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“Cloud security is simple, absolutely simple. Stop over complicating it.”
This is how I kicked off a presentation I gave at the CyberRisk Alliance, Cloud Security Summit on Apr 17 of this year. And I truly believe that cloud security is simple, but that does not mean easy. You need the right strategy.
As I am often asked about strategies for the cloud, and the complexities that come with it, I decided to share my recent talk with you all. Depending on your preference, you can either watch the video below or read the transcript of my talk that’s posted just below the video. I hope you find it useful and will enjoy it. And, as always, I’d love to hear from you, find me @marknca.
For those of you who prefer to read rather than watch a video, here’s the transcript of my talk:
Cloud security is simple, absolutely simple. Stop over complicating it.
Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “Wait a minute, what is this guy talking about? He is just off his rocker.”
Remember, simple doesn’t mean easy. I think we make things way more complicated than they need to be when it comes to securing the cloud, and this makes our lives a lot harder than they need to be. There’s some massive advantages when it comes to security in the cloud. Primarily, I think we can simplify our security approach because of three major reasons.
The first is integrated identity and access management. All three major cloud providers, AWS, Google and Microsoft offer fantastic identity, and access management systems. These are things that security, and [inaudible 00:00:48] professionals have been clamouring for, for decades.
We finally have this ability, we need to take advantage of it.
The second main area is the shared responsibility model. We’ll cover that more in a minute, but it’s an absolutely wonderful tool to understand your mental model, to realize where you need to focus your security efforts, and the third area that simplifies security for us is the universal application of APIs or application programming interfaces.
These give us as security professionals the ability to orchestrate. and automate a huge amount of the grunt work away. These three things add up to, uh, the ability for us to execute a very sophisticated, uh, or very difficult to pull off, uh, security practice, but one that ultimately is actually pretty simple in its approach.
It’s just all the details are hard and we’re going to use these three advantages to make those details simpler. So, let’s take a step back for a second and look at what our goal is.
What is the goal of cybersecurity? That’s not something you hear quite often as a question.
A lot of the time you’ll hear the definition of cybersecurity is, uh, about, uh, securing the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information or data. The CIA triad, different CIA, but I like to phrase this in a different way. I think the goal is much clearer, and the goal’s much simpler.
It is to make sure that whatever you’re building works as intended and only as intended. Now, you’ll realize you can’t accomplish this goal just as a security team. You need to work with your, uh, developers, you need to work with operations, you need to work with the business units, with the end users of your application as well.
This is a wonderful way of phrasing our goal, and realizing that we’re all in this together to make sure whatever you’re building works as intended, and only as intended.
Now, if we move forward, and we look at who are we up against, who’s preventing our stuff from working, uh, well?
You look at normally, you think of, uh, who’s attacking our systems? Who are the risks? Is it nation states? Is it maybe insider threats? While these are valid threats, they’re really overblown. You’re… don’t have to worry about nation state attacks.
If you’re a nation state, worry about it. If you’re not a nation state, you don’t have to worry about it because frankly, there’s nothing you can do to stop them. You can slow them down a little bit, but by definition, they’re going to get through your resources.
As far as insider attacks, this is an HR problem. Treat your people well. Um, check in with them, and have a strong information management policy in place, and you’re going to reduce this threat naturally. If you go hunting for people, you’re going to create the very threats that you’re looking at.
So, it brings us to the next set. What about cyber criminals? You know, we do have to worry about cyber criminals.
Cyber criminals are targeting systems simply because these systems are online, these are profit motivated criminals who are organized, and have a good set of tools, so we absolutely need to worry about them, but there’s a more insidious or more commonplace, maybe a simpler threat that we need to worry about, and that’s one of mistakes.
The vast majority of issues that happen around data breaches around security vulnerabilities in the cloud are mistake driven. In fact, to the point where I would not even worry about cyber criminals simply because all the work we’re going to do to focus on, uh, preventing mistakes.
And catching, and rectifying the stakes really, really quickly is going to uh, you a cover all the stuff that we would have done to block out cyber criminals as well, so mistakes are very common because people are using a lot more services in the cloud.
You have a lot more, um, parts and moving, uh, complexity in your deployment, um, and you’re going to make a mistake, which is why you need to put automated systems in place to make sure that those mistakes don’t happen, or if they do happen that they’re caught very, very quickly.
This applies to standard DevOps, the philosophies for building. It also applies to security very, very wonderfully, so this is the main thing we’re going to focus on.
So, if we look at that sum up together, we have our goal of making sure whatever we’re building works as intended, and only as intended, and our major issue here, the biggest risk to this is simple mistakes and misconfigurations.
Okay, so we’re not starting from ground zero here. We can learn from others, and the first place we’re going to learn is the shared responsibility model. The shared responsibility applies to all cloud service providers.
If you look on the left hand side of the slide here, you’ll see the traditional on premise model. We roughly have six areas where something has to be done roughly daily, whether it’s patching, maintenance, uh, just operational visibility, monitoring, that kind of thing, and in a traditional on premise environment, you’re responsible for all of it, whether it’s your team, or a team underneath your organization.
Somewhere within your tree, people are on the hook for doing stuff daily. Here when we move into an infrastructure, so getting a virtual machine from a cloud provider right off the bat, half of the responsibilities are pushed away.
That’s a huge, huge win.
And, as we move further and further to the right to more managed service, or staff level services, we have less and less daily responsibilities.
Now, of course, you always still have to verify that the cloud service provider’s doing what they, uh, say they’re doing, which is why certifications and compliance frameworks come into play, uh, but the bottom line is you’re doing less work, so you can focus on fewer areas.
Um, that is, or I should say not less work, but you’re doing, uh, less broad of a work.
So you can have that deeper focus, and of course, you always have to worry about service configuration. You are given knobs and dials to turn to lock things down. You should use them like things like encrypting, uh, all your data at rest.
Most of the time it’s an easy check box, but it’s up to you to check it ‘cause it’s your responsibility.
We also have the idea of an adoption framework, and this applies for Azure, for AWS and for Google, uh, and what they do is they help you map out your business processes.
This is important to security, because it gives you the understanding of where your data is, what’s important to the business, where does it lie, who needs to touch it, and access it and process it.
