How to conduct Professional Pentesting|Part-2 | Reconnaissance or footprinting

How to conduct Professional Pentesting|Part-2 | Reconnaissance or footprinting

  March 10, 2019    Davinder

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Reconnaissance is the first phase in the implementation of a hacking. The aim of this phase is to discover as much relevant information as we can from the client’s organization or victim.

Now, depending on whether the interaction with the target is direct or indirect, the reconnaissance can be active or passive.
Passive reconnaissance
We say the reconnaissance is passive when we have no direct interaction with the client or victim. For example, we use a search engine like Google and inquire the name of the audited company, in the results we get the name of the client’s website and discover that the web server name is www.enterprisex.com, then we do a DNS search and get that the IP address of that server is 200.20.2.2

Active Reconnaissance
In this type of reconnaissance there is a direct interaction with the target or victim. Examples of active reconnaissance:

Ping sweeps to determine the active public computers within a range of IP’s. Connecting to a service port in order to gather a banner and try to determine the software version.
Using social engineering to obtain confidential information.

Reconnaissance tools

The hacker’s platform it’s up to you, but if you ask my opinion I prefer to use Kali Linux.

Footprinting with Google

Google is undoubtedly the most widely used due to its classification technology web pages (Page Rank), which allows us to search quickly and accurately. For our reconnaissance example with Google we will begin with the most simple: searching for the company’s name.

In this example we’ll use as victim the Project Scanme by Nmap8. Scanme is a free site maintained by Fyodor, the creator of NMAP port scanner.

Google operators:

(plus symbol): is used to include words that because they are very common are not included on Google search results. For example, say that you want to look for company The X, given that the article “the” is very common, it is usually excluded from the search. If we want this word to be included, then we write our search text like this: Company +The X

(minus symbol): is used to exclude a term from results that otherwise could include it. For example, if we are looking for banking institutions, we could write: banks -furniture

”” (double quotes): if we need to find a text literally, we framed it in double quotes. Example: “Company X”

~ (tilde): placing this prefix to a word will include synonyms thereof. For example, search by ~company X will also include results for organization X

OR: This allows you to include results that meet one or both criteria. For example, “Company X General Manager” OR “Company X System Manager”

site: allow to limit searches to a particular Internet site. Example: General Manager site:companyX.com

link: list of pages that contain links to the url. For example, searching for link:companyX.com gets pages that contain links to company X website.

filetype: or ext: allows you to search by file types. Example: Payment roles + ext:pdf site:empresax.com

allintext: get pages that contain the search words within the text or body thereof. Example: allintext: Company X

inurl: shows results that contain the search words in the web address (URL). Example: inurl: Company X

Of course there are more operators that can be used with Google, but I think these are the most useful.
Returning to our reconnaissance example, we found among the results some pages about the NMAP organization. The one that catches our attention is scanme.nmap.org, this brings us to our next tool: DNS name resolution.

Determining names with nslookup

Now that we know the main site of our client, we can make a DNS query obtain its IP address. In a real case it is possibly to find more than one customer site referenced by Google and therefore we’ll get several IP addresses. Actually, the idea behind getting this first translation is to estimate the range of IP’s that we will need to scan in order to identify additional hosts that could belong to the client.
Assuming that our target is using IPv4 addresses, we could test the whole range of hosts inside the subnet.
The latter is impractical if you try to address Class A or B, since the scanning process could last longer. To determine the range more accurately, we can use other means as looking in Who-Is directories or performing socia engineering attacks. In this example we will made a name query using the nslookup command

DNS resolution with nslookup on Windows

Note: During an audit of any kind it is important to be organized and take notes of our findings. This will allow us to tie up loose ends while revealing more information as we go.
Returning to the nslookup command, we still can learn more from our target. We will use some useful options:
set type = [NS | MX | ALL] to set the query type, NS name service, MX mail service (mail exchanger) and ALL to show everything.
ls [-a | -d] domain enables you to list the addresses for the specified domain (for which the DNS server for that domain must have this option enabled) -a canonical names and aliases, -d all records in the DNS zone.

Maltego
Maltego is a tool that allows collecting data from an organization easily, through the use of graphic objects and contextual menus that let you apply “transformations”

You can also collect all the artifacts in the form of pdf reports ....like

Visual IP Trace route

During the execution of an external black box hacking is useful to know the
geographical location of a particular target. Imagine for example that we have obtained the names of the mail server and web server of our client and want to know if these services are hosted on the public network managed by the company itself or if instead, they are located in an external hosting as Yahoo Small Business , Gator, or similar. Why do we want to know this? Very simple, if the target servers happen to be held on an external hosting, in the event we managed to break into such equipment, we would actually be hacking the hosting provider, not our client, in which case we could face a possible lawsuit. Because of this, it is strongly recommended to perform a trace route to discover the geographical location of a target host. That way we would be able to decide “to hack or not to hack”.
There are several applications on the market that perform visual traceroute, to name a few: Visual IP Trace, Visual Route. Some of them are free or have paid versions with additional features such as the likelihood of generating reports.

