careful of those cheap made in china devices | GTAMotorcycle.com

careful of those cheap made in china devices

CruisnGrrl

CruisnGrrl

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http://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/2mkmlm/the_boss_has_malware_again/


I have a story I wanted to share about a data security breach at a large corporation. One particular executive had a malware infection on his computer from which the source could not be determined. The executive’s system was patched up to date, had antivirus and up to date anti-malware protection. Web logs were scoured and all attempts made to identify the source of the infection but to no avail. Finally after all traditional means of infection were covered; IT started looking into other possibilities. They finally asked the Executive, “Have there been any changes in your life recently”? The executive answer “Well yes, I quit smoking two weeks ago and switched to e-cigarettes”. And that was the answer they were looking for, the made in china e-cigarette had malware hard coded into the charger and when plugged into a computer’s USB port the malware phoned home and infected the system. Moral of the story is have you ever question the legitimacy of the $5 dollar EBay made in China USB item that you just plugged into your computer? Because you should, you damn well should. Sincerely, An IT guy
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i suspect it's not just in e-sigs
 
I once plugged in my device into a cheap chinese device, had to take a week of antibiotics to clear it up
 
Ummm... is it even possible to find a usb device that is not made in China anymore?
 
It's much worse than that, ever since people realized they could reprogram the firmware on the controllers of many USB devices: http://arstechnica.com/security/201...uters-badusb-exploit-makes-devices-turn-evil/

Of course, it still requires a working exploit of the operating system it's plugging into. The one upshot of this is that you won't see many zero-day exploits delivered this way. Keep your computer patched and up-to-date!
 
TwistedKestrel said:
It's much worse than that, ever since people realized they could reprogram the firmware on the controllers of many USB devices: http://arstechnica.com/security/201...uters-badusb-exploit-makes-devices-turn-evil/

Of course, it still requires a working exploit of the operating system it's plugging into. The one upshot of this is that you won't see many zero-day exploits delivered this way. Keep your computer patched and up-to-date!
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So I wonder, was the executive's computer outdated?
 
Can someone enlighten me on why a "hacker" would spend countless hours to come up with a virus? Most people I assume do not leave credit card info stored on their computer? I can understand installing a keylogger.. but why would you spend countless hours coming up with this stuff?
 
Dresden said:
Can someone enlighten me on why a "hacker" would spend countless hours to come up with a virus? Most people I assume do not leave credit card info stored on their computer? I can understand installing a keylogger.. but why would you spend countless hours coming up with this stuff?
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My bosses husband has a (plain text, non-encrypted, non-protected) file on his computer with every login name and password he uses in it. D'oh.
 
GreyGhost said:
My bosses husband has a (plain text, non-encrypted, non-protected) file on his computer with every login name and password he uses in it. D'oh.
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I guess it might be of public service to teach him about the existence of Keepass :D
 
Dresden said:
Can someone enlighten me on why a "hacker" would spend countless hours to come up with a virus? Most people I assume do not leave credit card info stored on their computer? I can understand installing a keylogger.. but why would you spend countless hours coming up with this stuff?
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for some it's to prove that they can. besides banking and credit card info there is plenty of other information that is on the computer that could be of use such as trade secrets (remember the initial post is about someone plugged their e-cig into the work computer). Sadly this sort of thing is just going to make tech support (particularly that of virus scanners) job harder. it's bad enough that places like cnet and other software distributors wrap malicious adware in with the downloads, my sister ended up with 4 that kept changing the homepage to an ad related one, required software and a re-install of the browser to remove, manually removing didn't get all the hooks out, now you can't even trust what appear to be benign devices. If i was in charge of IT for a large company first thing i would do is disconnect and disable all the USB ports on most of the computers
 
Dresden said:
Can someone enlighten me on why a "hacker" would spend countless hours to come up with a virus? Most people I assume do not leave credit card info stored on their computer? I can understand installing a keylogger.. but why would you spend countless hours coming up with this stuff?
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There is financial inventive, and low risk. There are people paying for custom design viruses, exploits, zero day vulnerabilities.

So you have people investing time and effort into it, then they sell their "product".

Other people buy the malware to execute attacks and steal data. All data has some value, even non-financial data, and there are people buying and selling everything online.
 
CruisnGrrl said:
for some it's to prove that they can. besides banking and credit card info there is plenty of other information that is on the computer that could be of use such as trade secrets (remember the initial post is about someone plugged their e-cig into the work computer). Sadly this sort of thing is just going to make tech support (particularly that of virus scanners) job harder. it's bad enough that places like cnet and other software distributors wrap malicious adware in with the downloads, my sister ended up with 4 that kept changing the homepage to an ad related one, required software and a re-install of the browser to remove, manually removing didn't get all the hooks out, now you can't even trust what appear to be benign devices. If i was in charge of IT for a large company first thing i would do is disconnect and disable all the USB ports on most of the computers
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Any organization worth their salt tries to limit User 'oopsies' as much as possible. Limiting USB, group policy accounts, browser settings, filters, etc. You can only do so much.

Now most companies are looking at (cost effective) solutions to eliminate infections on THEIR hardware, so they have everyone sign-in via web portals (full encryp, VPN tunnels) that way if something is infected, it's on the end-user not the corp.

TL;DR - Keep your stuff wrapped before sticking it in places.
 
nfq said:
Any organization worth their salt tries to limit User 'oopsies' as much as possible. Limiting USB, group policy accounts, browser settings, filters, etc. You can only do so much.

Now most companies are looking at (cost effective) solutions to eliminate infections on THEIR hardware, so they have everyone sign-in via web portals (full encryp, VPN tunnels) that way if something is infected, it's on the end-user not the corp.

TL;DR - Keep your stuff wrapped before sticking it in places.
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Even limiting access to the USB doesn't stop this virus as it's happening in the firmware gotta disable it physically, and it appears to affect multiple OS's too.
 
Dresden said:
Can someone enlighten me on why a "hacker" would spend countless hours to come up with a virus? Most people I assume do not leave credit card info stored on their computer? I can understand installing a keylogger.. but why would you spend countless hours coming up with this stuff?
Click to expand...

Because they get paid for it. You develop an exploit like this then you sell it to a ton of people, usually as part of a package. You're either working for the Russian mafia or some government arm. The developers are rarely the one using it themselves these days.
 
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