise that their client executable file gets generated based on client-controlled parameters. Meaning, an attacker could craft a ConnectWise Control client download link that would bounce or proxy the remote connection from the MSP’s servers to a server that the attacker controls.
This is dangerous because many organizations that rely on MSPs to manage their computers often set up their networks so that only remote assistance connections coming from their MSP’s networks are allowed.
Using a free ConnectWise trial account, Pyle showed the company how easy it was to create a client executable that is cryptographically signed by ConnectWise and can bypass those network restrictions by bouncing the connection through an attacker’s ConnectWise Control server.
“You as the attacker have full control over the link’s parameters, and that link gets injected into an executable file that is downloaded by the client through an unauthenticated Web interface,” said Pyle, a partner and exploit developer at the security firm Cybir. “I can send this link to a victim, they will click this link, and their workstation will connect back to my instance via a link on your site.”
A composite of screenshots researcher Ken Pyle put together to illustrate the ScreenConnect vulnerability.
On Nov. 29, roughly the same time Pyle published a blog post about his findings, ConnectWise issued an advisory warning users to be on guard against a new round email phishing attempts that mimic legitimate email alerts the company sends when it detects unusual activity on a customer account.
“We are aware of a phishing campaign that mimics ConnectWise Control New Login Alert emails and has the potential to lead to unauthorized access to legitimate Control instances,” the company said.
ConnectWise said it released software updates last month that included new protections against the misdirection vulnerability that Pyle reported. But the company said there is no reason to believe the phishers they warned about are exploiting any of the issues reported by Pyle.
“Our team quickly triaged the report and determined the risk to partners to be minimal,” said Patrick Beggs, ConnectWise’s chief information security officer. “Nevertheless, the mitigation was simple and presented no risk to partner experience, so we put it into the then-stable 22.8 build and the then-canary 22.9 build, which were released as part of our normal release processes. Due to the low severity of the issue, we didn’t (and don’t plan to) issue a security advisory or alert, since we reserve those notifications for serious security issues.”
Beggs said the phishing attacks that sparked their advisory stemmed from an instance that was not hosted by ConnectWise.
“So we can confirm they are unrelated,” he said. “Unfortunately, phishing attacks happen far too regularly across a variety of industries and products. The timing of our advisory and Mr. Pyle’s blog were coincidental. That said, we’re all for raising more awareness of the seriousness of phishing attacks and the general importance of staying alert and aware of potentially dangerous content.”
The ConnectWise advisory warned users that before clicking any link that appears to come from their service, users should validate the content includes “domains owned by trusted sources,” and “links to go to places you recognize.”
But Pyle said this advice is not terribly useful for customers targeted in his attack scenario because the phishers can send emails directly from ConnectWise, and the short link that gets presented to the user is a wildcard domain that ends in ConnectWise Control’s own domain name — screenconnect.com. What’s more, examining the exceedingly long link generated by ConnectWise’s systems offers few insights to the average user.
“It’s signed by ConnectWise and comes from them, and if you sign up for a free trial instance, you can email people invites directly from them,” Pyle said.
ConnectWise’s warnings come amid breach reports from another major provider of remote support technologies: GoTo disclosed on Nov. 30 that it is investigating a security incident involving “unusual activity within our development environment and third-party cloud storage services. The third-party cloud storage service is currently shared by both GoTo and its affiliate, the password manager service LastPass.
In its own advisory on the incident, LastPass said they believe the intruders leveraged information stolen during a previous intrusion in August 2022 to gain access to “certain elements of our customers’ information.” However, LastPass maintains that its “customer passwords remain safely encrypted due to LastPass’s Zero Knowledge architecture.”
In short, that architecture means if you lose or forget your all-important master LastPass password — the one needed to unlock access to all of your other passwords stored with them — LastPass can’t help you with that, because they don’t store it. But that same architecture theoretically means that hackers who might break into LastPass’s networks can’t access that information either.
Update, 7:25 p.m. ET: Included statement from ConnectWise CISO.
