Many GPS Tracking Services Expose User Location, Other Data

Fitness, child, pet and vehicle trackers, and other devices that include GPS and GSM tracking capabilities are typically managed via specialized online services. Security experts Vangelis Stykas and Michael Gruhn found that over 100 such services have flaws that can be exploited by malicious actors to gain access to device and personal data. The security holes, dubbed Trackmageddon, can expose information such as current location, location history, device model and type, serial number, and phone number.

Some services used by devices that have photo and audio recording capabilities also expose images and audio files. In some cases, it’s also possible to send commands to devices in order to activate or deactivate certain features, such as geofence alerts.

Attackers can gain access to information by exploiting default credentials (e.g. 123456), and insecure direct object reference (IDOR) flaws, which allow an authenticated user to access other users’ accounts simply by changing the value of a parameter in the URL. The services also expose information through directory listings, log files, source code, WSDL files, and publicly exposed API endpoints that allow unauthenticated access.

Stykas and Gruhn have notified a vast majority of the affected vendors in November and December. Nine services have confirmed patching the flaws or promised to implement fixes soon, and over a dozen websites appear to have addressed the vulnerabilities without informing the researchers. However, the rest of the tracking services remain vulnerable.

There are roughly 100 impacted domains, but some of them appear to be operated by the same company. Researchers have identified 36 unique IPs hosting these domains and 41 databases that they share. They estimate that these services expose data associated with over 6.3 million devices and more than 360 device models.

The vulnerable software appears to come from China-based ThinkRace, but in many cases the company does not have control over the servers hosting the tracking services.

Gruhn and Stykas pointed out that vulnerabilities in ThinkRace products – possibly including some of the issues disclosed now – were first discovered in 2015 by a New Zealand-based expert while analyzing car tracking and immobilisation devices that relied on ThinkRace software.

Users of the online tracking services that remain vulnerable have been advised to change their password and remove any potentially sensitive information stored in their account. However, these are only partial solutions to the problem and researchers have advised people to simply stop using affected devices until patches are rolled out.

Forever 21 Confirms Payment Card Breach

On November 2017, the US clothes retailer FOREVER 21 announced it has suffered a security breach, the company now confirmed that hackers stole payment card data from its locations throughout the country for several months during 2017. Even if the investigation is still ongoing, FOREVER 21 confirmed the presence of a malware at some point of sale (POS) systems in stores across the US, the malicious code was used at least between April 3, 2017, and November 18, 2017.

The payment made on the company website, forever21.com, were not affected by the incident.

The company explained that it has been using encryption technology since 2015 to protect its payment processes, but the investigation revealed that the encryption was switched off for some POS terminals at certain stores, a circumstance that allowed crooks to install the malware.

“The investigation determined that the encryption technology on some point-of-sale (POS) devices at some stores was not always on. The investigation also found signs of unauthorized network access and installation of malware on some POS devices designed to search for payment card data. The malware searched only for track data read from a payment card as it was being routed through the POS device. In most instances, the malware only found track data that did not have cardholder name – only card number, expiration date, and internal verification code – but occasionally the cardholder name was found.” reads the advisory published by the company.

“The investigation found that encryption was off and malware was installed on some devices in some U.S. stores at varying times during the period from April 3, 2017 to November 18, 2017. In some stores, this scenario occurred for only a few days or several weeks, and in some stores this scenario occurred for most or all of the timeframe.”

The company pointed out that not every POS terminal in affected stores was infected with the malware

“Each Forever 21 store has multiple POS devices, and in most instances, only one or a few of the POS devices were involved. Additionally, Forever 21 stores have a device that keeps a log of completed payment card transaction authorizations,” the company said while explaining the incident.

“When encryption was off, payment card data was being stored in this log. In a group of stores that were involved in this incident, malware was installed on the log devices that was capable of finding payment card data from the logs, so if encryption was off on a POS device prior to April 3, 2017, and that data was still present in the log file at one of these stores, the malware could have found that data.”

The company advised customers who shopped at its locations to monitor their credit transactions for any suspicious activity.

9 Steps to Being Completely Anonymous Online

Even many of the tools explicitly designed to protect your privacy don’t work quite as well as advertised. Our personal information is eroded through a combination of user information-driven commerce (nearly every company sells your personal data), weak governmental protections, leaky products, hacked records and a society that, in general, feels meh toward privacy in the first place. If you're concerned with the privacy of your business, contact our security experts. The end result is that it isn’t all that difficult for anyone to buy or see your personal information. You don’t have to be a government official with a legal warrant to peer into someone’s life. But just because your privacy isn’t protected by default doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to improve it. Here's how to take back a bit of your private life:

1. Find a safe country that values privacy

It’s good to be in a country that attempts to protect citizens from rampant government spying, at least without legal warrants and judicial oversight. It’s even better to be in a country that at least talks tough about protecting users' individual privacy and places limits on its commercial use.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is pushing the privacy bar a bit. It impacts any company in the EU or doing business with any citizen in the EU. That’s a lot of coverage. Expect more businesses and countries not in the EU to be moving toward more GDPR-like laws, although you will always have your laggards.