That also gives us the idea, uh, or the ability to identify the stakeholders, so that we know, uh, you know, who’s concerned about this data, who is, has an investment in this data, and finally it helps to, to deliver an action plan.
The output of all of these frameworks is to deliver an action plan to help you migrate into the cloud and help you to continuously evolve. Well, it’s also a phenomenal map for your security efforts.
You want to prioritize security, this is how you do it. You get it through the adoption framework, understanding what’s important to the business, and that lets you identify critical systems and areas for your security.
Again, we want to keep things simple, right? And, the third, uh, the o- other things we want to look at is the CIS foundations. They have them for AWS, Azure and GCP, um, and these provide a prescriptive guidance.
They’re really, um, a strong baseline, and a checklist of tasks that you can accomplish, um, or take on, on your, uh, take on, on your own, excuse me, uh, in order to, um, you know, basically cover off the really basics is encryption at rest on, um, you know, do I make sure that I don’t have, uh, things needlessly exposed to the internet, that type of thing.
Really fantastic reference point and a starting point for your security practice.
Again, with this idea of keeping things as simple as possible, so when it comes to looking at our security policy, we’ve used the frameworks, um, and the baseline to kind of set up a strong, uh, start to understand, uh, where the business is concerned, and to prioritize.
And, the first question we need to ask ourselves as security practitioners, what happened? If we, if something happens, and we ask what happened?
Do we have the ability to answer this question? So, that starts us off with logging and auditing. This needs to be in place before something happened. Let me just say that again, before something happened, you need [laughs] to be able to have this information in place.
Now, uh, this is really, uh, to ask these key questions of what happened in my account, and who, or what made that thing happen?
So, this starts in the cloud with some basic services. Uh, for AWS it’s cloud trail, for Azure, it’s monitor, and for Google Cloud it used to be called Stackdriver, it is now the Google Cloud operations suite, so these need to be enabled on at full volume.
Don’t worry, you can use some lifecycle rules on the data source to keep your costs low.
But, this gives you that layer, that basic auditing and logging layer, so that you can answer that question of what happened?
So, the next question you want to ask yourself or have the ability to answer is who’s there, right? Who’s doing what in my account? And, that comes down to identity.
We’ve already mentioned this is one of the key pillars of keeping security simple, and getting that highly effective security in your cloud.
[00:09:00] So here you’re answering the questions of who are you, and what are you allowed to do? This is where we get a very simple privilege, uh, or principle in security, which is the principle of least privilege.
You want to give an identity, so whether that’s a user, or a role, or a service, uh, only the privileges they, uh, require that are essential to perform the task that, uh, they are intended to do.
Okay?
So, basically if I need to write a file into a storage, um, folder or a bucket, I should only have the ability to write that file. I don’t need to read it, I don’t need to delete it, I just need to write to it, so only give me that ability.
Remember, that comes back to the other pillar of simple security here of, of key cloud security, is integrated identity.
This is where it really takes off, is that we start to assign very granular access permissions, and don’t worry, we’re going to use the APIs to automate all this stuff, so that it’s not a management headache, but the principle of these privilege is absolutely critical here.
The services you’re going to be using, amazingly, all three cloud providers got in line, and named them the same thing. It’s IAM, identity access management, whether that’s AWS, Azure or Google Cloud.
Now, the next question we’re going to a- ask ourselves are the areas where we’re going to be looking at is really where should I be focusing security controls? Where should I be putting stuff in place?
Because up until now we’ve really talked about leveraging what’s available from the cloud service providers, and you absolutely should available, uh, maximize your usage of their, um, native and primitive, uh, structures primitive as far as base concepts, not as, um, refined.
They’re very advanced controls and, but there are times where you’re going to need to put in your own controls, and these are the areas you’re going to focus on, so you’re going to start with networking, right?
So, in your networking, you’re going to maximize the native structures that are available in the cloud that you’re in, so whether that’s a project structure in Google Cloud, whether that’s a service like transit gateway in AWS, um, and all of them have this idea of a VPC or virtual private cloud or virtual network that is a very strong boundary for you to use.
Remember, most of the time you’re not charged for the creation of those. You have limits in your accounts, but accounts are free, and you can keep adding more, uh, virtual networks. You may be saying, wait a minute, I’m trying to simplify things.
Actually, having multiple virtual networks or virtual private clouds ends up being far simpler because each of them has a task. You go, this application runs in this virtual private cloud, not a big shared one in this specific VPC, and that gives you this wonderfully strong security boundaries, and a very simple way of looking at one VPC, one action, very much the Unix philosophy in play.
Key here though is understanding that while all of the security controls in place for your service provider, um, give you, so, you know, whether it’s VPCs, routing tables, um, uh, access control lists, security groups, all the SDN features that they’ve got in place.
These really help you figure out whether service A or system A is allowed to talk to B, but they don’t tell you what they’re saying.
And, that’s where additional controls called an IPS, or intrusion prevention system come into play, and you may want to look at getting a third party control in to do that, because none of the th- big three cloud providers offer an IPS at this point.
[00:12:00] But that gives you the ability to not just say, “Hey, you’re allowed to talk to each other.” But, to monitor that conversation, to ensure that there’s not malicious code being passed back and forth between systems that nobody’s trying a denial of service attack.
A whole bunch of extra things on there have, so that’s where IPS comes into play in your network defense. Now, we look at compute, right?
We can have compute in various forms, whether that’s in serverless functions, whether that’s in containers, manage containers, whether that’s in traditional virtual machines, but all the principles are the same.
You want to understand where the shared responsibility line is, how much is on your plate, how much is on the CSPs?
You want to understand that you need to harden the EOS, or the service, or both in some cases, make sure that, that’s locked down, so have administrator passwords. Very, very complicated.
Don’t log into these systems, uh, you know, because you want to be fixing things upstream. You want to be fixing things in the build pipeline, not logging into these systems directly, and that’s a huge thing for, uh, systems people to get over, but it’s absolutely essential for security, and you know what?
It’s going to take a while, but there’s some tricks there you can follow with me. You can see, uh, on the slides, uh, at Mark, that is my social everywhere, uh, happy to walk you through the next steps.
