Security Hacks

1479 Articles

This Week In Security: One-click, UPnP, Mainframes, And Exploring The Fog

September 9, 2022 by 8 Comments

A couple weeks ago we talked about in-app browsers, and the potential privacy issues when opening content in them. This week Microsoft reveals the other side of that security coin — JavaScript on a visited website may be able to interact with the JS embedded in the app browser. The vulnerability chain starts with a link handler published to Android, where any https://m.tiktok[.]com/redirect links automatically open in the TikTok app. The problem here is that this does trigger a redirect, and app-internal deeplinks aren’t filtered out. One of these internal schemes has the effect of loading an arbitrary page in the app webview, and while there is a filter that should prevent loading untrusted hosts, it can be bypassed with a pair of arguments included in the URI call.

Once an arbitrary page is loaded, the biggest problem shows up. The JavaScript that runs in the app browser exposes 70+ methods to JS running on the page. If this is untrusted code, it gives away the figurative keys to the kingdom, as an auth token can be accessed for the current user. Account modification, private video access, and video upload are all accessible. Thankfully the problem was fixed back in March, less than a month after private disclosure. Still, a one-click account hijack is nothing to sneeze at. Thankfully this one didn’t escape from the lab before it was fixed.

UPnP Strikes Again

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) may have been the most dangerous feature to be included in routers with the possible exception of open-by-default WiFi. QNAP has issued yet another advisory of ransomware targeting their devices, and once again UPnP is the culprit. Photo Station is the vulnerable app, and it has to be exposed to the internet to get pwned. And what does UPnP do? Exposes apps to the internet without user interaction. And QNAP, in their efforts to make their NAS products more usable, included UPnP support, maybe by default on some models. If you have a QNAP device (or even if you don’t), make sure UPnP is disabled on your router, turn off all port forwarding unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing, and use Wireguard for remote access. Continue reading “This Week In Security: One-click, UPnP, Mainframes, And Exploring The Fog” →

A portable computer built inside a rugged carrying case

2022 Cyberdeck Contest: The Black Beast Will Help You Survive A Robot Apocalypse

September 4, 2022 by 19 Comments

With AI systems getting smarter every day, one might wonder if they might someday evolve into a sentient Skynet-like system and try to take over the world. We’re not sure how close we are to such a situation, but we do know that if the robot apocalypse were to happen, we would want to stay close to [LordOfAllThings], who would likely be carrying the Black Beast. This scary-sounding machine is in essence a Raspberry Pi-based portable computer built inside an outdoor carrying case, with a wide range of unusual peripherals that make it the digital equivalent of a Swiss army knife. In other words, it’s a cyberdeck built for end times — and whatever comes after.

For example, an array of ESP32-based modules plus an SDR module allow you to intercept and analyze hostile robots’ communications, whether they’re using Bluetooth, WiFi, LoRaWAN, or anything in the 433 or 868 MHz ranges. An FM transmitter comes in handy for reaching out to fellow citizens who are trapped with nothing more than an analog radio receiver, while a suite of environmental sensors (including a Geiger counter) should help determine if Skynet has released any harmful substances to flush out those last few pesky humans. (Ed. note: No marigolds in the promised land and all that.)

If you manage to find a wired Ethernet connection somewhere, a built-in five-port gigabit router lets you set up a local network, obviously with a custom network analyzer to detect any unwanted intrusions. A storage compartment contains every kind of cable you could need, as well as useful gadgets like flashlights and, indeed, an actual Swiss army knife.

Continue reading “2022 Cyberdeck Contest: The Black Beast Will Help You Survive A Robot Apocalypse” →

This Week In Security: Malicious Clipboards, Snakes On A Domain, And Binary Golf

September 2, 2022 by 4 Comments

There’s a bit of a panic regarding Chromium, Google Chrome, the system clipboard, and of all things, Google Doodles on the New Tab Page. It’s all about Chromium issue 1334203, “NewTabPageDoodleShareDialogFocusTest.All test fails when user gesture is enforced”. You see, Chromium has quite a large regression test suite, and Google engineers want to ensure that the Google Doodles always work. A security feature added to the clipboard handling API happened to break a Doodles test, so to fix the Doodle, the security feature was partially reverted. The now-missing feature? Requiring user interaction before a page can read or write to the clipboard.

Now you understand why there’s been a bit of a panic — yes, that sounds really bad. Pages arbitrarily reading from your clipboard is downright malicious and dangerous. And if no interaction is required, then any page can do so, right? No, not quite. So, Chrome has a set of protections, that there are certain things that a page cannot do if the user has not interacted with the page. You might see this at play in Discord when trying to refresh a page containing a video call. “Click anywhere on this page to enable video.” It’s intended to prevent annoying auto-play videos and other irritating page behavior. And most importantly, it’s *not* the only protection against a page reading your clipboard contents. See for yourself. Reading the clipboard is a site permission, just like accessing your camera or mic.

