Any day we can take a purveyor of child pornography off the streets is a good day in my book. In this case, we can thank Google for discovering a Texas man sending images of child sex abuse through his Gmail account. As you might have guessed, a search algorithm rather than a human spotted the transgression and sent an alert to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who then tipped off local authorities. According to Google, this is the only criminal activity they actively scan for within Gmail, and the search relies heavily on a large database of known illegal images maintained by NCMEC against which comparisons are made.
What this means for you:
In the case of child pornography, I’d say that just about any method used to catch perpetrators is justified, but as many pundits and security analysts point out, this practice teeters precariously on a knife edge of ethics. Telecommunication service providers like Google are required to inform law enforcement of suspected child abuse whenever it is made aware of such activity within its systems, but that word “aware” is ill-defined in today’s age of artificial intelligence, big data analysis and search algorithms. Does a search algorithm matching mathematical hashes on images constitute “awareness”? Should this same algorithm be used to look for other serious crimes? What about petty crimes? Does talking about a crime constitute the commission of a crime? What happens if someone hacks your account and sends out a bunch of disgusting images in an attempt to get you arrested? All the more reason to keep your passwords strong, unique and very, very safe. Oh, and don’t use email to commit or plan out crimes, because even though Google says they are only watching for child pornography, you can bet other agencies are looking at everything. Heck, maybe you should just not commit crimes at all, mmkay?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, most will leap to the conclusion that I’m writing about the ongoing government snooping that seems to permeate the internet these days. Unfortunately, another of the tech industry’s dirty little secrets is being dragged out into the light of day, and it’s something you’ve probably known all along but didn’t want to acknowledge: Your email is not private. Microsoft recently underlined and highlighted this fact by releasing details on an investigation into an ex-employee’s attempt to sell confidential information. The individual in question was identify primarily through the contents of his Hotmail account, which Microsoft openly admits to reading. While this may seem to be a blatant and gross invasion of privacy (it is), it’s also well within Microsoft’s rights as outlined in the Terms of Service every single customer agrees to when creating and using the free webmail account.
What this means for you:
Before you think this is a Microsoft bashing party, Google and Yahoo have the same sort of Terms of Service, as does just about any other email provider out there. They can read your email any time they want to, and they don’t have to get a search warrant like law enforcement supposedly has to do. They own the equipment, software and data services that deliver your email, and they assert openly in the Terms of Service in one way or another that your email is not yours to keep private. You might also want to review your employer’s information security policy: it’s highly likely that they advise you that any email transmitted through their servers is company property, and is subject to review at any time. This is not something new – policies like this have been around since email first started being used in large organizations that could afford lawyers.
The only way to keep email truly private is to use end-to-end encryption, a process that most people find daunting to establish, and inconvenient to use. Until there is a radical change in how we communicate on the internet, the only way to truly keep things away from prying eyes is to not put them on the internet in the first place.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In case you are feeling like the only one under constant cyber attack, Microsoft has recently admitted that the Syrian Electronic Army has successfully hacked some of its employee email accounts, apparently in pursuit of documents pertaining to ongoing law enforcement surveillance requests. As is typical with these types of breaches, Microsoft has yet to determine if any customer data was exposed, and so far is saying very little in that regard. This comes on the heels of it’s the Microsoft Office blog being defaced only days prior, as well as successful attacks on high-profile Twitter accounts and blogs used by other Microsoft divisions.
What this means for you:
The Microsoft employees who were hacked were compromised through nothing more sophisticated than the ole “phishing” tactic. In case you still don’t know what that is, I’ll describe it in brief:
- You receive a legitimate-looking email, warning that your account at a popular service has been compromised, or your password has been reset, or that some other urgent action is required. Other popular phishing tactics include packages (or money) awaiting delivery, important faxes being held, etc.
- The email directs the recipient to a website that may be designed to look legitimate, but is not. The hacker owns that website, and any data typed into it.
- In all cases, the hacker is trying to get the recipient to volunteer specific information about themselves, usually things like user IDs, passwords, Social Security numbers, addresses, anything that could be used to compromise and possibly steal your ID.