This idea of this presentation’s really just the simple basics to start with, to give you that overview of where to focus your time, and, dispel that myth that cloud security is complicating things.
It is a huge path is simplicity, which is a massive lens, or for security.
So, the last area you want to focus here is in data and storage. Whether this is databases, whether this is big blob storage, or, uh, buckets in AWS, it doesn’t really matter the principles, again, all the same.
You want to encrypt your data at rest using the native cloud provided, uh, cloud service provider, uh, features functionality, because most of the time it’s just give it a key address, and give it a checkbox, and you’re good to go.
It’s never been easier to encrypt things, and there is no excuse for it and none of the providers charge extra for, uh, encryption, which is amazing, and you absolutely want to be taking advantage of that, and you want to be as granular as possible with your IAM, uh, and as reasonable, okay?
So, there’s a line here, and a lot of the data stores that are native to the cloud service providers, you can go right down to the data cell level and say, Mark has access, or Mark doesn’t have access to this cell.
That can be highly effective, and maybe right for your use case. It might be too much as well.
But, the nice thing is that you have that option. It’s integrated, it’s pretty straightforward to implement, and then, uh, when we look here, uh, sorry. and then, finally you want to be looking at lifecycle strategies to keep your costs under control.
Um, data really spins out of control when you don’t have to worry about capacity. All of the cloud service providers have some fantastic automations in place.
Basically, just giving you, uh, very simple rules to say, “Okay, after 90 days, move this over to cheaper storage. After 180 days, you know, get rid of it completely, or put it in cold storage.”
Take advantage of those or your bill’s going to spiral out of control, and, and that relates to availability ‘cause uh, uh, and reliability, ‘cause the more you’re spending on that kind of stuff, the less you have to spend on other areas like security and operational efficiency.
So, that brings us to our next big security question. Is this working?
[00:15:00] How do you know if any of this stuff is working? Well, you want to talk about the concept of traceability. Traceability is a, you know, somewhat formal definition, but for me it really comes down to where did this come from, who can access it, and when did they access it?
That ties very closely with the concept of observability. Basically, the ability to look at, uh, closed systems and to infer what’s going on inside based on what’s coming into that system, and what’s leaving that system, really what’s going on.
There’s some great tools here from the service providers. Again, you want to look at, uh, Amazon CloudWatch, uh, Azure Monitor and the Google Cloud operations, uh, suite. Um, and here this leads us to the key, okay?
This is the key to simplifying everything, and I know we’ve covered a ton in this presentation, but I really want you to take a good look at this slide, and again, hit me up, uh, @marknca, happy to answer any questions with, questions afterwards as well here, um, that this will really, really make this simple, and this will really take your security practice to the next level.
If the idea of something happened in your, cloud system, right? In your deployment, there’s a trigger, and then, it either is generating an event or a log.
If you go the bottom row here, you’ve got a log, which you can then react to in a function to deliver some sort of result. That’s the slow-lane on the bottom.
We’re talking minutes here. You also have the top lane where your trigger fires off an event, and then, you react to that with a function, and then, you get a result in the fast lane.
These things happen in seconds, sub-second time. You start to build out your security practice based on this model.
You start automating more and more in these functions, whether it’s, uh, Lambda, whether it’s Cloud Functions, whether it’s Azure Functions, it doesn’t matter.
The CSPs all offer the same core functionality here. This is the critical, critical success metric, is that when you start reacting in the fast lane automatically to things, so if you see that a security event is triggered from like your malware, uh, on your, uh, virtual machine, you can lock that off, and have a new one spin up automatically.
Um, if you’re looking for compliance stuff, the slow lane is the place to go, because it takes minutes.
Reactions happen up top, more, um, stately or more sedate things, so somebody logging into a system is both up top and down low, so up top, if you logged into a VPC or into, um, an instance, or a virtual machine, you’d have a trigger fire off and maybe ask me immediately, “Mark, did you log into the system? Uh, ‘cause you’re, you know, you’re not supposed to be.”
But then I’d respond and say, “Yeah, I, I did log in.” So, immediately you don’t have to respond. It’s not an incident response scenario, but on the bottom track, maybe you’re tracking how many times I’ve logged in.
And after the three or fourth time maybe someone comes by, and has a chat with me, and says, “Hey, do you keep logging into these systems? Can’t you fix it upstream in the deployment, uh, and build a pipeline ‘cause that’s where we need to be moving?”
So, you’ll find this balance, and this concept, I just wanted to get into your heads right now of automating your security practice. If you have a checklist, it should be sitting in a model like this, because it’ll help you, uh, reduce your workload, right?
The idea is to get as much automated possible, and keep things in very clear, and simple boundaries, and what’s more simple than having every security action listed as an automated function, uh, sitting in a code repository somewhere?
[00:18:00] Fantastic approach to modern security practice in the cloud. Very simple, very clear. Yes, difficult to implement. It can be, but it’s an awesome, simple mental model to keep in your head that everything gets automated as a function based on a trigger somewhere.
So, what are the keys to success? What are the keys to keeping this cloud security thing simple? And, hopefully you’ve realized the difference between a simple mental model, and the challenges, uh, in, uh, implementation.
It can be difficult. It’s not easy to implement, but the mental model needs to be kept simple, right? Keep things in their own VPCs, and their own accounts, automate everything. Very, very simple approach. Everything fits into this s- into this structure, so the keys here are remembering the goal.
Make sure that cybersecurity, uh, is making sure that whatever you build works as intended and only as intended. It’s understanding the shared responsibility model, and it’s really looking at, uh, having a plan through cloud adoption frameworks, how to build well, which is a, uh, a concept called the Well-Architected Framework.
It’s specific to AWS, but it’s generic, um, its principles, it can be applied everywhere. We didn’t cover it here, but I’ll put the links, um, in the materials for you, uh, as well as remembering systems over people, right?
Adding the right controls at the right time, uh, and then, finally observing and react. Be vigilant, practice. You’re not going to get this right out of the gates, uh, perfect.
You’re going to have to refine, iterate, and then it’s extremely cloud friendly. That is the cloud model is, get it out there, iterate quickly, but putting the structures in place, you’re not going to make sure that you’re not doing that in an insecure manner.