Now it’s true that a site could potentially *write* to the clipboard, and use this to try to be malicious. For example, writing rm -rf / on a site that claims to be showing off Linux command line tips. But that’s always been the case. It’s why you should always paste into a simple text editor, and not straight into the console from a site. So, really, no panic is necessary. The Chromium devs tried to roll out a slightly more aggressive security measure, and found it broke something unrelated, so partially rolled it back. The sky is not falling.
Continue reading “This Week In Security: Malicious Clipboards, Snakes On A Domain, And Binary Golf” →

Genshin Security Impact

August 29, 2022 by 29 Comments

An MMORPG with cute anime-style characters and maybe a bit too much inspiration taken from another classic Nintento franchise, Genshin Impact is a relatively popular game across the PlayStation, iOS, Android, and PC platforms. That last one has already generated a bit of controversy, since the PC version game includes an anti-cheat kernel driver that runs in the Windows kernel context, and on initial release that module kept running even after the game was closed.

That anti-cheat driver is back in the news, with Trend Micro discovering a ransomware campaign that includes mhyprot2.sys, the anti-cheat driver, as a component of the infection. The module is known to have vulnerabilities, and is still a signed kernel driver, so the malware campaign loads the driver and uses its functions to disable anti-malware protections.

The rest of the campaign is straightforward. Starting with access to a single domain-connected machine, an attacker uses that foothold to gain access to the domain controller. The malicious script is hosted on shared storage, and PsExec is used to run it on all the domain member machines. The real novelty here is the use of the vulnerable anti-cheat kernel driver as the anti-malware bypass. As far as we can tell, this driver is *still* signed and considered trustworthy by Windows. We join the call to Microsoft, to revoke this vulnerable driver, as it’s now actively being used in ongoing malware campaigns. For more on security, check out our weekly column on the topic,

This Week In Security: In Mudge We Trust, Don’t Trust That App Browser, And Firefox At Pwn2Own

August 26, 2022 by 19 Comments

There’s yet another brouhaha forming over Twitter, but this time around it’s a security researcher making noise instead of an eccentric billionaire. [Peiter Zatko] worked as Twitter’s security chief for just over a year, from November 2020 through January 2022. You may know Zatko better as [Mudge], a renowned security researcher, who literally wrote the book on buffer overflows. He was a member at L0pht Heavy Industries, worked at DARPA and Google, and was brought on at Twitter in response to the July 2020 hack that saw many brand accounts running Bitcoin scans.

Mudge was terminated at Twitter January 2022, and it seems he immediately started putting together a whistleblower complaint. You can access his complaint packet on archive.org, with whistleblower_disclosure.pdf (PDF, and mirror) being the primary document. There are some interesting tidbits in here, like the real answer to how many spam bots are on Twitter: “We don’t really know.” The very public claim that “…<5% of reported mDAU for the quarter are spam accounts” is a bit of a handwave, as the monetizable Daily Active Users count is essentially defined as active accounts that are not bots. Perhaps Mr. Musk has a more legitimate complaint than was previously thought.
Continue reading “This Week In Security: In Mudge We Trust, Don’t Trust That App Browser, And Firefox At Pwn2Own” →

Everything You Didn’t Know You Need To Know About Glitching Attacks

August 25, 2022 by 1 Comment

If you’ve always been intrigued by the idea of performing hardware attacks but never knew where to start, then we’ve got the article for you: an in-depth look at the hows and whys of hardware glitching.

Attentive readers will recall that we’ve featured [Matthew Alt]’s reverse engineering exploits before, like the time he got root on a Linux-based arcade cabinet. For something a bit more challenging, he chose a Trezor One crypto wallet this time. We briefly covered a high-stakes hack (third item) on one of these wallets by [Joe Grand] a while back, but [Matthew] offers much, much more detail.

After introducing the theory of glitching attacks, which seek to force a processor into an undefined state using various methods, [Matthew] discusses the specifics of the Trezor wallet and how the attack was planned.

His target — the internal voltage regulator of the wallet’s STM32 microcontroller — required desoldering a few caps before the attack could begin, which was performed with a ChipWhisperer. After resolving a few initial timing issues, he was able to glitch the chip into dropping to the lowest level of readout protection, which gave access to the dongle’s SRAM through an ST-Link debugger.

While this summary may make the whole thing sound trivial, it’s obvious that the attack was anything but, nor was the effort that went into writing it all up. The whole thing reads a little like a techno-thriller, and there’s plenty of detail there if you’re looking for a tutorial on chip glitching. We’re looking forward to part 2, which will concentrate on electromagnetic fault-injection using a PicoEMP and what looks like a modified 3D printer.

This Week In Security: Secure Boot Bypass, Attack On Titan M, KASLR Weakness

August 19, 2022 by 9 Comments

It’s debatable just how useful Secure Boot is for end users, but now there’s yet another issue with Secure Boot, or more specifically, a trio of signed bootloaders. Researchers at Eclypsium have identified problems in the Eurosoft, CryptoPro, and New Horizon bootloaders. In the first two cases, a way-too-flexible UEFI shell allows raw memory access. A startup script doesn’t have to be signed, and can easily manipulate the boot process at will. The last issue is in the New Horizon Datasys product, which disables any signature checking for the rest of the boot process — while still reporting that secure boot is enabled. It’s unclear if this requires a config option, or is just totally broken by default.

The real issue is that if malware or an attacker can get write access to the EFI partition, one of these signed bootloaders can be added to the boot chain, along with some nasty payload, and the OS that eventually gets booted still sees Secure Boot enabled. It’s the perfect vehicle for really stealthy infections, similar to CosmicStrand, the malicious firmware we covered a few weeks ago.
Continue reading “This Week In Security: Secure Boot Bypass, Attack On Titan M, KASLR Weakness” →