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Microsoft today released updates to fix more than 60 security holes in Windows computers and supported software, including two “zero-day” vulnerabilities in Windows that are already being exploited in active attacks. There are also important security patches available for macOS and Adobe users, and for the Chrome Web browser, which just patched its own zero-day flaw.
First, the zero-days. CVE-2024-30051 is an “elevation of privilege” bug in a core Windows library. Satnam Narang at Tenable said this flaw is being used as part of post-compromise activity to elevate privileges as a local attacker.
“CVE-2024-30051 is used to gain initial access into a target environment and requires the use of social engineering tactics via email, social media or instant messaging to convince a target to open a specially crafted document file,” Narang said. “Once exploited, the attacker can bypass OLE mitigations in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office, which are security features designed to protect end users from malicious files.”
Kaspersky Lab, one of two companies credited with reporting exploitation of CVE-2024-30051 to Microsoft, has published a fascinating writeup on how they discovered the exploit in a file shared with Virustotal.com.
Kaspersky said it has since seen the exploit used together with QakBot and other malware. Emerging in 2007 as a banking trojan, QakBot (a.k.a. Qbot and Pinkslipbot) has morphed into an advanced malware strain now used by multiple cybercriminal groups to prepare newly compromised networks for ransomware infestations.
CVE-2024-30040 is a security feature bypass in MSHTML, a component that is deeply tied to the default Web browser on Windows systems. Microsoft’s advisory on this flaw is fairly sparse, but Kevin Breen from Immersive Labs said this vulnerability also affects Office 365 and Microsoft Office applications.
“Very little information is provided and the short description is painfully obtuse,” Breen said of Microsoft’s advisory on CVE-2024-30040.
The only vulnerability fixed this month that earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating is CVE-2024-30044, a flaw in Sharepoint that Microsoft said is likely to be exploited. Tenable’s Narang notes that exploitation of this bug requires an attacker to be authenticated to a vulnerable SharePoint Server with Site Owner permissions (or higher) first and to take additional steps in order to exploit this flaw, which makes this flaw less likely to be widely exploited as most attackers follow the path of least resistance.
Five days ago, Google released a security update for Chrome that fixes a zero-day in the popular browser. Chrome usually auto-downloads any available updates, but it still may require a complete restart of the browser to install them. If you use Chrome and see a “Relaunch to update” message in the upper right corner of the browser, it’s time to restart.
Apple has just shipped macOS Sonoma 14.5 update, which includes nearly two dozen security patches. To ensure your Mac is up-to-date, go to System Settings, General tab, then Software Update and follow any prompts.
Finally, Adobe has critical security patches available for a range of products, including Acrobat, Reader, Illustrator, Adobe Substance 3D Painter, Adobe Aero, Adobe Animate and Adobe Framemaker.
Regardless of whether you use a Mac or Windows system (or something else), it’s always a good idea to backup your data and or system before applying any security updates. For a closer look at the individual fixes released by Microsoft today, check out the complete list over at the SANS Internet Storm Center. Anyone in charge of maintaining Windows systems in an enterprise environment should keep an eye on askwoody.com, which usually has the scoop on any wonky Windows patches.
Update, May 15, 8:28 a.m.: Corrected misattribution of CVE-2024-30051.
Photo: BrandonKleinPhoto / Shutterstock.com
Two U.S. men have been charged with hacking into the Ring home security cameras of a dozen random people and then “swatting” them — falsely reporting a violent incident at the target’s address to trick local police into responding with force. Prosecutors say the duo used the compromised Ring devices to stream live video footage on social media of police raiding their targets’ homes, and to taunt authorities when they arrived.
Prosecutors in Los Angeles allege 20-year-old James Thomas Andrew McCarty, a.k.a. “Aspertaine,” of Charlotte, N.C., and Kya Christian Nelson, a.k.a. “ChumLul,” 22, of Racine, Wisc., conspired to hack into Yahoo email accounts belonging to victims in the United States. From there, the two allegedly would check how many of those Yahoo accounts were associated with Ring accounts, and then target people who used the same password for both accounts.
An indictment unsealed this week says that in the span of just one week in November 2020, McCarty and Nelson identified and swatted at least a dozen different victims across the country.
“The defendants then allegedly accessed without authorization the victims’ Ring devices and transmitted the audio and video from those devices on social media during the police response,” reads a statement from Martin Estrada, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. “They also allegedly verbally taunted responding police officers and victims through the Ring devices during several of the incidents.”
James Thomas Andrew McCarty.
The indictment charges that McCarty continued his swatting spree in 2021 from his hometown in Kayenta, Ariz., where he called in bomb threats or phony hostage situations on more than two dozen occasions.
The Telegram and Discord aliases allegedly used by McCarty — “Aspertaine” and “Couch,” among others — correspond to an identity that was active in certain channels dedicated to SIM-swapping, a crime that involves stealing wireless phone numbers and hijacking the online financial and social media accounts tied to those numbers.
Aspertaine bragged on Discord that he’d amassed more than $330,000 in virtual currency. On Telegram, the Aspertaine/Couch alias frequented several popular SIM-swapping channels, where they initially were active as a “holder” — a SIM-swapping group member who agrees to hold SIM cards used in the heist after an account takeover is completed. Aspertaine later claimed more direct involvement in individual SIM-swapping attacks.
In September, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news about a wide-ranging federal investigation into “violence-as-a-service” offerings on Telegram and other social media networks, wherein people can settle scores by hiring total strangers to carry out physical attacks such as brickings, shootings, and firebombings at a target’s address.
