Archives 2019

Formjacking allows hackers to steal payment card data and other information submitted through online forms

As individuals become more savvy about avoiding phishing emails, and enterprises get better at filtering them out before they ever reach employees’ inboxes, it’s become more difficult for hackers to infect enterprise systems with ransomware and cryptojacking malware. Companies are also becoming more diligent about backing up their systems, and cryptocurrency prices have fallen, meaning that the potential profits from ransomware and cryptominers have likewise diminished.

So what’s a hacker to do if they want to make a fast, illicit buck? The answer is formjacking, a cyber attack that dramatically increased in popularity in 2018 and is now hitting an estimated 4,800 websites a month.

What is formjacking?

Formjacking is sometimes described as the online version of ATM card skimming – another hacking method that is becoming less fruitful as more brick-and-mortar retailers implement EMV chip technology. In a typical formjacking scheme, hackers breach an ecommerce site and insert malicious JavaScript code into the form where shoppers enter their payment information. When the customer hits “submit,” the information is transmitted to the hackers, who can then sell the credit card data or use it themselves.

Formjacking is very difficult to detect because it’s invisible to both the customer and the retailer. The customer sees the transaction being processed normally, and the retailer still receives the order information and payment. The malicious code tends to be very short, and hackers disguise it to appear innocuous or routine. There is no indication that anything unusual has happened until days, weeks, sometimes even months later, when the retailer discovers the code or customers see unusual charges appearing on their credit card statements.

Most formjacking malware is developed by Magecart, the name given to a hacking ring composed of loosely affiliated groups that specialize in stealing credit card data. In addition to orchestrating their own attacks, Magecart groups also offer formjacking malware-as-a-service to other cybercriminals.

Small- and medium-sized retailers are the most frequent victims of formjacking, likely because their cyber defenses tend to be less robust than large ecommerce sites. However, because formjacking malware often gets onto sites by compromising third-party services, such as payment processing and chatbot applications, very large companies are not immune. British Airways and Ticketmaster number among the high-profile victims of Magecart formjacking attacks.

While formjacking is usually deployed to steal payment card data from ecommerce sites, it can be used to compromise any type of online form. This means that formjacking could also be used to steal other sensitive data, including login credentials, Social Security Numbers, or even confidential business information, such as contact information for sales prospects who have signed up for a company’s mailing list.

Protecting your website against formjacking

Implement Subresource Integrity (SRI) tags. SRI tags use cryptographic hashes to ensure that the files that web applications and web documents fetch do not contain unexpected content that could indicate they’ve been manipulated by a malicious third party, such as additional code.

Monitor your site’s outbound traffic. If you see form data being transmitted to an unusual or unknown resource, your site could be under attack from formjacking or other malware.

Secure your supply chain. Hackers frequently insert formjacking malware onto sites by compromising third-party application developers, especially payment processors but also chatbots, quizzes, and other common web applications. Talk with a cybersecurity expert, such as Lazarus Alliance, about solutions to test software updates and scan your website for unexpected code changes.

The cybersecurity experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cybersecurity field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. Our full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC RegTech software will help protect your organization from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cybersecurity®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cybersecurity needs and find out how we can help your organization adhere to cybersecurity regulations, maintain compliance, and secure your systems.

Last year, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced the launch of the WPA3 WiFi security standard, which was developed to eliminate a number of security problems with WPA2. One of the major defense measures in WPA3 is the Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE) handshake, which replaced the Pre-Shared Key (PSK) used in WPA2. Also known as “Dragonfly,” SAE was touted as a way to prevent brute-force offline dictionary attacks and protect past sessions against future password breaches.

However, a new research paper, Dragonblood: A Security Analysis of WPA3’s SAE Handshake by Mathy Vanhoef (who discovered the infamous KRACK vulnerability in WPA2) and Eyal Ronen, reveals that SAE is not as secure as originally thought. The paper outlines a series of vulnerabilities in WPA3 that leave it open to many of the same types of cyberattacks that plagued WPA2. Additionally, the authors take umbrage with what they allege was a lack of transparency on the part of the Wi-Fi Alliance during the development of WPA3.

The Dragonblood vulnerabilities

Dragonblood isn’t one vulnerability but five design flaws that fall into two categories: downgrade attacks against WPA3-capable devices and weaknesses in the WPA SAE/Dragonfly handshake.

• A downgrade and dictionary flaw that exploits the backwards compatibility of WPA3. Attackers can create rogue networks, force WPA3 clients to connect via WPA2, then launch a brute-force or dictionary attack against the partial WPA2 handshake.
• A security group downgrade flaw in the Dragonfly handshake, where clients can be forced to choose a weak security group.
• Another flaw in the Dragonfly handshake allows hackers to forge commit frames and launch DDoS attacks.
• A timing-based side channel flaw that allows dictionary attacks on access points that support optional multiplicative security groups modulo a prime (MODP groups).
• A cache-based side channel attack can be launched if a hacker has control of any application on a user’s device, and “may even be possible when the adversary controls JavaScript code in the victim’s browser.” In this attack, hackers can recover password information by observing memory access patterns.