Intruders broke into a third-party cloud storage service LastPass shares with affiliate company GoTo and gained access to "certain elements" of customers' information, the pair have confirmed.…
Even with the holidays in full swing, scammers won’t let up. In fact, it’s high time for some of their nastiest cons as people travel, donate to charities, and simply try to enjoy their time with friends and family.
Unfortunate as it is, scammers see this time of year as a tremendous opportunity to profit. While people focus giving to others, they focus on taking, propping up all manner of scams that use the holidays as a disguise. So as people move quickly about their day, perhaps with a touch of holiday stress in the mix, they hope to catch people off their guard with scams that wrap themselves in holiday trappings.
Yet once you know what to look for, they’re relatively easy to spot. The same scams roll out every year, sometimes changing in appearance yet remaining the same in substance. With a sharp eye, you can steer clear of them.
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the books, we can look forward to what’s next—a wave of post-holiday sales events that will likewise draw in millions of online shoppers. And just like those other big shopping days, bad actors will roll out a host of scams aimed at unsuspecting shoppers. Shopping scams take on several forms, which makes this a topic unto itself, one that we cover thoroughly in our Black Friday & Cyber Monday shopping scams blog. It’s worth a read if you haven’t done so already, as digs into the details of these scams and shows how you can avoid them.
However, the high-level advice for avoiding shopping scams is this: keep your eyes open. Deals that look too good to be true likely are, and shopping with retailers you haven’t heard of before requires a little bit of research to determine if their track record is clean. In the U.S., you can turn to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) for help with a listing of retailers you can search simply by typing in their names. You can also use https://whois.domaintools.com to look up the web address of the shopping site you want to research. There you can see its history and see when it was registered. A site that was registered only recently may be far less reputable than one that’s been registered for some time.
Plenty of new tech makes its way into our homes during the holiday season. And some of that tech can be a little challenging to set up. Be careful when you search for help online. Many scammers will establish phony tech support sites that aim to steal funds and credit card information. Go directly to the product manufacturer for help. Often, manufacturers will offer free support as part of the product warranty, so if you see a site advertising support for a fee, that could be a sign of a scam.
Likewise, scammers will reach out to you themselves. Whether through links from unsolicited emails, pop-up ads from risky sites, or by spammy phone calls, these scammers will pose as tech support from reputable brands. From there, they’ll falsely inform you that there’s something urgently wrong with your device and that you need to get it fixed right now—for a fee. Ignore these messages and don’t click on any links or attachments. Again, if you have concerns about your device, contact the manufacturer directly.
With the holidays comes travel, along with all the online booking and ticketing involved. Scammers will do their part to cash in here as well. Travel scams may include bogus emails that pose as reputable travel sites telling you something’s wrong with your booking. Clicking a link takes you to a similarly bogus site that asks for your credit card information to update the booking—which then passes it along to the scammer so they can rack up charges in your name. Other travel scams involve ads for cut-rate lodging, tours, airfare, and the like, all of which are served up on a phony website that only exists to steal credit card numbers and other personal information.
Some of these scams can look quite genuine, even though they’re not. They’ll use cleverly disguised web addresses that look legitimate, but aren’t, so don’t click any links. If you receive notice about an issue with your holiday travel, contact the company directly to follow up. Also, be wary of ads with unusually deep discounts or that promise availability in an otherwise busy season or time. These could be scams, so stick with reputable booking sites or with the websites maintained by hotels and travel providers themselves.
Donations to an organization or cause that’s close to someone’s heart make for a great holiday gift, just as they offer you a way to give back during the holiday season. And you guessed it, scammers will take advantage of this too. They’ll set up phony charities and apply tactics that pressure you into giving. As with so many scams out there, any time an email, text, direct message, or site urges you into immediate action—take pause. Research the charity. See how long they’ve been in operation, how they put their funds to work, and who truly benefits from them.
Likewise, note that there some charities pass along more money to their beneficiaries than others. As a general rule of thumb, most reputable organizations only keep 25% or less of their funds for operations, while some less-than-reputable organizations keep up to 95% of funds, leaving only 5% for advancing the cause they advocate. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a site full of resources so that you can make your donation truly count. Resources like Charity Watch and Charity Navigator, along with the BBB’s Wise Giving Alliance can also help you identify the best charities.