Thank you very much, uh, here’s a couple of links that’ll help you out before we take some Q&A here, um, trendmicro.com/cloud will get you to the products to learn more. We’re also doing this really cool streaming.
Uh, I host a show called Let’s Talk Cloud. Um, we uh, interview experts, uh, and have a great conversation around, um, what they’re talking about, uh, in the cloud, what they’re working on, and not just around security, but just in building in general.
You can hit that up at trendtalks.fyi. Um, and again, hit me up on social @marknca.
So, we have a couple of questions to kick this off, and you can put more questions in the webinar here, and they will send them along, or answer them in kind if they can.
Um, and that’s really what these are about, is the interaction is getting that, um, to and from. So, the first question that I wanted to tackle is an interesting one, and it’s really that systems over people.
Um, you heard me mention it in the, uh, in the end and the question is really what does that mean systems over people? Isn’t security really about people’s expertise?
And, yes and no, so if you are a SOC analyst, if you are working in a security, uh, role right now, I am really confident saying that 80%, 90% of what you do right now could be delegated out to a system.
So, if you were looking at log lines, and stuff that should be done by systems and bubble up, just the goal for you to investigate to do what people are good at in systems are bad at, so systems mean, uh, you know, putting in, uh, to build pipeline, putting in container scanning in the build pipeline, so that you have to manually scan stuff, right to get rid of the basics. Is that a pen test? 100% no.
Um, but it gets rid of that, hey, you didn’t upgrade to, um, you know, this version of this library.
[00:21:00] That’s all automated, and those, the more systems you get in place, the more you as a security professional, or your security team will be able to focus on where they can really deliver value and frankly, where it’s more interesting work, so that’s what systems over people mean, is basically automate as much as you can to get people doing what people are really good at, and to make sure that the systems catch what we make as mistakes all the time.
If you accidentally try to push an old build out, you know that systems should stop that, if you push a build that hasn’t been checked by that container scanning or by, um, you know, it doesn’t have the appropriate security policy in place.
Systems should catch all that humans shouldn’t have to worry about it at all. That’s systems over processing. You saw that on the, uh, keys to success slide here. I’ll just pull it up. Um, you know, is that, that’s absolutely key.
Another question that we had, uh, was what we didn’t get into here, which was around the Well-Architected Framework. Now, this is a document that was published by AWS, uh, a number of years back, and they’ve kept it going.
They’ve evolved it and essentially it has five pillars. Um, performance, efficiency, uh, op- reliability, security, cost optimization, and operational excellence. Hey, I’ve got all five.
Um, and really [laughs] what that is, is it’s about how to take advantage of these cloud tools.
Now, AWS publishes it, but honestly it applies to Azure, it applies to Google Cloud as well. It’s not service specific. It teaches you how to build in the cloud, and obviously security is one of those big pillars, but it’s… so talking about teaching you how to make those trade offs, how to build an innovation flywheel, so that you have an idea, test it, uh, get the feedback from it, and move forward.
Um, and that’s really, really key. Again, now you should be reading that even if you are an Azure, or GCP customer or, uh, that’s where you’re putting your most of your stuff, because it’s really about the principles, and everything we do, and encourage people to build well, it means that there’s less security issues, right?
Especially we know that the number one problem is mistakes.
That leads to the last question we have here, which is about that, how can I say that cyber criminals, you don’t need to worry about them.
You need to worry about mistakes? That’s a good question. It’s valid, and, um, Trend Micro does a huge amount of research around cyber criminals. I do a whole huge amount of research around cyber criminals.
Uh, my training, by training, and by professional experience. I’m a forensic investigator. This is what I do is take down cyber crimes. Um, but I think mistakes are the number one thing that we deal with in the cloud simply because of the underlying complexity.
I know it’s ironic, and to talk about simplicity, to talk about complexity, but the idea is, um, is that you look at all the major breaches, especially around s3 buckets, those are all m- based on mistake.
There’ve been billions, and billions, and billions of records, and, uh, millions of dollars of damage exposed because of simple mistakes, and that is far more common, uh, than cyber criminals.
And yes, cyber crimes you have [inaudible 00:23:32] worry. You have to worry about them, but everything you’re going to do to fix mistakes, and to put systems in place to stop those mistakes from happening is also going to be for your pr- uh, protection up against cyber criminals, and honestly, if you’re the guy who runs around your organization’s screaming about cyber criminals all the time, you’re far less credible than if you’re saying, “Hey, I want to make sure that we build really, really well, and don’t make mistakes.”
Thank you for taking the time. My name’s Mark Nunnikhoven. I’m the vice president of cloud research at Trend Micro. I’m also an AWS community hero, and I love this stuff. Hit me up on social @marknca. Happy to chat more.
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Introduction Browsers have become an inherent part of our virtual life and we all make use of browsers for surfing the internet in some or the other way. Also, browsers can be used not only for surfing, we can make use of browsers for navigating through the file system of the OS. You might have […]
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Google’s Android operating system has been a boon for the average consumer. No other operating system has given so much freedom to developers and hardware manufacturers to make quality devices at reasonable prices. The number of Android phones in the world is astounding. That success comes with a price, however.
A recent report from our own McAfee Mobile Research team has found malicious apps with hundreds of thousands of downloads in the Google Play store. This round of apps poses as simple wallpaper, camera filters, and picture editing, but they hide their nature till after they’ve been installed on your device.
Figure 1. Infected Apps on Google Play
On the bright side, Google Play performs a review for every app to ensure that they are legitimate, safe, and don’t contain malware before they’re allowed on the Play store. However, enterprising criminals regularly find ways to sneak malware past Google’s security checks.
Figure 2. Negative reviews on Google Play
When developers upload their apps to the Play store for approval, they have to send supporting documents that tell Google what the app is, what it does and what age group it’s intended for. By sending Google a “clean” version of their app, attackers can later get their malicious code into the store via a future update where it sits and waits for someone to download it. Once installed, the app contacts a remote server, controlled by the attackers, so it can download new parts of the app that Google has never seen. You can think of it as a malware add-on pack that installs itself on your device without you realizing it. By contacting their own server for the malware files, attackers sneak around Google security checks and can put anything they want on your device.
