Category Archives: Virus & Malware

Application Development, Cell Phone (iPhone, Android, windows mobile), IoT, System, Virus & Malware

The other side of the story on cyber attack (Electronic war between countries)

340 Comments

Preface

We heard  that the new age transformation is coming.  As a result it transform the traditional military weapons to electronic codes. The computer  technologies such as DDOS (Distributed denial of services), malware and virus similar a killer. It can disrupt the financial activities,  daily network communication and health care services. An idea bring to our attention on world war II history was that classic military power result destroyed everything (mankind and properties).  But re-built the society and operation after war. It is a harsh and difficult mission! From technical point of view, the victorious might stand on ethics view point to assists defeated side to rebuild the business and economic system. As a matter of fact, the distruction level of war created by military weapon especially missile it is hard to evaluation. And this is the reason let’s cyber warfare appears in coming future! But it started already!

Analytic result on technical articles about cyber warfare

In regards to my study on technical article issued by CSS Eth Zurich (The Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich).The analytic result highlights serveral key factors of Cyber warfare . Cyber warfare was cheaper than traditional military force. It provides a  “cleaner” (with less or no bloodshed) suitation. No doubt that  less risky for an attacker than other forms of armed conflict. The analytic result  defines 5 different types of cyber conflict during their study. They are Cyber War, Cyber Terrorism, Cyber Espionage, internet crime and cyber vandalism.

The specific feature of cyber weapon (in between country to country)

I was sometimes confused with the headline news on prediction on cyber technology war.  The questions on my mind is that how electronic weapon or cyber weapon replacing traditional military facilities? Think it over, the appropriate technique might adopted target into the following criteria (see below):

The capabilities of cyber attack techniques ( A transformation of traditional military force)

Type Attack technology Functional feature – objective Target – Environment Remark:
Cyber Vandalism, Cyber War IOT & BOTNET (DDOS technique) Services suspension – electronic communication services (IP-Telephony) Bank, Fund House , Stock Exchange
Cyber Espionage Malware Information gathering Bank, Fund House, Stock Exchange & government sector
Cyber War, Cyber Vandalism Ransomware Services suspension important facility fucntion nuclear facility , Airlines,TV broadcast station, Radio broadcast station & military facility Ransomware feature contained facility to supspend the computer services. Besides it capable listen to the instruction of C&C server. On the other hand, the attacker can resume the services once they win the battle.
Traditional military force Bomb Services Suspension on important facility function and destroy permanently nuclear facility, military facility, power station, airport & communiation facility (Digital phone system)
Internet Crime, Cyber war Email phishing and Scam email message Carry out  psychological warfare, implant malware activities in order to fulfill their objective nuclear facility, military facility, power station,

Let us dig out one of the attack technique to see how the cyber technology feature fulfill the goal of the cyber warfare features .

Do you think Ransomware is founded by military department?

The first ransomware appear in the world on 1989. A biologist Joseph L. Popp sent 20,000 infected diskettes labeled
“AIDS Information – Introductory Diskettes” to attendees of the World Health Organization’s international AIDS conference.
But after 90 reboots, the Trojan hid directories and encrypted the names of the files on the customer’s computer.
To regain access, the user would have to send $189 to PC Cyborg Corp. at a post office box in Panama.

In 2006, former President George W. Bush was increasingly worried about Iranian efforts at enriching uranium, and ultimately, its hopes to build an atomic bomb. The goal of Stuxnet is going to destroy Iraq nuclear facilities driven by US government. The rumors were told Stuxnet malware destroyed roughly one-fifth of Iran’s centrifuges in 2009.

An unconfirmed  information stated that there is a separate operation called Nitro Zeus, which gave the US access into Iran’s air defense systems so it could not shoot down planes, its command-and-control systems so communications would go dead, and infrastructure like the power grid, transportation, and financial systems.

Speculation:

WannaCry infection using EternalBlue, an exploit of Windows’ Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.  The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had discovered the vulnerability in the past, but used it to create an exploit for its own offensive work, rather than report it to Microsoft. As we know nuclear power facilities control system OS platform relies on Microsoft OS system (see below articles). It may causes people think is there any secret action hide by NSA (National Security Agency). He aroused my interest in questioning who is the key figure to spread WannCry ransome? It looks that there is similarity with Stuxnet worm infection in 2009. Since we all fool by NSA at that time let your computer workstation transform to a cyber army then attack USA enemy.  Do you think wanncry is the rehearsal of test or pilot run?