The holidays also mean a flight of big-time sporting events, and with the advent of online betting in many regions scammers want to cash in. This scam works quite like shopping scams, where bad actors will set up online betting sites that look legitimate. They’ll take your bet, but if you win, they won’t pay out. Per the U.S. Better Business Bureau (BBB), the scam plays out like this:
“You place a bet, and, at first, everything seems normal. But as soon as you try to cash out your winnings, you find you can’t withdraw a cent. Scammers will make up various excuses. For example, they may claim technical issues or insist on additional identity verification. In other cases, they may require you to deposit even more money before you can withdraw your winnings. Whatever you do, you’ll never be able to get your money off the site. And any personal information you shared is now in the hands of scam artists.”
You can avoid these sites rather easily. Stick with the online betting sites that are approved by your regional gambling commission. Even so, be sure to read the fine print on any promo offers that these sites advertise because even legitimate betting sites can freeze accounts and the funds associated with them based on their terms and conditions.
A complete suite of online protection software, such as McAfee+ Ultimate can offer layers of extra security. In addition to more private and secure time online with a VPN, identity monitoring, and password management, it includes web browser protection that can block malicious and suspicious links that could lead you down the road to malware or a phishing scam—which antivirus protection can’t do alone. Additionally, we offer $1M identity theft coverage and support from a recovery pro, just in case.
And because scammers use personal information such as email addresses and cell phone numbers to wage their attacks, other features like our Personal Data Cleanup service can scan high-risk data broker sites for your personal information and then help you remove it, which can help reduce spam, phishing attacks, and deny bad actors the information they need to commit identity theft.
That’s why they enjoy the holidays so much. With all our giving, travel, and charity in play, it’s prime time for their scams. Yet a little insight into their cons, along with some knowledge as to how they play out, you can avoid them.
Remember that they’re playing into the hustle and bustle of the season and that they’re counting on you to lower your guard more than you might during other times of the year. Keep an eye open for the signs, do a little research when it’s called for, and stick with reputable stores, charities, and online services. With a thoughtful pause and a second look, you can spare yourself the grief of a scam and fully enjoy your holidays.
The post Unwrapping Some of the Holiday Season’s Biggest Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.
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Authored by SangRyol Ryu and Yukihiro Okutomi
McAfee’s Mobile Research team recently analyzed new malware targeting mobile payment users in Japan. The malware which was distributed on the Google Play store pretends to be a legitimate mobile security app, but it is in fact a payment fraud malware stealing passwords and abusing reverse proxy targeting the mobile payment services. McAfee researchers notified Google of the malicious apps, スマホ安心セキュリティ, or ‘Smartphone Anshin Security’, package name ‘com.z.cloud.px.app’ and ‘com.z.px.appx’. The applications are no longer available on Google Play. Google Play Protect has also taken steps to protect users by disabling the apps and providing a warning. McAfee Mobile Security products detect this threat as Android/ProxySpy.
The malware actor continues to publish malicious apps on the Google Play Store with various developer accounts. According to the information posted on Twitter by Yusuke Osumi, Security Researcher at Yahoo! Japan, the attacker sends SMS messages from overseas with a Google Play link to lure users to install the malware. To attract more users, the message entices users to update security software.
A SMS message from France (from Twitter post by Yusuke)
Malware on Google Play
The Mobile Research team also found that the malware actor uses Google Drive to distribute the malware. In contrast to installing an application after downloading an APK file, Google Drive allows users to install APK files without leaving any footprint and makes the installation process simpler. Once the user clicks the link, there are only a few more touches required to run the application. Only three clicks are enough if users have previously allowed the installation of unknown apps on Google Drive.
Following notification from McAfee researchers, Google has removed known Google Drive files associated with the malware hashes listed in this blog post.
When a user installs and launches this malware, it asks for the Service password. Cleverly, the malware shows incorrect password messages to collect the more precise passwords. Of course, it does not matter whether the password is correct or not. It is a way of getting the Service password. The Service password is used for the payment service which provides easy online payments. The user can start this payment service by setting a Service password. The charge will be paid along with the mobile phone bill.