The current round of malware we’re seeing hijack your SMS messages so they can make purchases through your device, without your knowledge. Through a combination of hidden functionality and abuse of permissions like the ability to read notifications, that simple looking wallpaper app can send subscription requests and confirm them as if it were you. These apps will regularly run up large bills through purchasing subscriptions to premium rate services. The more troubling part is how they can read any message that you receive, possibly exposing your personal information to attackers.
To start, a comprehensive and cross-platform solution like McAfee Total Protection can help detect threats like malware and alerts you if your devices have been infected. I’d also like to share some tips our Research team has shared with me.
Before you hit that install button, take a good look at an app’s reviews. Do they look like they were written by real people? Do the account names of the reviewers make sense? Are people leaving real feedback, or are the majority of comments things like, “Works great. Loved it.” with no other information?
Scammers can easily generate fake reviews for an app to make it look like people are engaging with the developers. Look out for vague reviews that don’t mention the app or what it does, nothing but five-star reviews, and generic sounding account names like, “girl345834”. They’re probably bots, so be wary.
Search for the app developers’ company and see if they have a website. Having a website doesn’t guarantee an app is legitimate, but it’s another good indicator of how trustworthy a company’s app is. Through their website, you should be able to find out where their team is based, or at least some personal information about the company. If they’re hiding that information, or there’s no site at all, that might be a good sign to try a different app.
A lot of malicious apps offer features that your phone already provides, like a flashlight or photo viewer. Unless there’s a very specific reason why you need a separate app to do something your device already does, it’s not recommended to use a third-party app. Especially if it’s free.
App permissions must be clearly stated on the app’s page in order to get into the Google Play store. They’re found near the bottom of the page, along with developer information. Check the permissions every app asks for before you install it and ask yourself if they make sense. For example, a photo editor doesn’t need access to your contacts list, and wallpapers don’t need to have access to your location data. If the permissions don’t make sense for the type of app, steer clear.
Mobile devices are vulnerable to malware and viruses, just like your computer. By installing McAfee protection to your mobile device, you can secure your mobile data, protect your privacy, and even find lost devices.
Android is one of the most popular operating systems on the planet, which means the rewards for creating malware for Android devices are well worth it. It’s unlikely that Android malware is going away any time soon, so staying safe means being cautious with the things you install on your devices.
You can protect yourself by installing McAfee Total Protection on your mobile device and reading the permissions apps ask for when you install them. There’s no good reason for a wallpaper app to have SMS permissions, but that request should ring some alarm bells that something isn’t right and stop you from installing it.
The post Fraudulent Apps that Automatically Charge you Money Spotted in Google Play appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Authored by Oliver Devane and Vallabh Chole
Notifications on Chrome and Edge, both desktop browsers, are commonplace, and malicious actors are increasingly abusing this feature. McAfee previously blogged about how to change desktop browser settings to stop malicious notifications. This blog focuses on Chrome notifications on Android mobile devices such as phones and tablets, and how McAfee Mobile Security protects users from malicious sites leveraging these notifications.
Most users are unaware of the source of these notifications. Permission is granted when a user clicks ‘Allow’ on a prompt within Android Chrome.
Many malicious websites use language and images like the one above that entice the user to click ‘Allow’ such as ‘Just one more step! Click “Allow” to continue. Once allow is clicked, the website is added to a site permissions list, which will enable it to send notifications.
The notifications will look like a usual Android notification which you will be used to seeing such as you have a new WhatsApp message or email. To identify the source of the notification, we need to look for the application name which is like the one highlighted in the red box below.
The image above shows the notification came from Chrome and it is from the website premiumbros[.]com. This is something you should pay attention to as it will be needed when you want to stop annoying notifications.
Some notifications like the ones in this blog are malicious as they attempt to trick users into believing that their mobile device is infected with a virus and some action is required. When the users click the notification, Chrome will load a website which will present them with a fake warning like the example below:
Clicking either Cancel or Update Now on the above website will result in the same behavior. The browser will redirect the user to a google play store app so that they can download and install it.
The malicious websites will flood your phone with several notifications. The screenshot below shows an example of this:
You may ask yourself, why do malicious actors try to get me to install a google play application? The people behind these scams receive a commission when these applications are installed on devices. They rely on deceptive tactics to trick users into installing them to maximize profits.
To remove a website’s notification permission, you need to change a Chrome setting.
1- Find out the name of the website which is sending these notifications. This can be done by looking at the notification and noting down the name of the website. If we use this blog as an example, it would be premiumbros[.]com
2- Open the Chrome browser app which can be found by performing the following search:
3- Click the three … on the top right hand of the application
4- Scroll down and click on settings
5- Click on Notifications
6- Scroll down until you find the website which you identified in step 1
7- Pres the blue radio button so it turns grey
8- Notifications will now be disabled for that website. If you want to block multiple websites, click the radio button for them as well.
McAfee customers who have McAfee Mobile Security are protected against these malicious websites as long as they enable the ‘Safe Browsing’ feature within the application.
Upon trying to access a malicious website such as the one in the blog it will be blocked as shown in the image below:
Please read this guide on enabling the Safe Browsing feature within the Mobile Security Application.
The post Why Am I Getting All These Notifications on my Phone? appeared first on McAfee Blog.
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On December 7, 2021, Google announced it was suing two Russian men allegedly responsible for operating the Glupteba botnet, a global malware menace that has infected millions of computers over the past decade. That same day, AWM Proxy — a 14-year-old anonymity service that rents hacked PCs to cybercriminals — suddenly went offline. Security experts had long seen a link between Glupteba and AWM Proxy, but new research shows AWM Proxy’s founder is one of the men being sued by Google.
AWMproxy, the storefront for renting access to infected PCs, circa 2011.
Launched in March 2008, AWM Proxy quickly became the largest service for crooks seeking to route their malicious Web traffic through compromised devices. In 2011, researchers at Kaspersky Lab showed that virtually all of the hacked systems for rent at AWM Proxy had been compromised by TDSS (a.k.a TDL-4 and Alureon), a stealthy “rootkit” that installs deep within infected PCs and loads even before the underlying Windows operating system boots up.