E-mail tracking tools
It is possible that during the execution of an external hacking we come across a case in which our client has outsourced DNS, E-mail and Web services, and everything we do only lead us to the hosting provider.

This implies that at least the ISP has assigned to our client one public IP for
outbound Internet, so there has to be a router or a firewall doing NAT so that internal users can navigate – I’m assuming the client uses IPv4. If this is the case, then getting this public IP address is now our target, let’s see how we can get this through the analysis of an email.

Raised this new goal now we would make our customer send us an email, and only then we will be able to analyze data from the email header in order to determine the source IP address. This is pretty simple since we have been hired by them to run an ethical hacking, so we could send e-mail pretending to show them how the audit is progressing and wait for the response. For this analysis we can use any email tracking tool or we can manually review the email header; but the use of automated tools has the advantage of obtaining a report. It should be mentioned that the email analysis tools not only help to identify an email source IP address, but also show whether the sender is indeed who he says he is, we can use these applications to determine if we’re dealing with a false email or a phishing email.

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Defensive measures to Prevent reconnaissance attacks

Defensive measures to Prevent reconnaissance attacks

  March 10, 2019    Davinder

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Defensive measures Prevent reconnaissance attacks by 100% is virtually impossible, precisely because footprinting is based on finding publicly available information about the target organization. And this information it’s public for a good reason.
For example, imagine the ABC organization which sells pet products through its website and through retail distribution stores.
Would it make sense to keep secret the address of the website www.abc.com?

Publishing the website allow users to find it through search engines like Google, Altavista, Metacrawler, etc., even without investing in advertising. And how could it sell the products through its website if the customers don’t know how to get there?
Therefore, what we can do is to minimize our exposure by making public only what it’s needed. I remember a particular case, during the reconnaissance phase when I found out that the network administrator of my client had posted the Intranet webserver on the Internet.
The same word Intranet indicates that this is a server for internal use only. This is a clear example of a service that should not be published. If for any reason is necessary to access it over the Internet, the safest way to do this is through the implementation of virtual private networks (VPNs), but not by opening the port in the firewall so that everyone can find an internal server from Internet.
Clarified this point, I suggest some preventive measures:

Keep the information private in the Who-Is directory services paying an annual fee to your hosting provider or NIC.

Avoid posting detailed information about operating systems, applications, hardware and personal information through social media or the news job offering section.

Train all company personnel on information security precautions and how to avoid becoming a victim of a social engineering attack.

Publish over the Internet only services of public nature (corporate web, name server, mail server, etc.) and confine such servers in a demilitarized zone (DMZ).

Install perimeter security measures (intelligent next generation firewalls, IDS/IPS systems, etc.).

Implement measures to protect data as encryption.

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How to conduct Professional Pentesting ? - Part 1

How to conduct Professional Pentesting ? - Part 1

  March 07, 2019    Davinder

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When we talk about ethical hacking, we mean the act of making controlled penetration tests on computer systems; it means that the consultant or pentester, acting from the point of view of a cracker, will try to find vulnerabilities in the audited computers that can be exploited, providing - in some cases - access to the affected system; but always in a controlled environment and never effect the operation of the computer services being audited.

Phases of hacking

Both the auditor and the cracker follow a logical sequence of steps when conducting a hacking. These grouped steps are called phases.
There is a general consensus among the entities and information security
professionals that these phases are 5 in the following order:
1-> Reconnaissance 2-> Scanning 3-> Gaining Access 4-> Maintaining Access 5-> Erasing Clues
Usually these phases are represented as a cycle that is commonly called “the circle of hacking” with the aim of emphasizing that the cracker can continue the process over and over again.

Though, information security auditors who perform ethical hacking services present a slight variation in the implementation phases like this:

1-> Reconnaissance 2-> Scanning 3-> Gaining Access 4-> Writing the Report 5-> Presenting the Report
In this way, ethical hackers stop at Phase 3 of the “circle of hacking” to report their findings and make recommendations to the client.
Subsequent posts will explain each phase in detail, and how to apply software tools and common sense, coupled with the experience, to run an ethical hacking from start to finish in a professional manner.

Types of hacking
When we execute an ethical hacking is necessary to establish its scope to develop a realistic schedule of work and to deliver the economic proposal to the client. To determine the project extent we need to know at least three basic elements: the type of hacking that we will conduct, the modality and the additional services that customers would like to include with the contracted service. Depending on where we execute the penetration testing, an ethical hacking can be external or internal.

External pentesting
This type of hacking is done from the Internet against the client’s public network infrastructure; that is, on those computers in the organization that are exposed to the Internet because they provide a public service. Example of public hosts: router, firewall, web server, mail server, name server, etc.

Internal pentesting
As the name suggests, this type of hacking is executed from the customer’s internal network, from the point of view of a company employee, consultant, or business associate that has access to the corporate network.

In this type of penetration test we often find more security holes than its external counterpart, because many system administrators are concerned about protecting the network perimeter and underestimate the internal attackers.