There is a native library named ‘libmyapp.so’ loaded during the app execution written in Golang. The library, when loaded, tries to connect to the C2 server using a Web Socket. Web Application Messaging Protocol (WAMP) is used to communicate and process Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). When the connection is made, the malware sends out network information along with the phone number. Then, it registers the client’s procedure commands described in the table below. The web socket connection is kept alive and takes the corresponding action when the command is received from the server like an Agent. And the socket is used to send the Service password out to the attacker when the user enters the Service password on the activity.
| RPC Function name | Description |
| connect_to | Create reverse proxy and connect to remote server |
| disconnect | Disconnect the reverse proxy |
| get_status | Send the reverse proxy status |
| get_info | Send line number, connection type, operator, and so on |
| toggle_wifi | Set the Wi-Fi ON/OFF |
| show_battery_opt | Show dialog to exclude battery optimization for background work |
Registered RPC functions description
To make a fraudulent purchase by using leaked information, the attacker needs to use the user’s network. The RPC command ‘toggle_wifi’ can switch the connection state to Wi-Fi or cellular network, and ‘connect_to’ will provide a reverse proxy to the attacker. A reverse proxy can allow connecting the host behind a NAT (Network Address Translation) or a firewall. Via the proxy, the attacker can send purchase requests via the user’s network.
It is an interesting point that the malware uses a reverse proxy to steal the user’s network and implement an Agent service with WAMP. McAfee Mobile Research Team will continue to find this kind of threat and protect our customers from mobile threats. It is recommended to be more careful when entering a password or confidential information into untrusted applications.
193[.]239[.]154[.]23
91[.]204[.]227[.]132
ruboq[.]com
| SHA256 | Package Name | Distribution |
| 5d29dd12faaafd40300752c584ee3c072d6fc9a7a98a357a145701aaa85950dd | com.z.cloud.px.app | Google Play |
| e133be729128ed6764471ee7d7c36f2ccb70edf789286cc3a834e689432fc9b0 | com.z.cloud.px.app | Other |
| e7948392903e4c8762771f12e2d6693bf3e2e091a0fc88e91b177a58614fef02 | com.z.px.appx | Google Play |
| 3971309ce4a3cfb3cdbf8abde19d46586f6e4d5fc9f54c562428b0e0428325ad | com.z.cloud.px.app2 | Other |
| 2ec2fb9e20b99f60a30aaa630b393d8277949c34043ebe994dd0ffc7176904a4 | com.jg.rc.papp | Google Drive |
| af0d2e5e2994a3edd87f6d0b9b9a85fb1c41d33edfd552fcc64b43c713cdd956 | com.de.rc.seee | Google Drive |
The post Fake Security App Found Abuses Japanese Payment System appeared first on McAfee Blog.
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Cisco supports the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework and is a launch partner of AWS Security Lake
The Cisco Secure Technical Alliance supports the open ecosystem and AWS is a valued technology alliance partner, with integrations across the Cisco Secure portfolio, including SecureX, Secure Firewall, Secure Cloud Analytics, Duo, Umbrella, Web Security Appliance, Secure Workload, Secure Endpoint, Identity Services Engine, and more.
We are proud to be a launch partner of AWS Security Lake, which allows customers to build a security data lake from integrated cloud and on-premises data sources as well as from their private applications. With support for the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) standard, Security Lake reduces the complexity and costs for customers to make their security solutions data accessible to address a variety of security use cases such as threat detection, investigation, and incident response. Security Lake helps organizations aggregate, manage, and derive value from log and event data in the cloud and on-premises to give security teams greater visibility across their organizations.
With Security Lake, customers can use the security and analytics solutions of their choice to simply query that data in place or ingest the OCSF-compliant data to address further use cases. Security Lake helps customers optimize security log data retention by optimizing the partitioning of data to improve performance and reduce costs. Now, analysts and engineers can easily build and use a centralized security data lake to improve the protection of workloads, applications, and data.