Malware vs. nuclear power: Do you think SCADA system is the culprit of attack on nuclear power system?

Below diagram is my imagination of the modern nuclear facility environment. The SCADA system pay a key role in nuclear power facility. Ransomeware have capabilities to suspend the services of this facilities. It doesn’t need to destroy anything but the services will be totally shut it down the services. We have seen the real example in UK health care services as a reference. I will stop written here. Should you have any queries, I will try my best to written more in future.

Supplement – The other side of the story on cyber attack (Electronic war between countries) – 13th June 2017

As said on above discussion topic, since it looks not interest to visitors on reflection of comments on feedback.  However there is something on my mind need to share.

North Korea President Kim’s intention show to the world of his governance power. He is in frequent to demonstrate his military power cause US government concerns his equalize of military power in the world. To be honest, it is hard to equal the military and economics power as of today. For instance China nearly become the 1st business economic leader. We all know United state is the leader in this moment. However their economic operation chain should have difficulties to do the 2nd round of transformation. Because some of their capital business and business economy contained made in China element.  Since North Korea on finance and business economy are weak. President Kim did such things seems not make sense. I did not visit North Korea however a lot of news on TV might speculate their current situation. I strongly believed that their nuclear facility might operation in 60’s fashion. The SCADA system not possibly supply by Siemens. But learn and develop a windows based SCADA system not difficult.  From information point of view, North Korea nuclear facilities might relies on window for Control Systems instead of Linux for control system.  And therefore Ransomware type attack can specifics shot the target. Meanwhile the business industry from North Korea all work with Microsoft OS  in daily life.

Below are the hints how to eliminate the risks issued by  SCADA system vendor. Any interest?

Process control vendors require:
1. A system with a minimal attack surface, so that biweekly or monthly patches are not required
2. A consistent programming interface that will not change every four to five years, requiring a complete rewrite of their software
3. An environment that can be quickly and safely “locked down” to reduce the risk from hacking
4. A system with limited network access, only through specific ports to reduce the risk of network based attacks
5. Support for priority-based multi-tasking, preferably a real-time operating system (RTOS) that supports hard real-time requirements
6. A robust ecosystem of utilities and tools to make development, installation, debugging, and maintenance as easy as it is on consumer systems.

End of this topic

Virus & Malware

Modern Sherlock Holmes – Find out the (malware & ransomware) perpetrators.

138 Comments

Preface:

A science concept guide human being to hypothesize boldly, to testify rigorously. It looks to me that this concept is principle but I believe that more terms can enrich our technology life. For example, carry the don’t care term during your development and thinking. That is even though it was unsucessful, you will receive knowledge. You will dig out more during this circumstances.

Remark: Since don’t care term also apply to boolean expression. May be you are think that it is a little bit side track, right. But we are in cyber world. In digital logic, a don’t-care term for a function is an input-sequence (a series of bits) for which the function output does not matter.

OK, we go to the subject matter today. How we imagine that Sherlock Holmes do a study on cybercrime. Find out the (malware & ransomware) perpetrator?

Perform investigation

From digital forensic point of view, the investigation will focus on the following objectives:

Capturing a Live RAM dump
Acquiring a Disk Image
Discovering and Analyzing Evidence
Creating Reports

Since I am not going to suggest that we engage a real exercises now. It is not a good idea without preventive control to execute this job. Run in rush without preparation thus contain inherent risk harm your machine and personal data. So we step back take a hot example (wanna cry) see whether can dig out more idea and information.

Observation Point 1 – Languages

Since we are not going to do a forensic investigation. We simply walk through example (wannacry) on language setup.  From language setup capabilities (see below), it looks that it cover the languages all around the world.

Criminal psychology

From criminal psychology point of view, it looks that the criminal not going to specify a specifics target. A high level point of view that they are looking for money. Fully compatible of language set benefits for their objective.

Observation Point 1.1 – Written language and grammar

From detection point of view, the written language and grammar can provides hints to detective see whether to dig out hints. This hints may speculate for the direction of the detection. For example: the fundamental limitation of mother tongue translation to other native language.

Weakness of this detection method:

Such detection might fool by criminal group and intend to interfere the direction.

