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Deals Website LivingSocial Reports It Was Hacked, Affects Up To 50 Million Customers

Posted on April 27, 2013 by

On Friday the popular daily deal site LivingSocial (https://livingsocial NULL.com/) announce a breach of its system that could affect up to 50 million users. According to information posted on LivingSocial

“LivingSocial recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue. The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.”

The information provided by LivingSocial also says, “The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed”. As a precaution, even though the passwords were encrypted and should be “difficult to decode”, they are “expiring your old password and requesting that you create a new one”.

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Facebook

Facebook Security Flaw Could Leave Your Mobile Phone Number Exposed (Check Your Settings)

Posted on October 12, 2012 by

Among the Facebook information that you can set up is your mobile phone number. Some people included it, to use the enhanced security log-in feature, others include it, so that it can be shared among your friends or family.

(http://facecrooks NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/contact_info_phone NULL.jpg)

As shown in the example above, when you go to the About Me area, you can include your mobile phone number, and select how you want the number shared. In the case of the example, the cell phone number is set to “Only Me”.  On its own, as a user (if I didn’t know any better), no one will see the mobile number as I only want it for the additional log-in security (http://facecrooks NULL.com/Internet-Safety-Privacy/how-to-lockdown-your-facebook-account-for-maximum-privacy-and-security NULL.html).

The problem, as discovered by Suriya Prakash, is that Facebook includes an additional setting in the Privacy Settings that overrides whatever security setting you entered in the contact info.

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WordPress Plugin Issue – Sociable 4.3.2 includes malware

Posted on September 9, 2012 by

This goes out to my fellow bloggers who have the Sociable plugin installed. It seems that the update to version 4.3.2 includes a file in the plugin that points to an external image. That external image then redirects to a now .ru address that is known to distribute malware. I have seen number of forum posts on the WP.org site discussing this issue. (http://wordpress NULL.org/support/topic/plugin-sociable-image-causing-malware-detected-flags?replies=17#post-3151747)

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Alert – Fake Amazon Email Attempting to Trick Users (via Websense)

Posted on September 4, 2012 by

Security company Websense (http://community NULL.websense NULL.com/blogs/securitylabs/) is reporting a new targeted attack that is attempting to trick users into downloading files that could infect a users pc, via an email that reports to be from Amazon. The email asks the person who received it to “Please click here and verify your order # with Amazon.com”

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Keep Malware off pc – Don’t fall for Social Engineering

Posted on July 28, 2012 by

Social engineering is a term that describes a non-technical kind of intrusion that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves tricking other people to break normal security procedures. A social engineer runs what used to be called a “con game.”

Social engineering is a component of many, if not most, types of exploits. Virus writers use social engineering tactics to persuade people to run malware-laden email attachments or click on links via social media (Facebook,Twitter,Google+, etc.), phishers use social engineering to convince people to divulge sensitive information, and scareware vendors use social engineering to frighten people into running software that is useless at best and dangerous at worst.

The biggest problem in identifying social engineering is that messages usually come from people you know. What the bad guys do is write their malware in such a way that when you fall for it and click on a link, it not only infects your pc, but it automatically sends itself (in your name) to everyone on your email or social media list. Since most people trust their friends, they are more likely to click on links from friends.

CURRENT EVENTS

One of the biggest tactics used in social engineering involves current events. Events like the recent Movie Theater Massacre in Colorado come to mind.  As you can see by this Twitter message.

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Another current event is the Summer Olympics in London. During the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010, a fake page was discovered that used the Olympic theme to trick people.

In the example (below) from Vancouver of social engineering, you can see the actual page and false page respectively, where a typo in the domain name is used as a strategy.

