Hacker Public Radio

HPR NEWS News for the community, by the community.

• TAGS: Ransomware, Malware, Phishing, Security Breach

• Microsoft Confirms Server Misconfiguration Led to 65,000+ Companies' Data Leak

  • Microsoft “misconfigured” an Azure Blob Storage server causing a security breach. Attackers were able to access unauthorized customer data; business transactions and other interactions between Microsoft and its customers. SOCRadar, a cyber security company, is calling the security breach “BlueBleed”. SOCRadar discovered the breach on September 24, 2022 Microsoft is downplaying the security breach but security researcher Kevin Beaumont isn't buying it. Mr. Beaumont suggest Microsoft dropped the ball on informing its customers, and federal regulators, of the security breach in a timely manner.

• HiddenAds malware affects 1M+ Android users

  • McAfee’s Mobile Research Team identified multiple apps containing malware on the Google Play Store. After install, the malicious android apps automatically run services without the user knowing or interacting with the app. That’s right, they auto run after install. These malicious apps then disguise themselves by changing their icon to the “Google Play” icon and renaming to themselves to “Google Play” or “Settings”. The malicious apps quickly create permanent malicious services. McAfee’s Mobile Research Team demonstrates the resilience of the malware by using kill -9 on the service processes. More malicious processes generate immediately as if nothing happened.

• Fully undetectable PowerShell backdoor disguised as part of a Windows update

  • Director of security research at SafeBreach, Tomer Bar stated, "The covert self-developed tool and the associated C2 commands seem to be the work of a sophisticated, unknown threat actor who has targeted approximately 100 victims."
  • Based on the metadata found within a malicious document, this seems to be a LinkedIn-based spear-phishing attack, which ultimately leads to the execution of a PowerShell script via a piece of embedded macro code.
  • "The Macro drops 'updater.vbs' creates a scheduled task pretending to be part of a Windows update, which will execute the updater.vbs script from a fake update folder under '%appdata%\local\Microsoft\Windows,'"said Tomar.
  • Currently 32 security vendors and 18 anti-malware engines have flagged the decoy document and the PowerShell scripts as malicious.
  • The findings come as Microsoft has taken steps to block Excel 4.0 (XLM or XL4) and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default across Office apps, prompting threat actors to pivot to alternative delivery methods.

• Millions of patients compromised in hospital data leak.

  • Nearly 3 million Illinois & Wisconsin patients are caught in a hospital data breach. Advocate Aurora Health, which operates 27 hospitals, said in a statement, “the breach may have exposed information including a patients' medical provider, type of appointments, medical procedures, dates and locations of scheduled appointments, and IP addresses”. The system blamed the breach on its use of pixels, computer code that collects information on how a user interacts with a website, including products developed by Google and Facebook's parent company Meta that make the collected data accessible to those companies.
  • The health care industry's use of pixels has come under wide criticism from privacy advocates who warn that the technology's use violates federal patient privacy law. A report published in June by The Markup found many of the country's top-ranked hospitals used the Meta Pixel, collecting and sending sensitive patient information to the social media company.

• Texas sues Google for biometric data collecting
  • Texas has filed a lawsuit against Google claiming the tech behemoth took users’ biometric data without permission. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, claims Google is illegally data harvesting Texans using features and devices such as: Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max. Google spokesman José Castañeda
    is willing to take the argument to court, “AG Paxton is once again mischaracterizing our products in another breathless lawsuit,”.