Cisco Secure Firewall serves as an organization’s centralized source of security information. It uses advanced threat detection to flag and act on malicious ingress, egress, and east-west traffic while its logging capabilities store information on events, threats, and anomalies. By integrating Secure Firewall with AWS Security Lake, through Secure Firewall Management Center, organizations will be able to store firewall logs in a structured and scalable manner.
The eNcore client provides a way to tap into message-oriented protocol to stream events and host profile information from the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. The eNcore client can request event and host profile data from a Management Center, and intrusion event data only from a managed device. The eNcore application initiates the data stream by submitting request messages, which specify the data to be sent, and then controls the message flow from the Management Center or managed device after streaming begins.
These messages are mapped to OCSF Network Activity events using a series of transformations embedded in the eNcore code base, acting as both author and mapper personas in the OCSF schema workflow. Once validated with an internal OCSF schema the messages are then written to two sources, first a local JSON formatted file in a configurable directory path, and second compressed parquet files partitioned by event hour in the S3 Amazon Security Lake source bucket. The S3 directories contain the formatted log are crawled hourly and the results are stored in an AWS Security Lake database. From there you can get a visual of the schema definitions extracted by the AWS Glue Crawler, identify fieldnames, data types, and other metadata associated with your network activity events. Event logs can also be queried using Amazon Athena to visualize log data.
To utilize the eNcore client with AWS Security Lake, first go to the Cisco public GitHub repository for Firepower eNcore, OCSF branch.
Download and run the cloud formation script eNcoreCloudFormation.yaml.
The Cloud Formation script will prompt for additional fields needed in the creation process, they are as follows:
Cidr Block: IP Address range for the provisioned client, defaults to the range shown below
Instance Type: The ec2 instance size, defaults to t2.medium
KeyName A pem key file that will permit access to the instance
AmazonSecurityLakeBucketForCiscoURI: The S3 location of your Data Lake S3 container.
FMC IP: IP or Domain Name of the Cisco Secure Firewall Mangement Portal
After the Cloud Formation setup is complete it can take anywhere from 3-5 minutes to provision resources in your environment, the cloud formation console provides a detailed view of all the resources generated from the cloud formation script as shown below.
Once the ec2 instance for the eNcore client is ready, we need to whitelist the client IP address in our Secure Firewall Server and generate a certificate file for secure endpoint communication.
In the Secure Firewall Dashboard, navigate to Search->eStreamer, to find the allow list of Client IP Addresses that are permitted to receive data, click Add and supply the Client IP Address that was provisioned for our ec2 instance. You will also be asked to supply a password, click Save to create a secure certificate file for your new ec2 instance.
Download the Secure Certificate you just created, and copy it to the /encore directory in your ec2 instance.
Use CloudShell or SSH from your ec2 instance, navigate to the /encore directory and run the command bash encore.sh test
You will be prompted for the certificate password, once that is entered you should see a Successful Communication message as shown below.
Run the command bash encore.sh foreground
This will begin the data relay and ingestion process. We can then navigate to the S3 Amazon Security Lake bucket we configured earlier, to see OCSF compliant logs formatted in gzip parquet files in a time-based directory structure. Additionally, a local representation of logs is available under /encore/data/* that can be used to validate log file creation.
Amazon Security Lake then runs a crawler task every hour to parse and consume the logs files in the target s3 directory, after which we can view the results in Athena Query.
More information on how to configure and tune the encore eStreamer client can be found on our official website, this includes details on how filter certain event types to focus your data retention policy, and guidelines for performance and other detailed configuration settings.
You can participate in the AWS Security Lake public preview. For more information, please visit the Product Page and review the User Guide.
While you are at AWS re:Invent, go see a demo video of the Security Lake integrations in the Cisco Booth #2411, from November 29 to December 2, 2022, at the Cloud, Network and User Security with Duo demo station.
Learn more about Cisco and AWS on the Cisco Secure Technical Alliance website for AWS.
Thank you to Seyed Khadem-Djahaghi, who spend long hours working with the beta to develop this integration and is the primary for developer of eNore.
We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Secure on social!
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