Real Website – http://www.vancouver2010.com (http://www NULL.vancouver2010 NULL.com)

Real Pic

Fake Website – http://vaucouver2010.com

Fake Pic

As you can see if you compare the sites, they look almost identical. The only real difference is the fake page showing an alleged error in the flash plugin, offering to download a binary called flash-plugin_update.45125 which is a malware with a very low detection rate. Once pages like the fake Vancouver site is created, search engines (which can’t tell if a site is real or fake) add them to the search results. What the bad guys hope is that when you do a search you will not realize it, and you will click on the fake site via the search result.

WHAT CAN YOU DO
  • Don’t trust your friends. I know that’s seems a little harsh, but remember that because someone you know sent you a link, it doesn’t mean that its legit, or that they even know that they sent it. If you get a link, contact your friend and confirm that they sent it, and ask questions like “what’s on the link” or “what is the link about”.
  • Don’t trust links you find via search engine’s. So if you can’t trust a search engine “what are they good for” is what you are saying to yourself.  After running a search, instead of clicking on the link shown, you should manually type the address in your browser address bar, paying attention to things like misspelling.
  • If you get a message from The Olympics, your bank, or any other site asking for info or telling you that you have won something, DON’T CLICK ON THE LINK. Open a web browser and go directly to the site in question, if there is a need for info (like the recent password change requests from LASTfm, LinkedIn and eHarmony) the site will have a notice posted with instructions.

LASTLY, If its TO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS….. not everything that is posted on the internet is REAL!

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Passwords Compromised – Yahoo Voice

Posted on July 12, 2012 by

Update (@12:15p CST) – Per a story on ZDNET (http://www NULL.zdnet NULL.com/yahoo-confirms-400000-accounts-hacked-less-than-5-valid-7000000812/), Yahoo now confirms the event, however claims that only 5% of the over 450,000 user passwords that were compromised are valid.

 ”At Yahoo! we take security very seriously and invest heavily in protective measures to ensure the security of our users and their data across all our products,” a Yahoo spokesperson said in a statement obtained by TechCrunch (http://techcrunch NULL.com/2012/07/12/yahoo-confirms-apologizes-for-the-email-hack-says-still-fixing-plus-check-if-you-were-impacted-non-yahoo-accounts-apply/). “We confirm that an older file from Yahoo! Contributor Network (previously Associated Content) containing approximately 400,000 Yahoo! and other company users names and passwords was stolen yesterday, July 11. Of these, less than 5% of the Yahoo! accounts had valid passwords. We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo! users and notifying the companies whose users accounts may have been compromised. We apologize to affected users. We encourage users to change their passwords on a regular basis and also familiarize themselves with our online safety tips at security.yahoo.com (http://security NULL.yahoo NULL.com).”

It is still recommended that you change your password if you use any Yahoo service (Email, Chat, IM, etc.) and also change your password on any other non-yahoo site that uses the same user name and password that was used for Yahoo.

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There are reports this morning that over 450,000 Yahoo Voice passwords have been compromised and posted online by a hacker group calling themselves “D33DS Company”. The group used what is known as a SQL Injection (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/SQL_injection), which basically tricks a website database into dumping its information to the attacker.

With all of the high-profile sites that have recently had their passwords compromised (Sony, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Lastfm, among others), what is surprising is that a Major company like Yahoo was storing its passwords in plain text.  What that means is that anyone at all could see the user name and password, which is like putting a piece of paper on your refrigerator with all your user name / passwords that you use, and then having someone break into your home and steal it.  Once they have it, there much they couldn’t do. Sites that actually take their security seriously keep that information encrypted in such a way that even if the file was taken, the person taken it would be unable to actually see what it says.

In the case of D33DS, they claim the following as part of the information they posted online.

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If you want to try to see the list of passwords, they can be found on the D33DS site (https://d33ds NULL.co/archive/yahoo-disclosure NULL.txt), however, due to heavy traffic you may find it a little difficult to actually access the site.

Recommended Password Change 

As always when situations like these occur. It is advisable to change your password if you are a user of the affected service/site, even if you are not on the list compromised. In addition, if you use the same user name and password on other sites that you use on yahoo voice (or any other compromised site) you want to change your password on those sites as well. Read more