The story observed that SIM swappers were especially enamored of these “IRL” or “In Real Life” violence services, which they frequently used to target one another in response to disagreements over how stolen money should be divided amongst themselves. And a number of Aspertaine’s peers on these SIM-swapping channels claimed they’d been ripped off after Aspertaine took more than a fair share from them.
In August, a member of a popular SIM-swapping group on Telegram who was slighted by Aspertaine put out the word that he was looking for some physical violence to be visited on McCarty’s address in North Carolina. “Anyone live near here and wants to [do] a job for me,” the job ad with McCarty’s home address read. “Jobs range from $1k-$50k. Payment in BTC [bitcoin].” It’s unclear if anyone responded to that job offer.
Ring, Inc., which is owned by Amazon, said it learned bad actors used stolen customer email credentials obtained from external (non-Ring) services to access other accounts, and took immediate steps to help those customers secure their Ring accounts.
“We also supported the FBI in identifying the individuals responsible,” the company said in a written statement. “We take the security of our customers extremely seriously — that’s why we made two-step verification mandatory, conduct regular scans for Ring passwords compromised in non-Ring breaches, and continually invest in new security protections to harden our systems. We are committed to continuing to protect our customers and vigorously going after those who seek to harm them.”
KrebsOnSecurity recently published The Wages of Password ReUse: Your Money or Your Life, which noted that when normal computer users fall into the nasty habit of recycling passwords, the result is most often some type of financial loss. Whereas, when cybercriminals reuse passwords, it often costs them their freedom.
But perhaps that story should be updated, because it’s now clear that password reuse can also put you in mortal danger. Swatting attacks are dangerous, expensive hoaxes that sometimes end in tragedy.
In June 2021, an 18-year-old serial swatter from Tennessee was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a fraudulent swatting attack that led to the death of a 60-year-old man.
In 2019, prosecutors handed down a 20-year sentence to Tyler Barriss, a then 26-year-old serial swatter from California who admitted making a phony emergency call to police in late 2017 that led to the shooting death of an innocent Kansas man.
McCarty was arrested last week, and charged with conspiracy to intentionally access computers without authorization. Prosecutors said Nelson is currently incarcerated in Kentucky in connection with unrelated investigation.
If convicted on the conspiracy charge, both defendants would face a statutory maximum penalty of five years in federal prison. The charge of intentionally accessing without authorization a computer carries a maximum possible sentence of five years. A conviction on the additional charge against Nelson — aggravated identity theft — carries a mandatory two-year consecutive sentence.
Update, 11:48 a.m., Dec. 20: Added statement from Ring. Modified description of a “holder” in the SIM-swapping parlance.
AMLBot, a service that helps businesses avoid transacting with cryptocurrency wallets that have been sanctioned for cybercrime activity, said an investigation published by KrebsOnSecurity last year helped it shut down three dark web services that secretly resold its technology to help cybercrooks avoid detection by anti-money laundering systems.
Antinalysis, as it existed in 2021.
In August 2021, KrebsOnSecurity published “New Anti Anti-Money Laundering Services for Crooks,” which examined Antinalysis, a service marketed on cybercrime forums that purported to offer a glimpse of how one’s payment activity might be flagged by law enforcement agencies and private companies that track and trace cryptocurrency transactions.
“Worried about dirty funds in your BTC address? Come check out Antinalysis, the new address risk analyzer,” read the service’s opening announcement. “This service is dedicated to individuals that have the need to possess complete privacy on the blockchain, offering a perspective from the opponent’s point of view in order for the user to comprehend the possibility of his/her funds getting flagged down under autocratic illegal charges.”
Antinalysis allows free lookups, but anyone wishing to conduct bulk look-ups has to pay at least USD $3, with a minimum $30 purchase. Other plans go for as high as $6,000 for 5,000 requests. Nick Bax, a security researcher who specializes in tracing cryptocurrency transactions, told KrebsOnSecurity at the time that Antinalysis was likely a clone of AMLBot because the two services generated near-identical results.
AMLBot shut down Antinalysis’s access just hours after last year’s story went live. However, Antinalysis[.]org remains online and accepting requests, as does the service’s Tor-based domain, and it is unclear how those services are sourcing their information.
AMLBot spokesperson Polina Smoliar said the company undertook a thorough review after that discovery, and in the process found two other services similar to Antinalysis that were reselling their application programming interface (API) access to cybercrooks.
Smoliar said that following the revelations about Antinalysis, AMLBot audited its entire client base, and implemented the ability to provide APIs only after a contract is signed and the client has been fully audited. AMLBot said it also instituted 24/7 monitoring of all client transactions.
“As a result of these actions, two more services with the name AML (the same as AMLBot has) were found to be involved in fraudulent schemes,” Smoliar said. “Information about the fraudsters was also sent to key market participants, and their transaction data was added to the tracking database to better combat money laundering.”
Experts say the founder of Antinalysis also runs a darknet market for narcotics.
The Antinalysis homepage and chatter on the cybercrime forums indicates the service was created by a group of coders known as the Incognito Team. Tom Robinson, co-founder of the blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic, said the creator of Antinalysis is also one of the developers of Incognito Market, a darknet marketplace specializing in the sale of narcotics.
“Incognito was launched in late 2020, and accepts payments in both Bitcoin and Monero, a cryptoasset offering heightened anonymity,” Robinson said. “The launch of Antinalysis likely reflects the difficulties faced by the market and its vendors in cashing out their Bitcoin proceeds.”
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