In March 2011, security researchers at ESET found TDSS was being used to deploy Glupteba, another rootkit that steals passwords and other access credentials, disables security software, and tries to compromise other devices on the victim’s network — such as Internet routers and media storage servers — for use in relaying spam or other malicious traffic.
A report from the Polish computer emergency response team (CERT Orange Polksa) found Glupteba was by far the biggest malware threat in 2021.
Like its predecessor TDSS, Glupteba is primarily distributed through “pay-per-install” or PPI networks, and via traffic purchased from traffic distribution systems (TDS). Pay-per-install networks try to match cybercriminals who already have access to large numbers of hacked PCs with other crooks seeking broader distribution of their malware.
In a typical PPI network, clients will submit their malware—a spambot or password-stealing Trojan, for example —to the service, which in turn charges per thousand successful installations, with the price depending on the requested geographic location of the desired victims. One of the most common ways PPI affiliates generate revenue is by secretly bundling the PPI network’s installer with pirated software titles that are widely available for download via the web or from file-sharing networks.
An example of a cracked software download site distributing Glupteba. Image: Google.com.
Over the past decade, both Glupteba and AWM Proxy have grown substantially. When KrebsOnSecurity first covered AWM Proxy in 2011, the service was selling access to roughly 24,000 infected PCs scattered across dozens of countries. Ten years later, AWM Proxy was offering 10 times that number of hacked systems on any given day, and Glupteba had grown to more than one million infected devices worldwide.
There is also ample evidence to suggest that Glupteba may have spawned Meris, a massive botnet of hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices that surfaced in September 2021 and was responsible for some of the largest and most disruptive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks the Internet has ever seen.
But on Dec. 7, 2021, Google announced it had taken technical measures to dismantle the Glupteba botnet, and filed a civil lawsuit (PDF) against two Russian men thought to be responsible for operating the vast crime machine. AWM Proxy’s online storefront disappeared that same day.
AWM Proxy quickly alerted its customers that the service had moved to a new domain, with all customer balances, passwords and purchase histories seamlessly ported over to the new home. However, subsequent takedowns targeting AWM Proxy’s domains and other infrastructure have conspired to keep the service on the ropes and frequently switching domains ever since.
Earlier this month, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. dismantled the “RSOCKS” botnet, a competing proxy service that had been in operation since 2014. KrebsOnSecurity has identified the owner of RSOCKS as a 35-year-old from Omsk, Russia who runs the world’s largest forum catering to spammers.
The employees who kept things running for RSOCKS, circa 2016.
Shortly after last week’s story on the RSOCKS founder, I heard from Riley Kilmer, co-founder of Spur.us, a startup that tracks criminal proxy services. Kilmer said RSOCKS was similarly disabled after Google’s combined legal sneak attack and technical takedown targeting Glupteba.
“The RSOCKS website gave you the estimated number of proxies in each of their subscription packages, and that number went down to zero on Dec. 7,” Kilmer said. “It’s not clear if that means the services were operated by the same people, or if they were just using the same sources (i.e., PPI programs) to generate new installations of their malware.”
Kilmer said each time his company tried to determine how many systems RSOCKS had for sale, they found each Internet address being sold by RSOCKS was also present in AWM Proxy’s network. In addition, Kilmer said, the application programming interfaces (APIs) used by both services to keep track of infected systems were virtually identical, once again suggesting strong collaboration.
“One hundred percent of the IPs we got back from RSOCKS we’d already identified in AWM,” Kilmer said. “And the IP port combinations they give you when you access an individual IP were the same as from AWM.”
In 2011, KrebsOnSecurity published an investigation that identified one of the founders of AWM Proxy, but Kilmer’s revelation prompted me to take a fresh look at the origins of this sprawling cybercriminal enterprise to determine if there were additional clues showing more concrete links between RSOCKS, AWM Proxy and Glupteba.
Supporting Kilmer’s theory that AWM Proxy and RSOCKS may simply be using the same PPI networks to spread, further research shows the RSOCKS owner also had an ownership stake in AD1[.]ru, an extremely popular Russian-language pay-per-install network that has been in operation for at least a decade.
Google took aim at Glupteba in part because its owners were using the botnet to divert and steal vast sums in online advertising revenue. So it’s more than a little ironic that the critical piece of evidence linking all of these operations begins with a Google Analytics code included in the HTML code for the original AWM Proxy back in 2008 (UA-3816536).
That analytics code also was present on a handful of other sites over the years, including the now-defunct Russian domain name registrar Domenadom[.]ru, and the website web-site[.]ru, which curiously was a Russian company operating a global real estate appraisal business called American Appraisal.
Two other domains connected to that Google Analytics code — Russian plastics manufacturers techplast[.]ru and tekhplast.ru — also shared a different Google Analytics code (UA-1838317) with web-site[.]ru and with the domain “starovikov[.]ru.”
The name on the WHOIS registration records for the plastics domains is an “Alexander I. Ukraincki,” whose personal information also is included in the domains tpos[.]ru and alphadisplay[.]ru, both apparently manufacturers of point-of-sale payment terminals in Russia.
Constella Intelligence, a security firm that indexes passwords and other personal information exposed in past data breaches, revealed dozens of variations on email addresses used by Alexander I. Ukraincki over the years. Most of those email addresses start with some variation of “uai@” followed by a domain from one of the many Russian email providers (e.g., yandex.ru, mail.ru). [Full disclosure: Constella is currently an advertiser on this website].
But Constella also shows those different email addresses all relied on a handful of passwords — most commonly “2222den” and “2222DEN.” Both of those passwords have been used almost exclusively in the past decade by the person who registered more than a dozen email addresses with the username “dennstr.”
The dennstr identity leads to several variations on the same name — Denis Strelinikov, or Denis Stranatka, from Ukraine, but those clues ultimately led nowhere promising. And maybe that was the point.
Things began looking brighter after I ran a search in DomainTools for web-site[.]ru’s original WHOIS records, which shows it was assigned in 2005 to a “private person” who used the email address lycefer@gmail.com. A search in Constella on that email address says it was used to register nearly two dozen domains, including starovikov.ru and starovikov[.]com.