- On top of tricking you into entering your important data, the website will often attempt to install other malware on your computer, resulting in severe infections and further data theft if it’s not caught quickly. This can even happen if don’t enter any information on the website. Visiting that first page is often all it takes to get a bad malware infection.
If you haven’t figured out why it’s called “phishing”, the hackers are the fishermen, the email is the bait (and hook), and you are the fish. “Spear phishing” is when specific groups of recipients are targeted (as was probaby the case with the Microsoft incident above), and “whaling” is when high-profile executives or critical employees are specifically targeted with carefully crafted emails tailored for the individual coupled with other social engineering tactics to lend legitimacy to the attack. And don’t think that you are immune to whaling attacks just because you aren’t a high-powered executive. Analysts are even now investigating possible AI-generated whaling attacks that being generated based upon information gathered on the internet from sites like Facebook and Linkedin, making it harder and harder to spot the fakes in your email.
Last week, Google made a change to it’s widely used webmail platform Gmail: instead of asking if you want to “show images” in emails, Gmail will automatically display them by default instead of asking permission. This particular behavior is also seen in the other two webmail titans (Yahoo and Microsoft), as well as a common feature in mail clients like Outlook. Why aren’t images loaded by default? Primarily because when you open that email full of graphics and you actually want to see them, the mail client (or webpage) makes a request to the server hosting the images, which is usually the same server that sent the email in the first place.
If that sounds like a sneaky way to confirm that you’ve opened a particular email, that’s because it is. This process reveals certain data about the recipient, including date and time of opening, what browser or mail client you are using to view the email, as well as some rough geographical data about your location, based upon your IP address. So why is Google loading images by default? It’s because now they are caching the images to their own server, and then showing them to you, which effectively acts as a proxy between you and the sender, and blinds many marketers who were relying on the image requests to track you.
What this means for you:
Whether you realized it or not, your email client’s annoying tendency to not show you images in emails was actually in your best interests. Because displaying images required you to actively “opt in” by choosing to view the graphics, if that email was sent by a marketer, you sent them a nice packet of data and a positive affirmation that you saw the email, whether you intended to or not. With Gmail’s image caching, some of that data is no longer being unwittingly sent by its customers, however, notice that I wrote “some.” The more clever marketers out there (including Mailchimp, the service I use for my own email) tag email images individually, so they can still track opens, as Gmail still has to load the image to its servers before showing it to you. In my case, this is merely so I can tell if anyone is reading my newsletters, but even that one point of data is still valuable information to email marketers, and you can bet they will find other ways to track your online activity.
For many professionals, LinkedIn plays an important role in their ability to network and market themselves to others, but the primary business tool of choice for just about everyone is still email. Realizing this, LinkedIn has created an app (currently only for iOS) that puts a lot more LinkedIn into your email. The app, dubbed “Intro”, is designed to provide you LinkedIn profile information (if it exists) of your recipients while you are writing your email, as well as automatically inserting an “Intro” banner that includes your profile information into every email you send. It’s this latter function that has security analysts up in arms, because in order for Intro to do its thing, it requires the user to switch their email server from the provider to LinkedIn’s own mail servers, which in turn authenticate on the user’s behalf while inserting the Intro snippet into each email as it makes its way through LinkedIn’s service. You read that right: every email you send using Intro goes through LinkedIn’s servers as well.
What this means for you:
For decades now, hackers have used a similar technology process to compromise security systems: the “Man in the Middle” attack basically tricks a computer into sending information to an alternate destination, which then forwards on the information to the intended destination, all the while pretending to be the original sender, with neither endpoint being the wiser. In this manner, the “man” in question is able to collect any information passing between the two points, including passwords and other sensitive information. Obviously, LinkedIn’s Intro app is purposefully inserted into the middle of a user’s email by the user himself, but the principle remains the same, and, at minimum, complicates security. Think of it as an email “love triangle.”
On top of this concern, security analysts have already figured out a way to spoof the information Intro inserts into your emails, essentially “weaponizing” Intro’s banner to carry any sort of payload the hacker would like, including links to hijacked websites. Imagine if you sent your client an email with a compromised LinkedIn Intro banner that led to them getting infected and their information destroyed by a virus. For now, I’d recommend sticking to inserting your own signatures into your email (which can include a link to your LinkedIn profile) and waiting a few months to see if LinkedIn has worked out all the security concerns in their new app.