Dragonblood attacks are cheap to deploy; Vanhoef and Ronen point out that a hacker needs less than $125 worth of Amazon EC2 instances to get started.

Dragonblood also affects EAP-pwd

On their website, Vanhoef and Ronen note that the Dragonfly/SAE handshake is also used in the EAP-pwd (Extensible Authentication Protocol), which is supported in the WPA and WPA2 standards. The researchers discovered that the Dragonblood attacks also work against EAP-pwd and found what they called “serious bugs in most products that implement EAP-pwd. These allow an adversary to impersonate any user, and thereby access the Wi-Fi network, without knowing the user’s password.”

The Wi-Fi Alliance is downplaying the research, stating in a press release that the Dragonblood vulnerability exists “in a limited number of early implementations of WPA3™-Personal” and that “the small number of device manufacturers that are affected have already started deploying patches to resolve the issues.”

However, Vanhoef and Ronen expressed concerns over what they alleged was a lack of transparency in the WPA3 development process; the new features of the protocol were not put up for public review before they were released. Additionally, the researchers note, while the Dragonfly handshake “was designed in an open manner, its security guarantees are unclear. On one hand, there is a security proof of a close variant of WPA3’s handshake, but on the other hand, another close variant of the handshake received significant criticism during its standardization. These issues raise the question whether WPA3 is secure in practice.”

The cybersecurity experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cybersecurity field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. Our full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC RegTech software will help protect your organization from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cybersecurity®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cybersecurity needs and find out how we can help your organization adhere to cybersecurity regulations, maintain compliance, and secure your systems.

Last year, the FBI reported that incidents of business email compromise (BEC), also known as spear phishing, CEO fraud, and invoice fraud, had been reported in all 50 states and 150 countries, with global losses exceeding $12 billion. BEC scams are continuing to explode in popularity among cyber criminals, with attacks increasing by 476% between Q4 2017 and Q4 2018, according to research from Proofpoint. Recently, a Lithuanian national pled guilty in a U.S. court to his role in a BEC scheme that bilked Facebook and Alphabet out of more than $100 million.

What Is Business Email Compromise?

As opposed to traditional phishing scams, where identical messages are mass-emailed to thousands of recipients, BEC scams involve sending customized emails that target specific employees within a company, usually those who handle wire transfer payments or have access to sensitive information, such as employee payroll data. Before launching an attack, hackers research their targets in great detail, culling information from public sources such as social media networks and official company web properties.

After selecting a victim, hackers send the employee an email impersonating a company executive or business partner. Sometimes, the sender’s email address is spoofed; other times, hackers have obtained the real user’s login credentials and taken over their email account. The BEC email will contain an urgent request for a wire transfer, allegedly to pay a past-due invoice, or sensitive information, such as employee tax withholding forms. In one scheme, the IRS issued an official warning about last year, the BEC emails requested both a wire transfer and employee tax data.

The BEC email warns of dire consequences should the recipient not act immediately, such as a delay on a time-sensitive parts shipment or the next round of employee paychecks. BEC emails are designed to look as realistic as possible, and sometimes, hackers will follow up with a phone call to add legitimacy and increase the victim’s sense of urgency. Thinking they’re doing the right thing, the recipient sends the money or data.

Sometimes, victims of BEC don’t realize they’ve been scammed until much later, such as when an impersonated vendor contacts the company about non-payment on a real invoice.

Preventing Business Email Compromise

Because business compromise emails do not contain malicious links or attachments, they usually bypass traditional email security measures, such as spam filters. However, there are technical solutions and non-technical controls companies can implement to help stem the tide, such as:

• Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) to protect against account takeovers.
• Use the DMARC email security protocol to protect against domain spoofing.
• Prohibit employees from using personal emails for company business and vice versa.
• Talk to a cybersecurity professional about technical solutions that can identify compromised accounts, as well as solutions that block emails that contain sensitive data from being sent.
• Avoid using a private email server. Most companies don’t have the in-house resources to secure and monitor one.
• Ensure that all employees have appropriate and continuous cybersecurity training, including how to spot BEC scams.
• Require that all sensitive operational procedures, such as making wire transfers or releasing employee payroll data, be authorized by more than one person.

The cybersecurity experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cybersecurity field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. Our full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC RegTech software will help protect your organization from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cybersecurity®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cybersecurity needs and find out how we can help your organization adhere to cybersecurity regulations, maintain compliance, and secure your systems.