A cached copy of the contact page for Starovikov[.]com shows that in 2008 it displayed the personal information for a Dmitry Starovikov, who listed his Skype username as “lycefer.”
Finally, Russian incorporation documents show the company LLC Website (web-site[.]ru)was registered in 2005 to two men, one of whom was named Dmitry Sergeevich Starovikov.
Bringing this full circle, Google says Starovikov is one of the two operators of the Glupteba botnet:
The cover page for Google’s lawsuit against the alleged Glupteba botnet operators.
Mr. Starovikov did not respond to requests for comment. But attorneys for Starovikov and his co-defendant last month filed a response to Google’s complaint in the Southern District of New York, denying (PDF) their clients had any knowledge of the scheme.
Despite all of the disruption caused by Google’s legal and technical meddling, AWM is still around and nearly as healthy as ever, although the service has been branded with a new name and there are dubious claims of new owners. Advertising customer plans ranging from $50 a day to nearly $700 for “VIP access,” AWM Proxy says its malware has been running on approximately 175,000 systems worldwide over the last 24 hours, and that roughly 65,000 of these systems are currently online.
AWM Proxy, as it exists today.
Meanwhile, the administrators of RSOCKS recently alerted customers that the service and any unspent balances will soon be migrated over to a new location.
Many people seem to equate spending time, money and effort to investigate and prosecute cybercriminals with the largely failed war on drugs, meaning there is an endless supply of up-and-coming crooks who will always fill in any gaps in the workforce whenever cybercriminals face justice.
While that may be true for many low-level cyber thieves today, investigations like these show once again how small the cybercriminal underground really is. It also shows how it makes a great deal of sense to focus efforts on targeting and disrupting the relatively small number of established hackers who remain the real force multipliers of cybercrime.
Your digital footprint grows with every internet account you make. While your old Tumblr account may be fun for reminiscing, dormant accounts are actually one of the most significant sources of user data on the internet. These accounts can be used by data brokers or third parties to access your personal information.
To improve your data security, it’s good practice to remove public-facing information by deleting unused accounts. Simply put, having less personal data stored on the internet reduces the risk of theft and/or non-consensual data usage.
Deleting, canceling, unsubscribing, or removing your account can be a long process, depending on the service. This article will walk you through the simplest ways to delete unwanted accounts from various social media platforms.
Deleting unwanted accounts protects your information and prevents the monetization of your data. Your internet accounts often hold personal information like your name, age, email, or home address. What’s more alarming is that some platforms may even have credit card details, phone numbers, and bank account information.
When left unattended, internet accounts become vulnerable to being suspended or taken over by the platform. This means that if your accounts are left inactive for too long, you might be handing some or all of your data over to the tech platform.
For example, even if you believe an old Google account doesn’t have any sensitive information stored, it may be linked to other platforms you use (like Amazon or Google services like Gmail and Google Play). This exposes all of these accounts to several data privacy vulnerabilities.
Moreover, a recent survey found that 70% of surveyed adults admitted using the same password for more than one service. People who don’t use password managers or reuse passwords are at a greater security risk than others, as multiple accounts can become compromised at once. Whether the platform is now out of service or you are cutting down on your app usage, deleting dormant accounts will minimize security threats and safeguard your data.
Every platform has a different process for deleting accounts: Some take only a few clicks to complete and others are a little longer. Companies usually don’t want a user to stop using their services, so account deletion pages are often hidden in a complex web of tabs that you have to navigate.
In addition, some subscription services might require that you send an email to customer support to close your account. You can go to justdelete.me, an online directory that lets you access direct links to account deletion pages of various web services.
Remember to download your personal information and data before pulling the plug on your account. Most platforms let you download your data before initiating a deletion request, which saves you from losing important details and files. It is also important to check whether your Google account is used for your YouTube channel or connected to other online accounts.
To help you get rid of accounts you no longer use, we’ve broken down deleting accounts from some of the most popular social networks. The steps described below are for a desktop browser and may not apply to Android or iOS devices (unless specified).
Facebook’s user privacy policy enables it to store a large amount of user information, including personal messages, posts, search history, name, age, birthdate, and even metadata from posted photos and videos.
Follow these simple steps to delete your Facebook account:
LinkedIn collects information on users and uses it for targeted advertising. As a result, it amasses quite a lot of your data, from professional details to personal preferences and even your online behavior trail.
Follow these simple steps from your desktop to delete your account:
It’s simple to delete your Twitter account, but you’ll have to wait 30 days for your data and tweets to clear. To delete your account, you first need to deactivate it.
Once you’ve decided to delete your account from the micro-blogging site, follow these steps from your desktop:
Remember to revoke third-party access to your Twitter account to avoid having your account reactivated in the 30 days following deactivation.
Since Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta, they share a lot of data for targeted advertising. You can adjust the privacy settings of your Instagram account from the mobile app, but you will need to log in from a web browser like Chrome to delete your account.
To delete your Instagram account:
Your information and data will be permanently deleted after 30 days and you won’t be able to retrieve it. However, completing a deletion process may take up to 90 days.
Tumblr has a fairly simple process to delete your account:
Follow these steps to delete your account from the popular picture-sharing platform:
Pinterest servers continue to store your data after deletion, but your information won’t be visible to other users.
There are different steps to deleting your email account depending on which email service you use. Backing up email data usually takes more time because of the sheer volume of data a mail account can hold.
Complete the following steps to delete your Google account:
Here’s what you need to do to delete your Yahoo email account:
Deleting your Yahoo account also deletes the linked information from Yahoo’s other services.
Follow these steps to delete your Microsoft account on Outlook 2010, 2013, or 2016:
Leaving old information scattered across the internet makes you susceptible to identity theft. There are multiple ways to keep your identity and data secure online, including McAfee’s Total Protection plan.
Total Protection lets you choose from multiple affordable subscription models that provide comprehensive security against identity theft and potential data breaches and offers web protection and several related benefits. In addition, having access to 24/7 online security experts and a 30-day money-back guarantee make the Total Protection plan an easy, reliable, and safe choice. You can also have peace of mind with McAfee’s Personal Data Cleanup feature where our teams will work to find your personal information online and assist in removing it.
The post How to Delete Old Accounts Containing Personal Information appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Here’s one way you can help reduce your chances of identity theft: remove your personal information from the internet.
