[HN Gopher] Countering threats from North Korea
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Countering threats from North Korea
 
Author : arkadiyt
Score  : 195 points
Date   : 2022-03-27 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
 
web link (blog.google)
w3m dump (blog.google)
 
| tester756 wrote:
| Will WebAssembly save us from this kind of CVEs?
| 
| assuming it has capabilities to support "modern" web
 
  | wolverine876 wrote:
  | How will WebAssembly save us?
 
    | tester756 wrote:
    | I'm asking
 
      | lucb1e wrote:
      | But why ask? Why not ask why we can't use forests or jquery
      | to prevent these attacks? What is the logic here, how do
      | you think it might work, even just vaguely if you don't
      | have a worked-out solution?
      | 
      | Edit: from another comment in a sibling thread, you
      | indicate thinking that WASM has a "security model /
      | sandbox". That would have been (part of) the answer to the
      | grandparent comment I suppose.
 
        | tester756 wrote:
        | My logic was here that WASM was created/designed by
        | companies that do maintain browsers - Mozilla Microsoft
        | Google Apple and it is marketed as
        | 
        | "WebAssembly describes a memory-safe, sandboxed execution
        | environment that may even be implemented inside existing
        | JavaScript virtual machines. When embedded in the web,
        | WebAssembly will enforce the same-origin and permissions
        | security policies of the browser."
        | 
        | Basically I felt like it was designed with security in
        | mind and I do wonder whether it'd prevent attacks like
        | this
 
  | dchest wrote:
  | No, on the contrary, it makes the attack surface larger.
 
    | tester756 wrote:
    | How?
 
      | FastEatSlow wrote:
      | Web assembly is extra code and complexity in a web browser
      | compared to one without, so there are more potential
      | vulnerabilities
 
        | tester756 wrote:
        | I don't buy it because you can apply same reasoning to
        | every new / changed line of code, yet it ain't always
        | true
        | 
        | The question is,
        | 
        | is WASM's security model / sandbox "safer" / "easier to
        | actually execute" than JS'?
 
        | vbezhenar wrote:
        | It does not matter because JS is not going anywhere.
        | Whether it's more secure or not, it's still additional
        | attack surface.
 
        | tester756 wrote:
        | I believe it does
        | 
        | Of course JS ain't gonna go anywhere now, but if popular
        | JS frameworks started emitting WebAssembly behind the
        | scenes, so devs could still write their JS(and
        | C++/C#/etc) code, but it'd use WASM under the hood then
        | that'd start process of the deprecation of JS.
        | 
        | Which would mean that after all popular JS frameworks
        | managed to migrate and popular sites adopted to this,
        | then in ideal world you'd be able to turn off javascript
        | and still use those sites/apps via WASM, not by default
        | for everyone, but at least users that care would have an
        | option to do so while still being able to use the web.
        | 
        | You gotta start somewhere
        | 
        | I'm wrong somewhere? or out of the touch with reality?
 
        | dchest wrote:
        | Perhaps, you can start by learning what WASM is:
        | 
        | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly
        | 
        | As for vulnerabilities, here are nccgroup's slides about
        | WASM explots:
        | 
        | https://i.blackhat.com/us-18/Thu-
        | August-9/us-18-Lukasiewicz-...
        | 
        | Here's an example vulnerability in WASM parsing leading
        | to RCE:
        | 
        | https://labs.f-secure.com/assets/BlogFiles/apple-safari-
        | wasm...
 
| napmo wrote:
| Google itself is gathering people's personal data and uses
| fingerprinting methods to track them. This is done on billions of
| people, and not even limited to their actual logged in users! It
| would be nice if governments put an end to Google's invasion of
| people's privacy. It is much more important than some failed
| attacks.
 
  | coder-3 wrote:
  | Snowden has shown us that governments encourage and benefit
  | from this surveillance thus are unlikely to put an end to it
 
| shdshdshd wrote:
| Couldn't they just hardware mitm the CPU and Ram, not to be
| prisoner of AES. This way they can dump stages as well.
 
  | ajross wrote:
  | Sure, but that requires having a fully instrumented host get
  | attacked. If all you have is a few reports of compromised
  | machines, it's much harder to work backwards to the exploit.
  | The attacker will switch things around before phishing again,
  | etc...
  | 
  | Honeypots are harder than they look, basically.
 
