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Submission + - Poisoned Installers Found in SolarWinds Hackers Toolkit (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: The ongoing multi-vendor investigations into the SolarWinds mega-hack took another twist this week with the discovery of new malware artifacts that could be used in future supply chain attacks. According to a new report, the latest wave of attacks being attributed to APT29/Nobelium threat actor includes a custom downloader that is part of a “poisoned update installer” for electronic keys used by the Ukrainian government. SentinelOne principal threat researcher Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade documented the latest finding in a blog post that advances previous investigations from Microsoft and Volexity. “At this time, the means of distribution [for the poisoned update installer] are unknown. It’s possible that these update archives are being used as part of a regionally-specific supply chain attack,” Guerrero-Saade said.

Comment Re:Why new protocols (Score 3, Insightful) 56

Why do people create new protocols?

Because Mobile peer-to-peer ad-hoc mesh networking represents a future where wireless telcos are less able to control all aspects of your communications, and smartphones still provide functionality when the major carrier networks go down.

Projects like SPAN and B.A.T.M.A.N. are trying to bring this functionality to android in open source, and I think sooner is better than later.

Let's see if many open source eyeballs helps us avoid these problems.

Submission + - New "Illusion Gap" Attack Bypasses Windows Defender Scans (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers have discovered a new technique that allows malware to bypass Windows Defender, the standard security software that comes included with all Windows operating systems. The technique — nicknamed Illusion Gap — relies on a mixture of both social engineering and the use of a rogue SMB server.

The attack exploits a design choice in how Windows Defender scans files stored on an SMB share before execution. For Illusion Gap to work, the attacker must convince a user to execute a file hosted on a malicious SMB server under his control. This is not as complex as it sounds, as a simple shortcut file is all that's needed.

The problems occur after the user double-clicks this malicious file. By default, Windows will request from the SMB server a copy of the file for the task of creating the process that executes the file, while Windows Defender will request a copy of the file in order to scan it. SMB servers can distinguish between these two requests, and this is a problem because an attacker can configure their malicious SMB server to respond with two different files. The attacker can send a malicious file to the Windows PE Loader, and a benign file to Windows Defender. After Windows Defender scans the clean file and gives the go-ahead, Windows PE Loader will execute the malicious file without Windows Defender realizing they're two different things. Microsoft declined to patch the bug, considering it a "feature request."

Submission + - Chinese Researchers Correct Genetic Mutation In Embryos Using Base Editing (bbc.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Chinese researchers have taken tissue from a Beta Thallasemia patient, created cloned embryos from that patient's cells, and used a genetic editing technique known as Base Editing to correct the gene mutation that causes Beta Thallasemia. The embryos were not implanted in a womb, so no actual babies were created during the procedure: The BBC reports: "Precise 'chemical surgery' has been performed on human embryos to remove disease in a world first, Chinese researchers have told the BBC. The team at Sun Yat-sen University used a technique called base editing to correct a single error out of the three billion 'letters' of our genetic code. They altered lab-made embryos to remove the disease beta-thalassemia. The embryos were not implanted. The team says the approach may one day treat a range of inherited diseases. Base editing alters the fundamental building blocks of DNA: the four bases adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. Base editing works on the DNA bases themselves to convert one into another. Prof David Liu, who pioneered base editing at Harvard University, describes the approach as 'chemical surgery'. He says the technique is more efficient and has fewer unwanted side-effects than Crispr. He told the BBC: 'About two-thirds of known human genetic variants associated with disease are point mutations. So base editing has the potential to directly correct, or reproduce for research purposes, many pathogenic [mutations].'"

Submission + - Laser light forges graphene into the third dimension (newatlas.com)

Submitted by Big Hairy Ian
Big Hairy Ian writes: The wonder material graphene gets many of its handy quirks from the fact that it exists in two dimensions, as a sheet of carbon only one atom thick. But to actually make use of it in practical applications, it usually needs to be converted into a 3D form. Now, researchers have developed a new and relatively simple way to do just that, using lasers to "forge" a three-dimensional pyramid out of graphene.

This isn't the first time graphene has been given an extra dimension. In 2015, researchers from the University of Illinois molded graphene into 3D structures by layering it onto shaped substrates, and early this year MIT scientists found that tubes of the stuff could be shaped into 3D coral-like structures 10 times stronger than steel but just five percent as dense. Rice University researchers have also recently made graphene foam and reinforced it with carbon nanotubes.

But this new technique, developed by researchers in Finland and Taiwan, might be an easier and faster method to make 3D graphene. By focusing a laser onto a fine point on a 2D graphene lattice, the graphene at that spot is irradiated and bulges outwards. A variety of three-dimensional shapes can be made by writing patterns with the laser spot, with the height of the shape controlled by adjusting the irradiation dose at each particular point

Submission + - Cisco fixes undocumented SSH support tunnel in its Umbrella product (umbrella.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Described by a recent security blog post, Cisco hid a SSH backdoor in its Cisco Umbrella product, which they were using for support. Affected organizations can install version 2.1.0 of their virtual appliance which has the backdoor removed.

Submission + - Bell Canada wants pirate websites blocked for Canadians 1

Submitted by wierzpio
wierzpio writes: According to Rob Malcolmson, Bell Canada's VP of regulatory affairs, Canada is a safe haven to internet pirates and the only solution is to create federally mandated blocklist of pirate websites. Unlike existing blocklist in the U.K., Bell's plan appears to involve no judicial oversight. "'Engaging in extrajudicial attempts to block access to sites, I think, raises all kinds of Charter of Rights and Freedoms issues,' argues Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor and internet law expert."

Submission + - Russia suspected of using GPS spoofing attacks (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: After trawling through AIS data from recent years, evidence of spoofing becomes clear. GPS data has placed ships at three different airports and there have been other interesting anomalies. "We would find very large oil tankers who could travel at the maximum speed at 15 knots," said a former director for Marine Transportation Systems at the US Coast Guard. "Their AIS, which is powered by GPS, would be saying they had sped up to 60 to 65 knots for an hour and then suddenly stopped. They had done that several times."

"It looks like a sophisticated attack, by somebody who knew what they were doing and were just testing the system,"

Comment Re: Prove it's true (Score 1) 307

by GunJah (#54955185) Attached to: Linux Kernel Hardeners Grsecurity Sue Open Source's Bruce Perens

our announcements were for future modules, which will not be gpl2. the acused told everyone they would be criminals by being our clients because we would release the new modules as gpl2, which we won't. hence he is disrupting our business. "

GRS does not have the right to release future modules that are not GPL2.
That's the whole point of friction in this issue.

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