Of course, most of us don’t have the option of simply moving to another, more privacy-embracing country. If that's your situation and if you care about your privacy, be an agent of change. I recommend contributing to any organization that fights for your privacy. Certainly, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are top organizations with lots of information and a track record of continued hard work and success.

2. Get an anonymizing operating system

Next, you'll need an anonymizing operating system that runs on a resettable virtual machine (VM) running on secure portable media. The portable media device should use hardware-based encryption or a secure software-based encryption program. One of the top products on that list is Ironkey Workspace. It offers good encryption, locks out users who enter too many bad passwords and comes with Microsoft's portable OS, Windows to Go, on several USB key models.

Many privacy advocates prefer a Linux Live distro, such as Tails or ZeusGuard. Live OSes are designed to be booted from removable media for each session, and Tails is one of the best, built for and focused on privacy and security. The U.S. National Security Agency has stated in an internal, leaked presentation that Tails and Live OSes like it are a threat to its eavesdropping mission.

3. Use an anonymous VPN

Next, you'll need to connect to the internet using an anonymous method. The best approach would probably be to jump around different open wireless networks, public or otherwise, as much as possible, rarely repeating at the same connection point. Barring that method, you would probably want to use a virtual private network (VPN) or device built for such purposes. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of VPNs that are specifically built to make your internet connection more difficult to identify and track. They do this by replacing your computer’s originating IP address and metadata information with something else. Instead they substitute one of their IP addresses for yours and block your metadata information from traveling to the eventual endpoint. On top of that, many privacy-protecting VPNs also promise not to log your connection, so even if they get a legal search warrant from law enforcement, they will have less data that can assist in identifying you.

You can also consider using a device explicitly designed to protect your privacy, like Anonabox and ProxyGambit. Devices like Anonabox can utilize Tor (covered below) or anonymizing VPN services, which are always on to protect your connection. Devices like ProxyGambit go even a little further. I'll let ProxyGambit describe itself:

ProxyGambit is a simple anonymization device that allows you to access the internet from anywhere in the world without revealing your true location or IP, fracturing your traffic from the internet/IP through either a long distance radio link or a reverse tunneled GSM bridge that ultimately drops back onto the internet and exits through a wireless network you're nowhere near. While a point to point link is possible, the reverse GSM bridge allows you to proxy from thousands of miles away with nothing other than a computer and internet with no direct link back to your originating machine.

If you are truly concerned about your privacy, then consider using a VPN or anonymizing device to protect your internet surfing.

4. Use Tor

Whatever Live OS and internet connection method you use, make sure to go with an anonymizing browser, such as a Tor-enabled browser. Tor is actually an entire system — tools, browsers, APIs and network — dedicated to helping you and your connection remain anonymous.

Once you enter a Tor network path, the traffic to and from your destination will be routed through a random set of "Tor nodes." Although Tor's anonymity can be defeated, it remains one of the best ways to stay anonymous when combined with these other recommendations. You can even buy hardware-based Tor solutions like Anonabox.

5. Don't use plug-ins

It's very important to remember that many of today's browser plug-ins, particularly the most popular ones, leave clues that reveal your identity and location. Don't use them if you want to preserve your anonymity.

6. Stick with HTTPS

When you connect somewhere on the internet, try to use HTTPS. This used to be harder to do, but now the most popular websites use HTTPS by default, and those that don’t can be defeated by using one of the anonymizing VPN services or devices used above. When working with HTTPS, use only handpicked, trusted certificate authorities that don't issue "fake" identity certificates.

7. Avoid the usual applications

Don't install or use normal productivity software, like word processors or spreadsheets. If it’s super popular, they probably don’t care about your privacy. Many "dial home" each time they're started and reveal information. If it’s free and isn’t explicitly designed to protect your privacy, don’t expect any. As computer security guru Bruce Schneier says in his seminal book, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, “If something is free, you’re not the customer; you’re the product.”