  | [deleted]
 
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| I am so fucking done with the internet turning into a trash pile
| of scams and exploits.
 
  | ______-_-______ wrote:
  | Countries have been doing terrible things to people since long
  | before the internet
 
    | wolverine876 wrote:
    | > Countries have been doing terrible things to people since
    | long before the internet
    | 
    | What do you conclude? We shouldn't care or do anything? The
    | Internet, the medium, seems to greatly increase the volume of
    | scams and from everyone, not just countries.
 
    | user_7832 wrote:
    | True but before the internet it was limited to the locality.
    | The internet feels like a public park that gets trashed by
    | folks all across the world and not just by the neighbors.
    | (Just to be clear, I sympathize with your point as well)
 
      | [deleted]
 
      | [deleted]
 
  | stefan_ wrote:
  | Who is even routing with North Korea? Seeing how the normal
  | populace there literally doesn't have access to the internet,
  | what on earth is there to be gained?
 
    | sydthrowaway wrote:
    | You know who.
 
    | Symbiote wrote:
    | Hong Kong and Russia:
    | 
    | https://bgpview.io/asn/131279#peers-v4
    | 
    | http://cooks.org.kp/en/ is hosted on that network.
 
| buzzert wrote:
| What evidence do they have that suggests these threats are coming
| from North Korea?
 
  | trashcan01 wrote:
  | A statement from Google.
 
    | martyvis wrote:
    | I'm actually surprised Google would say this is from the DPRK
    | government without also saying it had has been verified by US
    | federal government authorities. Usually they leave it for
    | others to deal with statements at that level.
 
      | huntsman wrote:
      | I think you'll find TAG regularly gives assessment on
      | attribution at least at the country level. Iran, China,
      | Russia, Belarus and North Korea at least have been named in
      | the last few years.
      | 
      | (Disclaimer: I am head of TAG)
 
      | fit2rule wrote:
 
    | vmception wrote:
    | And even when knowing how a country or particular state-
    | backing is identified, there is nothing preventing other
    | hackers from adding the same markers to their own software
 
      | agilob wrote:
      | NK hackers are kwnon for adding false flags
 
  | bberrry wrote:
  | > These groups' activity has been publicly tracked as Operation
  | Dream Job and Operation AppleJeus.
  | 
  | Following those links yield these two documents, which both
  | have "Attribution" sections. Presumably some of these tell-tale
  | signs were identified in the ongoing exploitation.
  | 
  | https://www.clearskysec.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Dream...
  | 
  | https://securelist.com/operation-applejeus/87553/#attributio...
 
  | [deleted]
 
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Been looking in that article to find how they concluded it's from
| North Korea, but I can't find it. Can anyone point it out for me?
 
  | buzzert wrote:
  | _crickets_
 
  | eli wrote:
  | https://www.clearskysec.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Dream...
 
| vmception wrote:
| Operation AppleJeus
| 
| Ok thats clever, and a nod to Zeus exploit kit, I love hacker
| group names lol
 
| blondin wrote:
| it is interesting that most of the CVEs are "use after free".
| instead of being stuck in an endless cycle of detection and
| patching, maybe, it's time we consider better ways...
 
  | [deleted]
 
| olivierduval wrote:
 
  | huntsman wrote:
  | In this case we only obtained a Chrome exploit.
  | 
  | Whether that means they didn't have exploits for other
  | platforms as part of this attack or that we just didn't succeed
  | in determining them is unknown.
  | 
  | TAG has certainly found and reported exploits in other
  | platforms many times so it is not a matter of not caring.
  | 
  | Source: I am lead of TAG at Google
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | Thorrez wrote:
  | Because of the various safeguards:
  | 
  | > Only serving the iframe at specific times, presumably when
  | they knew an intended target would be visiting the site.
  | 
  | > In some email campaigns the targets received links with
  | unique IDs. This was potentially used to enforce a one-time-
  | click policy for each link and allow the exploit kit to only be
  | served once.
  | 
  | > The exploit kit would AES encrypt each stage, including the
  | clients' responses with a session-specific key.
  | 
  | > Additional stages were not served if the previous stage
  | failed.
  | 
  | it was hard to collect the exploits. They only managed to
  | collect the Chrome one.
  | 
  | Compare this to Pegasus, malware that attacks both iOS and
  | Android. So far researchers have only been able to collect iOS
  | versions.
  | 
  | I think it's a little funny that you're complaining that a
  | Google security group (TAG in this case) is publicly reporting
  | vulnerabilities in a Google product, but not others. With
  | Project Zero (a different Google security group), people
  | usually complain in the opposite way, and say that it's bad for
  | Google to publicly report a lot of vulnerabilities in
  | competitor products, because it makes competitors look bad and
  | is just done for publicity reasons.
  | 
  | Disclosure, I work at Google, but not on anything related to
  | this.
 
