Cyber Security, Enterprise, Ransomware, Security Tips

Ransomware Protection Crucial to Enterprise 0 152

Ransomware

Ransomware is by far the biggest threat among Enterprises.  So what is Ransomware? It is a malicious code that blocks or encrypts the contents of a device and demands a ransom to restore access to the data.

According to research done by ESET,  Companies named ransomware their number one concern.

In response to customer needs and concerns, ESET integrated Ransomware Shield into its security solutions. ESET has long been providing its customers with very good behavior-based malware detection and also with Host-based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) that allows users to set custom rules for the protection against ransomware. However, should something slip past the 11 other security layers, Ransomware Shield will be automatically activated.

While ransomware infection often starts with clicking a suspicious link or a fictitious invoice, ESET found that email remains the most common distribution method.

To combat these scenarios, enter ESET Dynamic Threat Defense (EDTD). EDTD provides another layer of security for ESET products like Mail Security and Endpoint products. It utilizes a cloud-based sandboxing technology and multiple machine learning models to detect new, never before seen type of threats. In result, attachments that were classified as malicious are stripped off the email and the recipient gets information about the detection.

To learn more about how ESET can protect your business, and to book a FREE in house Cybersecurity Training Session for your employees, please sign up below.

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Beware: ad slingers thinly disguised as security apps 0 782

Fake Security App

According to AV-Comparatives, an independent testing organization, there are significant differences in the level of protection provided by mobile security solutions. However, even the least secure of them are still far better than questionable apps that impersonate security applications in order to display ads to users. Thirty-five such applications have recently been discovered in the Google Play official Android app store.

These apps have Google Play statistics showing a minimum of over six million installs, cumulatively. However, not all those were necessarily real installations, it is possilbe that many were bot downloads posting fake reviews to improve the ratings for the app.

All 35 apps have been flagged by ESET and eventually removed from the store.

In addition to annoying their victims with ads, disguising these apps as security software has some serious negative side effects, too. In mimicking basic security functions – in fact, they all act as very primitive security checkers relying on a few trivial hardcoded rules – they often detect legitimate apps as malicious. And last but not least, they create a false sense of security in the victims, which might expose them to real risks from malicious apps that are not detected as such.

ESET’s analysis has shown that among these 35 apps, only a handful stand out for their specific features: one app is not completely free as it offers a paid upgrade; one app has implemented a primitive, easily bypassed, app-locker manager; another app flags other apps from this group as dangerous by default; and finally, one misuses ESET’s branding.

 

Security-mimicking functionality
In order to stay under the radar, all the shady ad-displaying apps mimic actual mobile security solutions. However, their ‘detection mechanisms’ are incomplete and very primitive, which makes them easy to bypass and prone to false positives.

Our research into these questionable apps has shown that their ‘detection mechanisms’ can be divided into four categories. These mechanisms are identical or almost identical across the whole set of apps.

1) Package name whitelist & blacklist
These whitelists features popular apps such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Skype and others. The ‘blacklists’ contains far too few items to be considered security functionality at all.

2) Permissions blacklist
All apps (including legitimate ones) are flagged if they require some of the listed permissions that are considered dangerous, such as send and receive SMS, access location data, access the camera, etc.

3) Source whitelist
All apps but those from the official Android store, Google Play, are flagged – even if they are completely benign.

4) Activities blacklist
All apps that contain any of the blacklisted activities: that is, parts of applications. This mainly concerns some ad-displaying activities.

Flagged are all apps that contain any of the blacklisted activities, i.e., packages of application that are used in an application. These packages can handle additional functionalities (mainly some ad-displaying activities).

While there is nothing wrong with the idea of activity blacklisting, the implementation in these questionable apps is rather sloppy. For example, Google Ads is included in the blacklist despite the fact that it is a legitimate service. On top of being legitimate, this service is implemented in all of the shady apps we analyzed.

Additional security “functionality”
Some of the questionable security apps are capable of protecting a user’s apps with a password or a pattern locker. The idea behind this seemingly useful feature is to provide the user with another layer of security in selected apps.

However, due to insecure implementation, this feature also fails to provide true security to the user.

The problem is that relevant information is not stored safely on the device – instead of using encryption, which is common baseline practice in cybersecurity, these apps store the names of locked apps and the passwords to unlock them as plaintext.

This means that the data can be accessed after the device is rooted.

Besides compromising the unencrypted data by rooting the phone, there is another way to bypass the app lock. An attacker with physical access to the device can change the app-locking password without knowing the old one!

Conclusion
Having a security solution installed in an Android phone is definitely a good thing. However, not all apps featuring “security” or “antivirus” in their name do what the name promises. Before installing a security solution, think twice: is it really a tool you can safely rely on?

The 35 pseudo-security apps described in this article are not, say, ransomware or other hardcore malware. The only harm they do is displaying annoying ads, making false-positive detections and giving the victim a false sense of security. However, those millions of unwary users who downloaded them could easily have ended up downloading true malware in some similar disguise.

Instead of shady apps with flashy names and icons and outlandish, unsubstantiated promises, seek a reputable security solution. And which one to choose? An independent test by a well-respected testing organization might help.

ESET’s guide makes it possible to peek into FinFisher 0 848

FinFisher, also known as FinSpy, has a history of being used in surveillance campaigns, both against legitimate targets and against political opposition in countries with oppressive regimes. Despite that, the latest thorough analyses dealt with samples from as long ago as 2010. Since then, the FinFisher spyware received strong anti-analysis measures; apparently, this is also the reason why the more recent reports about FinFisher don’t go into much technical detail. In one of the reports, a reputable security company even admitted that due to strong obfuscation, it was not possible to extract the C&C servers.

Having discovered a wave of surveillance campaigns in several countries in summer 2017, ESET researchers dug deep into the samples of FinFisher. To be able to start a thorough analysis of how these recent samples work, they first had to break through all FinFisher’s protective layers.

To help malware analysts and security researchers overcome FinFisher’s advanced anti-disassembly obfuscation and virtualization features, ESET researchers have framed some clever tricks into a whitepaper, “ESET’s guide to deobfuscating and devirtualizing FinFisher”.

“The company behind FinFisher has built a multimillion-dollar business around this spyware – so it comes as no surprise that they put a much bigger effort into hiding and obfuscation than most common cybercriminals. Our aim is to help our peers analyze FinFisher and thus protect internet users from this threat,” comments Filip Kafka, ESET malware analyst who leads the analysis of FinFisher.

Filip Kafka expects the FinFisher creators to improve their protections to make FinFisher hard to analyze again. “With their huge resources, there is no doubt FinFisher will receive even better anti-analysis features. However, I expect their additional measures to cost more to implement while being easier to crack for us the next time around,” comments Filip Kafka.

ESET’s analysis into FinFisher is ongoing. In the first stage, ESET researchers focused on the infection vector used in the mentioned campaigns. They strongly believe internet service providers have played the key role in infecting the victims with FinFisher. Filip Kafka’s presentations of these findings along with a brief overview of FinFisher’s anti-analysis capabilities raised a lot of interest at the Virus Bulletin Conference as well as the AVAR conference.