Hackers threaten mass iCloud carnage: don't panic, but do enable 2FA

There have been rumblings in recent weeks (with varying degrees of credibility and/or paranoia) of several hundred million Apple accounts stolen by hackers, with a threat that the iPhones, iPads, and iCloud backups associated with these accounts will be deleted on April 7 unless Apple pays a ransom fee. The threat is that owners of those account could wake up to find all their pictures, all their files, all their data, deleted forever.

ZDNet's Zack Whittacker has a sane take on the matter: Apple has not been hacked, but people are prone to reusing the same passwords across all the apps and websites they use - many of which have been breached. ZDNet's analysis has found that not all the accounts the hackers claim to have compromised, are indeed compromised - but a not insignificant number are.

What you need to know:

• If you haven't changed your Apple (aka iCloud) password recently (as in, within the last 6 months or so), it wouldn't be a bad idea to change it now. 
• Use separate passwords for each account, so one stolen password doesn't put all your other accounts at risk.
• Enable two-factor authentication on any accounts that matter to you, so a stolen password by itself isn't enough to break into your account and steal or delete your valuable data. Here's how to enable it on your Apple ID: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204915

Why is this website impersonating the FBI-run InfraGard?

Can you tell which is the real InfraGard login screen?

InfraGard is a partnership between the FBI and private business, created to share information about threats. It consists of members from private business, state and local government agencies, state and local law enforcement agencies, schools and universities. Some of the information shared to members - while not classified - is also not entirely public.

The true web portal for InfraGard is www.infragard.org -- the image on the left.

Someone created a pretty convincing replica of the real portal, at www.infragard.com -- the image on the right. Other than a few outdated images, the only noticeable differences are that the replica domain name ends in .com instead of .org, and the replica is served over non-secure http instead of https.

Cisco's CIA Vault7 exploit in context

Cisco issued a security bulletin on March 17, disclosing a remote code execution vulnerability in the Cluster Management Protocol function of IOS and IOS XE software, affecting over 300 Cisco switches and routers. Through this vulnerability, remote attackers can take complete control of a network device.

Cisco discovered the flaw while going through the WikiLeaks "Vault7" documents believed to have come from the CIA, suggesting that the flaw has been actively exploited. Naturally, every tech writer on the planet has rushed in to write doom and gloom stories of mass exploitation.

Slow down just a bit.

Those following long-standing best practices for securing infrastructure hardware are not at risk. The vulnerability can only be exploited through the Telnet protocol, and requires access to the management interface of a switch. 

Telnet communicates with a remote device unencrypted - transmitting usernames and passwords, as well as commands and configuration details, in the clear where anyone listening can intercept them. All modern switches and routers support SSH, which serves the same purpose but with an encrypted connection.

Disable the Telnet service on your Cisco switches, restrict management to an isolated management network, and update the OS as soon as practical once Cisco issues a fix.

Carry on.

Facebook Messenger phishing scam

Updated 20-March: My initial analysis was limited due to traveling without my laptop, and with unreliable data service. I've updated the post with a few additional domains to block, and to show the different behavior on mobile versus PC.

There’s a scam making the rounds on Facebook, making use of Facebook Messenger to spread. (Sysadmins, scroll to the bottom for a list of domains to block).

It starts when you receive a message from a friend, that simply says your name, with your profile picture designed to look like a preview of a video with hundreds of thousands of views. The implication is there is a “Facebook Video” of you that has gone viral.

Quick and dirty malicious PDF analysis

Friends and family regularly send me things they find suspicious or weird. Sometimes it turns out to be malicious, and other times perfectly fine, but I'm always glad to know I've instilled a proper degree of skepticism in my friends.

My willingness to help has an ulterior motive: aside from the "herd immunity" that comes from helping those around me stay safe, analyzing weird things they see helps me keep my own skills sharp. It also can alert me to new or resurging threats, such as the Disney theme park scams so common around customary family travel periods.

Today's story is about a phish. A simple phish, but one with lots of red flags to call out, and that called to my attention some new features Google introduced in Chrome last month. As with many phish, this one begins with an email. Nothing fancy, just a brief memo that a voice message has arrived.

It's tax fraud season!

1040 Individual Tax Return, by 401kcalculator. Used under license CC BY-SA 2.0

It's tax season. That means it is also tax fraud season. 

Early in the year is prime time for tax-related scams targeting both consumers and businesses. I see these start to appear around late December, but tax-related scams tend to peak in March. It makes sense that consumer scams would peak as the April 15 filing deadline approaches - but it's rather illogical that this is also true for business compromise. Employers, charities, and financial institutions are generally required to provide tax documents to consumers by January 31, so a successful business-oriented scam in March is a bit of a head-scratcher. Nonetheless, that's what the data show. 

What follow are explanations of some common tax-related threats this time of year, along with tips to protect yourself.

How to be your daughter's hero, DFIR edition

Every now and then, my day job pays dividends at home. Shortly before Christmas was one such occasion.

My daughter (a foreign exchange student my family is hosting, but she quickly became a daughter to us) had just spent a weekend with a friend. The friend too was a foreign exchange student from the same country as my daughter, but was near the end of her exchange, and was soon to return to her their home country. My daughter had taken many pictures of their weekend together, and had uploaded them to the friend's computer.

As is commonly the default, uploading the photos to the computer also deleted them from her camera.

By the time she discovered that, the friend had already begun her trek home. Several gigabytes of photos are not hard to transfer over WiFi or with a flash drive ... it's a different story when all you have is a cellphone hotspot with a limited data plan, or a costly and rate-limited airport wireless service.

Much to my wife's chagrin I am a sucker for my daughters' pleas for help. That holds true whether from the daughters born to my family or the daughter we are hosting. Just about any dad would say the same. Fortunately, one doesn't spend twenty years in technology and digital forensics without learning a few tricks.