8. Set up anonymous burner accounts

You'll need a different password and password question answers for each website where you create a logon account. (Note: these steps are not only for privacy nuts and should already be practiced by everyone.)  The very paranoid will also want to create different email addresses for each website. These "burner" email accounts are expendable and are much harder to trace back to the real you. Use email services that explicitly advertise as being anonymous. You’ll find free and commercial versions. Always connect to them using other anonymity apps and connections, and switch among burner accounts, even when speaking to the same people.

9. Never use credit cards

If you plan to buy anything on the internet, you can't use a normal credit card and stay anonymous. You can try to use online money transfer services such as PayPal, but most have records that can be stolen or subpoenaed. Better, use an e-currency such as bitcoin or one of its competitors. E-currencies are starting to gain widespread validity and are accepted in more and more places every day.  You'll need a bank or service to convert your real money into one of these alternative forms (and to get it back out), but once you're using the currency, buying anonymity is easier to maintain.

The hard work of privacy

Each of these anonymizing methods can be defeated, but the more of them you add to your privacy solution, the harder it will be for another person or group to identify you. Of course, everything you do to protect your privacy causes inconvenience in your online life. Serious privacy advocates don't mind going to this trouble, but most of us aren't willing to do what it takes to accomplish even a modicum of privacy, such as configuring settings in our OS or on social media sites. Most people simply accept the defaults — which rarely protect privacy.

The people who hack and monitor us for a living hope the majority of us will take the easy way out and do little or nothing to prevent our online identities from being discovered, hacked, and revealed. You can be part of the solution.

How Secure are Your Communication Applications?

Personally identifiable information (PII) within corporations is worth millions. This data is even more valuable to malicious actors. I’ve noticed that a majority of corporations rely on consumer apps for communication, cloud storage, and collaboration. Have you ever considered the messaging apps that people in corporations use? According to some statistics in 2017, the biggest instant messaging apps in the world are WhatsApp and Facebook with 1 billion users, QQ Mobile and WeChat with 800 million users, and Skype with 300 million users. Hangouts, Viber, Line, and BBM follow. Lots of users are on multiple platforms as well. In fact, 7 in 10 Snapchat users definitely use another mainstream chat app.

Mainstream applications have been compromised more than once—some through affiliation with government surveillance programs and others through the inspection of privacy watchdogs.

One investigation was conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in collaboration with Julia Angwin of ProPublica and Joseph Bonneau of the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy. They dubbed it a “Campaign for Secure and Usable Crypto”, a project which started in late 2014 and has continued every year. The EFF, Angwin, and Bonneau are studying mainstream instant messaging apps and publish their results in an easy to understand scorecard table.

The applications have been analyzed according to the same seven criteria. They are as follows:

1. Is the message encrypted in transit?
2. Does the developers hold the encryption keys?
3. Can a user verify identities?
4. If your key is stolen, is your chat messages still secure?
5. Can people research and view the source code?
6. How well is the encryption method documented?
7. Has the application gone through a security audit?

What can we take away from all of this research? Obviously, we can see that many of these mainstream messaging apps are unsecure. Additionally, we can see how the study hasn’t made these apps much more secure. This proves that such apps aren’t fit for handling corporate communications, which is often very sensitive.

Corporations need a robust communication platform for chat, emails, calls, collaboration and file storage that’s encrypted with strong AES-256 with ChaCha20 at minimum and RSA 4096-bit key cryptography. This ensures that messages are sent through secure channels, free from malicious third parties.

'Nigerian Price' Email Fraud Scammer is Allegedly 67-Year-Old Louisiana Man

A Louisiana man has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in a “Nigerian prince" fraud scheme that defrauded people of thousands of dollars. Michael Neu, 67, faces 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering after being taken into custody following an 18-month investigation, the Slidell Police Department said in a statement.

Michael Neu, 67 of Slidell, La., was arrested on wire fraud and money laundering charges in connection with a "Nigerian prince" scam, according to the Slidell Police Department.

According to police, Neu acted as a “middle man” for a group of Nigerian scammers, obtaining money and wiring funds to his co-conspirators.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, the scammers operate by posing as Nigerian royalty or high-ranking officials and persuade victims to provide them with financial assistance or personal information to retrieve a fictional inheritance.

Though such scams have become notorious, thousands still fall for them, according to police.

"Most people laugh at the thought of falling for such a fraud, but law enforcement officials report annual losses of millions of dollars to these schemes," Slidell police said in a statement.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," Slidell Police Chief Randy Fandal said in a released statement. "Never give out personal information over the phone, through e-mail, cash checks for other individuals, or wire large amounts of money to someone you don’t know. 99.9 percent of the time, it’s a scam.”

Police said that their investigation is continuing, but has been hampered by the fact that many of those accused of involvement in the scheme live outside the U.S.