And chances are, you have more personal information posted online than you think.
According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), consumers registered 1.4 million identity theft complaints in 2021, all part of a year where consumers reported losing $5.8 billion to fraud overall—a 70% increase over the year prior.
What fuels all this theft and fraud? Access to personal information.
Scammers and thieves can get a hold of personal information in several ways, such as through phishing attacks that lure you into handing it over, malware that steals it from your devices, by purchasing your information on dark web marketplaces, or as a result of information leaked in data breaches, just to name a few.
However, scammers and thieves have other resources to help them commit theft and fraud—data broker sites, places where personal information is posted online for practically anyone to see. Which makes removing your info from them so important, from both an identity and privacy standpoint.
Think of data broker sites as huge repositories of personal information. Search your name and address online and you’ll see. You’ll likely find dozens of sites that turn up information about you, some of which offer a few pieces for free and others that offer far more information for a price.
Data brokers collect and then aggregate personal information from several sources, including:
Data brokers also buy personal information from other data brokers. As a result, some data brokers have thousands of pieces of data for billions of individuals worldwide.
What could that look like? A broker may know how much you paid for your home, your education level, where you’ve lived over the years and who your lived with, your driving record, and possibly your political leanings. A broker may also know your favorite flavor of ice cream and your preferred over-the-counter allergy medicine thanks to information from loyalty cards. Further, they may also have health-related information from fitness apps. The amount of personal information can run that broadly, and that deeply.
With information at this potential level of detail, it’s no wonder that data brokers rake in an estimated at $200 billion U.S. dollars worldwide every year.
On the legitimate side, it’s used by advertisers to create targeted ad campaigns. With information sold by data brokers, they can generate lists based on highly specific criteria, such as shopping histories, personal interests, and even political leanings as mentioned above. Likely without you being aware of it—and likely with no way to contest that information if it’s incorrect.
Other legitimate uses include using these sites for background checks. Law enforcement, reporters, and employers will use data brokers as a starting point for research because the leg work has largely been done for them. Namely, data brokers have aggregated a person’s information already, which is an otherwise time-consuming process.
If this seems a little shady, it’s still legal. As of now, the U.S. has no federal laws that regulate data brokers or require data them to remove personal information if requested. A few states, such as Nevada, Vermont, and California, have legislation in place aimed at protecting consumers. Meanwhile, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union has stricter rules about what information can be collected and what can be done with it. Still, the data broker economy thrives.
On the darker side, scammers and thieves use personal information for identity theft and fraud. With enough personal information gathered from enough sources, they can create a high-fidelity profile of their victims. One that gives them enough information to open new accounts in their name.
So, from the standpoint of both privacy and identity, cleaning up your personal information online makes a great deal of sense.
Let’s review some ways you can remove your personal information from data brokers and other sources on the internet.
The process starts with finding the sites that have your information. From there, you can request to have it removed. Yet as mentioned above, there are dozens and dozens of these sites. Knowing where to start is a challenge in of itself, as is manually making the requests once you have identified the sites that post and sell information about you.
Our Personal Data Cleanup can do the work for you. Personal Data Cleanup scans some of the riskiest data broker sites and shows you which ones are selling your personal info. It also provides guidance on how you can remove your data from those sites and can even manage the removal for you depending on your plan. It also monitors those sites, so if your info gets posted again, you can request its removal again.
As of September 2022, Google accounts for just over 92% of search engine market share worldwide. Aside from being a search engine, Google offers a myriad of other services and applications, such as Gmail and Google Maps. While Google offers plenty of tools for productivity, travel, work, and play for free, they still come at a cost—the gathering and analysis of your personal information.
You can limit the data Google associates with you by removing your name from Google search results with a removal request. This will disable anyone online from getting any results if they search your name. (Note that this will not remove your information from the original sites and sources where it’s posted.) Moreover, Google collects all your browsing data continuously. You have the option to turn on “Auto Delete” in your privacy settings to ensure that the data is deleted regularly and help limit the amount of time your sensitive data stays vulnerable.
You can also occasionally delete your cookies or use your browser in incognito mode to prevent websites from being tracked back to you. Go to your Google Chrome settings to clear your browser and cookie history.
As discussed above, data brokers can collect information from public social media profiles. You can minimize your presence on social media to the bare minimum. Make a list of the ones you use or have used in the past. If there are old accounts that you no longer use or websites that have gone by the wayside like Myspace or Tumblr, you may want to deactivate them or consider deleting them entirely.
For social media platforms that you still may use regularly, like Facebook and Instagram, consider adjusting your privacy settings to ensure that your personal information on these social media platforms is the bare minimum. For example, on Facebook you can lock your profile, while on Instagram you can stay private.
If you’ve ever published articles, written blogs, or created any content online, it might be a good time to consider taking it down if it is no longer serving a purpose. Depending on what you’ve posted, you may have shared personal details about your life. Additionally, you might be mentioned by other people in various social media posts, articles, or blogs. It is worth reaching out to these people to request them to take down posts with sensitive information.
Social media and online articles that host your personal information are often used when businesses or hackers are doing “internet scrapes” to find better ways to use your targeted information. Asking your friends or third-party sites to remove that information can help protect your privacy.
Another way you can tidy up your digital footprint online involves deleting all the unnecessary phone apps that you no longer need or use. Even when apps are not open or in use, they may be able to track personal information such as your real-time location and even your payment details if you have a paid subscription to the app.
Some apps even sell this data as it can be extremely advantageous to other companies, which they use to target certain consumer segments and profiles for advertising. Try to share as little information with apps as possible if you’re looking to minimize your online footprint, and provide them access to your photos, contacts, and location only on as-needed basis and only when the app is in use. Your phone’s app and location services settings will give you the tools to do it.
In addition to the steps above, comprehensive online protection software can keep you more private and minimize your risk of cybercrime. It can include:
So while it may seem like all this rampant collecting and selling of personal information is out of your hands, there’s plenty you can do to take control. With the steps outlined above and strong online protection software at your back, you can keep your personal information more private and secure.
The post 5 Steps to Removing Your Personal Information From the Internet appeared first on McAfee Blog.
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