Observation Point 2 – Malware written technique:

Some of the times, the written programming style and infection technique might provides hints to detective to the right direction. But a lot of time will interfere the direction of investigation. For example: Wannacry relies on NSA (DoublePulsar) back door software agent or SMB v1 vulnerability (see below picture) to execute the job task. From normal circumstance’s, bad guy will implant a backdoor to victim machine to fulfill the infiltration job task. Unfortunately the backdoor software (DoublePulsar) was given from NSA of their global surveillance program. Wannacry is a ransome software. In the sense that NSA might not be the perpetrator. As a result it interrupt the trace process. The investigator can’t follow the hints to predict who is the appropriate party to do this criminal job.

Observation Point 3 – Down to the grove, execute forensic investigation

Since above observation items might contain fundamental weakness. As a matter of fact, those items of evidences might become a relevant evidence. The fundamental theory by law of relevant evidence interpret that relevant part of evidence is logically connected to the fact it is intended to establish” (Blackwell, 2004).  However the investigator or detective most likely will prefer to execute forensic investigation to receive the digital and demonstrative evidence.

Technical limitation of the forensic investigation

We know that ransomware infection crisis like Wannacry victims suspended Health care services in United Kingdom. The major effect which harm to whole hospital services over there! Since healthcare services maintains compliance standard. It is possible to let the forensic investigator do the investigation (see below step).

1. Capturing a Live RAM dump
2. Acquiring a Disk Image
3. Discovering and Analyzing Evidence
4. Creating Report

However a technical limitation has been found on traditional digital forensic investigation criteria.

Few evidences will be lost once victim power off their machine.
Victim which have technical know how will erase some evidence
Audit log disable by default

Advanced technology enhance  the limitation on their investigation algorithm

Technology company note with alert of the technical weakness during forensics investigation. A preventive mechanism was build to avoid lost of critical data after system power off. The enhancement is that an software agent will be installed on the workstations. The software agent will collect the delta (data change) and then forward to the centralized repository in real time.

As we know, no design and solution is prefect. For this enhancement it is prefect to implement to enterprise or corporate environment. For workstation for personal usage it is difficult to implement. A drawback alert to the detective or government enforcement team that there is a technical limitation on personal devices (personal computer workstations, mobile computing devices and IoT devices).
Multi-angle detection architecture
Readers, if you can read this down to here, we might know the mentioned investigation mechanism are able to collect the following details.

(1) Memory dump, (2) disk image, (3) malware activities finger print, (4) virus and malware types, (5) C&C server public IP address and (6) malware dropper file.

Even through we received above informations on hand. However, it is hard to provide a comprehensive of evidence proof who is the perpetrator! For example, it is hard to collect the information details once workstation compromised by wannacry. As a matter of fact the whole disk has been encrypted. So, what’s the next step when investigator face this problem.

Refer to below picture, you might aware that point C (C&C server) and point D (victim compromised web server) are located in different regions. They are not in single operation. Even though Forensics investigator are able to decrypted the hard disk or collect the activities log from their SIEM device. The trace result sometimes mislead the location of the area. It is hard to provides a clear picture. In order to identify the root sources. A detection terminology so called multi angle detection algorithm will be assist investigator in such circumstances.

The concept idea is that investigator will summarize the following entities.

1. Total no. of C&C servers and their IP addresses
2. Total no. of Victims (compromised web server) and their IP address
3. Categorized the IP address and highlight the IP address region

Remark: As we know, hacker will relies on Tor network to hide himself in effective manner. Since it is hard to know their location status once their connectivities get inside to the onion network (Tor network).

4. Execute forensic investigation to the compromised server (Point D)

5. Find out the C&C server connectivity (Point C)

6. Sometimes law enforcement team not going to let hacker know they has been traced. The job might run on ISP side (Point B). For instance, they will lock down the appropriate tor certificate and filter the certificate Issuer and Subject ID patterns.

7. Since two important elements (tor cert and C&C server public IP address) are known. It is more easy to do the following to find out the attacker source IP address:

a.  Define correlation rule to find out the source IP address of the attacker.

b. Apply Google analytic methodology to figure out the attacker IP address.

8. The final action is activate the local police force to arrest the hacker.

Summary:

Regarding to above description it looks that it is not easy to lock down the hackers actual location. Heard that some security expert relies on English written skill or C&C server to predict the attacker source IP address. From technical point of view, it might contained distortion.