  | yunohn wrote:
  | I think you misunderstood - they're saying the links served
  | nothing, presumably because it's a Chrome-specific exploit.
 
    | SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
    | "We did not recover" is ambiguous.
 
    | joshuamorton wrote:
    | Or potentially there were exploits but they weren't able to
    | encounter them due to the various protection measures the
    | attackers used.
 
      | yunohn wrote:
      | Either way, I find it very hard to believe that they
      | haven't coordinated with Apple and Mozilla on this CVE.
 
| daenz wrote:
| > Careful to protect their exploits, the attackers deployed
| multiple safeguards to make it difficult for security teams to
| recover any of the stages. These safeguards included:
| * Only serving the iframe at specific times, presumably when they
| knew an intended target would be visiting the site.       * In
| some email campaigns the targets received links with unique IDs.
| This was potentially used to enforcea one-time-click policy for
| each link and allow the exploit kit to only be served once.
| * The exploit kit would AES encrypt each stage, including the
| clients' responses with a session-specific key.       *
| Additional stages were not served if the previous stage failed.
| 
| Is this a normal level of sophistication for a CVE?
 
  | mhoad wrote:
  | I think it's currently unusual but makes sense as a pretty
  | obvious SOP for an attacker with a specific target set who is
  | sitting on top of a pretty valuable vulnerability (RCE on a
  | fully up to date Chrome in this instance).
  | 
  | They are hard to come buy and building tooling is a long and
  | expensive process on top of everything else.
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | RL_Quine wrote:
  | We see some of this with just normal spear phishing against
  | companies. The "single click" thing is reasonably common, it
  | makes things a bit harder to catch as often the clickthrough
  | will change to whatever is being spoofed in the first place. A
  | homophone ycornbinator.com would serve the malware first time,
  | then next time it would send a permanent redirect. Unique IDs
  | you'll see in things like spam SMS, both to work around
  | automated blacklisting, but also to work out who clicked
  | through and who might be a potential mark the next time even if
  | they didn't completely fall for the scam.
  | 
  | Most of what we got was recycled RAT malware with various
  | packers though, it didn't trend towards being particularly
  | interesting because you usually don't need to be to catch
  | people, at least that's my impression. Maybe it's bad toupee
  | fallacy.
 
    | wolverine876 wrote:
    | Thanks for the input. A nit, sorry, but maybe relevant to
    | readers learning a little about anti-phishing: homophones
    | sound the same ('-phone' refers to sound, like telephone) but
    | differ in meaning, such as 'write' and 'right'. I don't know
    | the term for ycombinator.com / ycornbinator.com, which is a
    | real problem, of course.
 
      | chrismarlow9 wrote:
      | It's a homoglyph https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph
      | 
      | Typically used via poorly named idn homograph attacks
      | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack
 
        | thaumasiotes wrote:
        | Technically ycornbinator.com is just a lookalike.
        | 
        | Homographs look exactly the same.
        | 
        | (And of course "homograph" ["same writing" or "same
        | picture"] is a better name than "homoglyph" ["same
        | carving"].)
 
        | chrismarlow9 wrote:
        | That's fair I'm not really one for jargon and whatnot (I
        | think it can actually become less useful if the goal is
        | just to communicate something to a person), but the first
        | line in wiki says:
        | 
        | > a homoglyph is one of two or more graphemes,
        | characters, or glyphs with shapes that appear identical
        | or very similar.
        | 
        | "Very similar" and "two or more" being the key words.
        | 
        | As for homograph I found homoglyph by reading the wiki
        | and it saying homoglyph is more appropriate.
        | 
        | (Insert obligatory "wiki it's not always accurate etc
        | etc"). Overall I'd take either one and personally don't
        | care. Just trying to match what you're saying with what
        | I'm reading and make sense of where the truth is.
 
