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Gmail reports spear phishing attack

No one, it seems, is immune from account compromise attempts. Today Google reported they had identified a systemic campaign to compromise Gmail accounts belonging to “senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.”
Google offers a number of solutions for users, including the ability to add 2 factor authentication to your Gmail account. I strongly recommend anyone who uses Gmail to do this.
This isn’t a security blog, but email is one of the major vectors used to infect machines. We’ve seen numerous break ins targeting email senders and ESPs, resulting in customer and recipient data being stolen and then used for spam. Everyone who uses email needs to be aware of the risks and maintain their email account integrity. Be careful clicking links in emails. Be careful opening webpages. Keep your antivirus software up to date.
Everyone is a target.
 

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More security problems

I know a lot of people are putting all their eggs in the 2 factor authentication (2FA) basket as a solution to the recent breaches. Earlier this year, however, RSA had their internal systems breached and unknown data was stolen. Speculation from a lot of sources is that the information stolen from RSA by the attackers could be used to infiltrate systems protected by 2FA.
Today I, Cringely reports that a very large U.S. defense contractor may have been breached despite protection by SecurID. Anyone who has been around folks that work for defense contractors, or even just people with security clearances, knows that security and secrecy becomes second nature. They are naturally suspicious and careful, particularly when interacting with secure systems.
What should really concern anyone thinking about implementing security is that the defense contractor’s security folks implemented extra security after the RSA breach, but someone still managed to infiltrate their systems.
Whatever happens with RSA and the defense department, it’s pretty clear that 2FA is not a panacea. And even when we’re talking about security experts, including defense contractors and RSA, hackers can still get into their systems.
Many of the compromises start with spam linking to payloads. In fact, just last night another email expert had their gmail account compromised, resulting in virus being sent to multiple mailing lists and individuals. Some of the compromises happen through Facebook with links that fool people who should know better.
Security is critical for everything on the internet. But recently the attackers seem to be gaining the upper hand over the defenders. When even the experts are compromised, what chance does the average user have?
UPDATE: Reuters reports that the defense contractor was Lockheed.

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Uptick in botnet spam

There’s been a heavy uptick in botnet spam over the last few days, judging by things I’m hearing and my own mailboxes. There are a few common subject lines, but all of them are trying to get recipients to either run programs or visit malicious web pages.
The first subject line I’m seeing a lot of is “<name> wants to be friends with you on facebook!” In my mailbox most of those names have not been common European names. The give away that this isn’t actually a Facebook invite is the Reply-To address pointing to Linkedin. The URLs in the message appear to be random strings of numbers, and may actually encode recipient information in them.
The second has a subject that that is a variation on “End of July Statement.” The spammers are mixing capitals, adding in “Re:” and “FWD:” and sometimes increasing the urgency by adding required or STAT!! to the mail. These mails contain a .zip file which probably contains some virus which will turn the recipient machine into the next spam spewing bot.
The third variation has the subject line “Uniform Traffic Ticket.” The content is a citation that tells the recipient they were speeding somewhere in New York (possibly other states, I have only done a spot check of the couple hundred copies I have). There is, however, a .zip attachment with a virus.
Most people probably aren’t seeing these. SpamAssassin is doing a reasonably good job here of catching the spam and filtering it. I’m sure that the bigger ISPs are also filtering it effectively. But one person did forward a copy of the spam to a mailing list and ask if anyone knew what was going on.
If you get any of these messages, you don’t need to ask. It’s virus spam. Don’t open it and don’t forward it.

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