Only seven months after a major redesign that many considered a huge flop, Yahoo has unveiled major changes to its Ymail service, and it has its users up in arms again. The new features like conversation threads, themed background images and a massive terabyte of storage are clearly following in Gmail’s footsteps, changes that weren’t unexpected, given that Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Meyer was one of the core designers of Gmail when she was at Google.
What this means for you:
Yahoo Mail is the second largest webmail service in the world, and very close on the heels of Gmail. Feature changes like the ones above are attempting to build on Google’s successes, but as many customers have noted in the large volume of complaints, the main reason they use Yahoo Mail is because it is not Gmail. The biggest change seems to be the removal of the Mail Tabs feature, something that nearly 40K users have voted to have Yahoo reinstate. Users are also complaining about numerous bugs that appear to have never been quashed from the last time Yahoo messed with its email service. Seemingly heedless to the outpouring of complaints, Yahoo has issued press statements reiterating the need for the company to progress the development of its services into a “…more modern and personalized Yahoo!” Perhaps that development means some loyal fans will be left behind.
In a public event hosted by the Reddit.com, infamous NSA whisteblower Edward Snowden answered questions posted by Reddit users on a variety of topics. Of particular note was his response to a question about whether encrypting emails would be an effective way to keep the NSA (or anyone else, for that matter) out of your business. Snowden’s response was both heartening and depressing at the same time:
Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.
What this means for you:
Imagine you want to send a package that contains some very valuable items to a friend on the other side of the world. You carefully wrap the items and then lock them in a briefcase, which is in turn handcuffed to an armored guard, who is then transported via armored truck to your friend’s house. He makes sure that the package is put into your friend’s hands and verifies that your friend is indeed who he says he is, and he even calls you to let you know that the package has been delivered safely. This is analogous to using email encryption to send an email to a friend.
Unfortunately, your friend’s house has a broken lock on the front door, and he carelessly leaves the valuable items in plain view of a window that is also unlocked. That’s analogous to the weak endpoint security Snowden at the end of his response.
In other words, it doesn’t matter how much security you engage on your end if your recipients don’t engage in the same level of security. To use another real-world analogy: cyber attacks are like water – they will flow into every nook and cranny, looking for a way in. It doesn’t matter if 99% of the surface it is covering is impenetrable. That last 1% provides the hairline crack needed to seep in and destroy everything from the inside.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Just this past week I received 2 emails that looked very legitimate, but were in actuality very cleverly designed phishing emails meant to trick unwary individuals into making some bad decisions. And when I say “cleverly designed” I mean that even to my experienced eye, the emails looked very real, with properly implemented graphics, clever use of recognizable branding and even using text from actual legitimate emails to camoflauge the hook.
How did I know they were not the real deal? Well, first off, Gmail’s spam filters flagged them right away (score one for Google!) but there were a couple of other things that immediately marked them as fishy, and a little more investigation revealed the true colors of these sophisticated phishing attempts. These types of emails will happen more frequently once the cybercriminals realize how much more effective they are, so I think it’s time I showed you some techniques for spotting counterfeits before they trick you.
Apply Common Sense
Are you a customer of the company, service or brand that sent you an email asking you to do something? Is what they are asking you to do something that makes sense for that particular company/service/brand? In the example here, I received an email that looks like it was from ATT notifying me that my monthly account was ready for review. OK, this would have passed the “smell test” for me a couple years ago, but I’m not an ATT customer anymore. However, ATT is the largest cellular provider in the US, so it’s not inconceivable that many, many people thought this was a legitimate email.
Who’s the email from? And who is the actual recipient?
In the fake ATT email, you can see clearly that the sender on this email is totally bogus (outlined in RED at the top). Why would ATT be sending an email from the IRS? Always look closely at who the sender was on the email, especially if it looks like it’s something you might expect to see in your email box. Is that email address actually correct. Call up the sender to ask if they actually sent the email.