        | wolverine876 wrote:
        | > (Insert obligatory "wiki it's not always accurate etc
        | etc"). Overall I'd take either one and personally don't
        | care. Just trying to match what you're saying with what
        | I'm reading and make sense of where the truth is.
        | 
        | Diving in (even if the parent doesn't care :) ):
        | 
        | The last sentence is the real challenge: Meanings depend
        | 100% on writer and reader understandings. If two agree
        | that 'homograph' means 'chicken poop', as long as they're
        | the only ones communicating then 'chicken poop' it is;
        | but if someone else reads it, our language subsystem
        | fails.
        | 
        | Some dictionaries influence meaning by being
        | _prescriptive_ (e.g., American Heritage, IIRC); others
        | report what has been understood by being _descriptive_
        | (e.g., Oxford). The problem is, Wikipedia is neither: It
        | represents the understandings of a few editors of unknown
        | knowledge; it is neither descriptive nor prescriptive and
        | we quickly get into chicken poop scenarios.
        | 
        | * _Homograph_ , report Merriam-Webster and Oxford, means
        | words with the same spelling but different meanings (or
        | origin or pronunciation), e.g., the _bow_ of a ship and a
        | _bow_ and arrow.
        | 
        | * _Homoglyph_ doesn 't appear in Oxford, Merriam-Webster,
        | American Heritage, or any others (per Wordnik and
        | OneLook), except Wiktionary. Wiktionary descriptively
        | traces the word back to 1938 (though maybe with a
        | different meaning in that case) and says it means a glyph
        | with the same or similar appearance but different
        | meaning. That still doesn't define a term for the entire
        | string "ycornbinator.com", only the "rn", but close
        | enough!
 
        | naniwaduni wrote:
        | > Some dictionaries influence meaning by being
        | prescriptive (e.g., American Heritage, IIRC); others
        | report what has been understood by being descriptive
        | (e.g., Oxford). The problem is, Wikipedia is neither: It
        | represents the understandings of a few editors of unknown
        | knowledge; it is neither descriptive nor prescriptive and
        | we quickly get into chicken poop scenarios.
        | 
        | To be clear: reporting what has been understood still
        | influences meaning. Choice of inclusion moderates spread;
        | definitions are inherently lossy and cannot capture the
        | whole range of nuance; the compiler's understanding can
        | be inaccurate. Lexicography is not a neutral art, no
        | matter your choice of biases. And OED no less "represents
        | the understandings of a few editors of unknown knowledge"
        | than Wikipedia does. With different goals, and to
        | different standards, to be sure, but Gell-Mann amnesia
        | goes hard until you get into the weeds.
        | 
        | In any case, to understand "homoglyph" to refer only to
        | 1:1 character correspondences gratuitously misunderstands
        | the nature of writing. Recall that we have a letter
        | called "double u".
 
        | kovvy wrote:
        | There is also 'homeograph' - "A word similar -- but not
        | identical -- in spelling to another." That seems a better
        | fit for your needs.
 
    | mot0rola wrote:
    | I am receiving increased SMS spam past week. Is connected to
    | this exploit? Msgs are all different domains with unique ID
    | appended.
 
      | huntsman wrote:
      | Probably not. No signs that this is linked to any mass
      | activity.
 
      | ipaddr wrote:
      | Tax time
 
      | samsonradu wrote:
      | Me too, receiving spam job offers with bit.ly links.
 
        | xunn0026 wrote:
        | I too saw one of these. Very odd since I was expecting a
        | note about a job.
 
        | TedDoesntTalk wrote:
        | Don't reply to those SMS. Your geolocation can be derived
        | from your reply, even a STOP or UNSUBSCRIBE reply.
 
  | politelemon wrote:
  | For targeted ones I think it is. The details that emerged
  | around SolarWinds were quite sophisticated in terms of
  | execution, timing, hiding, and cleanup.
 
  | adolph wrote:
  | Much of it seems like normal ad-tech practice to identify
  | individuals and discourage click-farming. Unique keys sent in
  | an email campaign? Oh my scaaary stuff.
 
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