In my second example, the sender actually looks like it might be legitimate at a passing glance. They got the domain right, so now you have put your security glasses on and take a harder look. This particular email was sent to a recipient address that is an alias for a webmaster inbox for one of my clients. I know for a fact she uses Quickbooks, but I also know she would never have used this particular email address to register the product or create an account because it goes to my email box, not hers. On top of this, there are several other addresses in the CC field (including 2 that weren’t actually email addresses), something you should never see when receiving a legitimate, automated email from a company like Intuit.
But once again, the content looks legitimate, and it’s not unlikely that the phisher landed a few hooks, considering how widely used Quickbooks is in the business world. So, let’s dig a little deeper!
Are the embedded links legitimate?
Outlook provides a handy feature that allows you to roll over a link in an email and see the actual URL of the link, even if it isn’t typed out in the email (which it never will be in a phishing attempt). Webmail users may not have this function handy, depending on the browser and the service you are using. Regardless of what program you are using, NEVER CLICK LINKS THAT YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY VERIFY, AND IF YOU HAVE THE SLIGHTEST HINT OF DOUBT, STOP CLICKING AND START DIALING FOR A HUMAN! (If ever there was a justified need for all caps and bold, that was it.)
In my two examples, you can clearly see that neither of the “call to action” links actually go to sites that have even the remotest connection to either of the services they purport to represent. Why would my American ATT account need me to click a domain in Australia? Why would I ever download US Withholding Data from a domain with “latina dot com” in the name?
What this means for you:
These types of emails will continue to become harder to spot, and I will guarantee you that the cybercriminals will continue to improve their counterfeiting techniques once they see how effective they are as compared to the past easy-to-spot and detect trash that normally fills our Junk folders. Unless the good guys come up with better ways to protect us (and they haven’t yet!), the best defense is (as my good friend Prof. Moody likes to shout) “Constant vigilance!” Take the time to read all emails carefully, and think twice before clicking once.
Yesterday, the internet experienced a moment of apocalypse angst when Gmail users around the world (including C2) experienced a variety of issues getting email. Lasting roughly 40 minutes, users experienced complete outages, slowness and, if they were using Chrome with browser syncing enabled, outright application crashes. It turns out, rather than being able to blame ancient prophecies, Google fingered one of their own as the root source of the problem.
What this means for you:
Cloud nay-sayers may have had a brief moment in the sun while Gmail was on the ropes, but the fact remains that it’s still a very reliable service. Several lessons may be learned from the experience, all of them common sense:
- If your critical business practices rely on a free email service being available all the time, everywhere, you may want to re-evaluate those practices.
- When making adjustments to your business infrastructure, always double-check your work, and make sure you have a backup of your data.
- When technology fails, 9 times out of 10, a human is behind the failure.
Security researcher Bogdan Calin has reportedly devised a new cyberattack method that can compromise certain types of routers merely by a local user opening an email on their iPhone, iPod or Mac. This new vector takes advantage of two common security weaknesses: the default mail client settings on Apple devices that loads remote images automatically, as well as default or weak admin passwords on consumer-grade routers that are often found in residences and small businesses. In a nutshell, the attack works by taking advantage of your router’s ability to be managed via web-browser by opening dozens of hidden pages with login and setting changes, each firing off in turn until one of them affects the change.
All of this happens in the blink of an eye, and because the changes don’t have to be destructive immediately, the user would not know they had just compromised their own network. These settings could include changing your DNS settings to servers that a hacker controls, allowing them to misdirect anyone on that network to sites that can further hijack computers. For example, typing “Google.com” would no longer take you to the actual Google website, but could instead send you to a counterfeit site that, for all intents and purposes, looks very similar to Google’s own site, and from there, could lure unsuspecting users into further compromising decisions.
What this means for you:
As of now, this particular attack only works on specific types of routers, and relies on the fact that many people have never set their router password to something other than the default it shipped with from the factory. Despite Mr. Calin’s warning, Apple is not planning to address the settings exploit, and has instead suggested that users can turn off the automatic loading of remote images in emails (the default setting in Android mail clients) if they wish additional security, but with the downside that all images, legitimate or not, would be prevented from loading. The simplest solution, of course, is to set your router password to something other than the default, and preferably one that is hard to guess or brute-force.
Image courtesy of Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net