Black box hacking
This mode is applicable to external testing only. It is called so because the client only gives the name of the company to the consultant, so the auditor starts with no information, the infrastructure of the organization is a “black box”. While this type of audit is considered more realistic, since the external attacker who chooses an X victim has no further information to start that the name of the organization that is going to attack, it is also true that it requires a greater investment of time and therefore the cost incurred is higher too. Additionally, it should be noted that the ethical hacker - unlike the cracker - does not have all the time in the world to perform penetration testing, so the preliminary analysis cannot extend beyond what is possible in practical terms because of cost/time/benefit.

Gray box hacking
This method is often refer to internal pentestings. Nevertheless, some auditors also called gray-box-hacking an external test in which the client provides limited information on public computers to be audited. Example: a list of data such as IP address and type/function of the equipment (router, web-server, firewall, etc.). When the term is applied to internal testing, it is given that name because the consultant receives the same access that an employee would have like having his laptop connected to the internal network and the NIC configured properly (IP address, subnet mask, gateway and DNS server); but does not obtain additional information such as: username/password to join a domain, the existence of related subnets, etc.

White box hacking
White-box hacking is also called transparent hacking. This method applies only to internal pentestings and is called this way because the client gives complete information to the auditor about its networks and systems. This means, that besides providing a connection to the network and configuration information , the consultant receives extensive information such as network diagrams, detailed equipment audit list including names, types, platforms, main services, IP addresses, information from remote subnets, etc. Because the consultant avoids having to find out this information, this kind of hacking usually takes less time to execute and therefore also reduces costs.

Additional hacking services

There are additional services that can be included with an ethical hacking; among the popular ones are: social engineering, wardialing, wardriving, stolen equipment simulation and physical security.
Social engineering
Social engineering refers to the act of gathering information through the
manipulation of people, it means that the hacker acquire confidential data using the wellknown fact that the weakest link in the chain of information security is the human component.
Wardialing
During the early years of Internet, access to it was mostly made by using modems, so it was common for companies to have a group of these devices (modem pool) connected to a PBX to answer the calls that required access to the company’s local network. These modems were connected to a remote access server (RAS), which through a menu entry (username/password) and using protocols such as SLIP or PPP, allowed authorized users to connect as if they were on the local network and have access to resources as applications, shared folders, printers, etc. At that time security was not something that managers meditated much, so many of these modems were not adequately protected, which made them easy prey for the first wardialing programs. What these programs did was dial phone numbers, based on the initial value provided by the user, and record those in which a modem answered instead of a person; then the cracker called these numbers manually and executed AT3 commands to gain access to the modem or ran brute force programs to overcome the key set by the system administrator. Afterward, these programs became more sophisticated and from the same application they could discover modems automatically and execute brute force password attacks.
Today, our way of connecting to the Internet has changed, yet, is a fact to notice that many system and network managers still use modems as a backup strategy to provide remote support in the event of a network failure. It should, therefore, not be dismissed as an entry point into the customer network.
Wardriving
The term wardriving is derived from its predecessor wardialing, but is applied to wireless networks. The hacker strikes up a wireless war from the vicinity of the client/victim company, usually from his parked car with a laptop and a signal booster antenna.The aim is to detect the presence of wireless networks that belong to the client and identify vulnerabilities that could allow entry to the hacker. expertise with customer to back up the devices prior to the audit.
Physical security audit
Although physical security is considered by many experts as an independent subject from ethical hacking, specialized companies can integrate it as part of the service. This type of audit involves difficulties and risks that you must be aware with the aim of avoiding situations that endanger those involved. I point this because a physical security audit could be as simple as an inspection accompanied by customer staff filling
out forms, a little bit more complex when we try getting to the boardroom to place a spy device pretending to be a lost customer, or something as delicate as attempting to circumvent armed guards and enter through a back door.


Finally, once you have obtained the required customer information - type of hacking, mode and optional services - we are ready to prepare a proposal that clearly defines: the scope of the service, the time it takes us to perform the ethical hacking, the deliverable (a report of findings and recommendations), costs and payment.

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What is Sourcefire | IPS

What is Sourcefire | IPS

  March 07, 2019    Davinder

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Sourcefire Next-Generation IPS sets a new standard for advanced threat protection.

Real-time Contextual Awareness—See and correlate extensive amounts of event data related to IT environments—applications, users, devices, operating systems, vulnerabilities, services, processes, network behaviours, files and threats

Advanced Threat Protection—Protecting for the latest threats, Sourcefire delivers the best threat prevention .

Intelligent Security Automation—Automated event impact assessment, IPS policy tuning, policy management, network behaviour analysis.

Unparalleled Performance and Scalability—Purpose-built appliances incorporate a low-latency, single-pass design for unprecedented performance and scalability

Application Control and URL Filtering—Reduce the surface area of attack
through optional granular control of over 1200 applications and 100s millions of URLs in over 80 categories

Sourcefire has been aggregating network intelligence to provide “context” to network security defenses.
• Worms
• Triojans
• Backdoor attacks
• Spyware
• Port Scans
• VoIP attacks
• IPv6 attacks
• DoS attacks
• Buffer overflows
• P2P attacks
• Statistical anomalies
• Protocol anomalies
• Application anomalies
• Malformed traffic
• Invalid headers
• Blended threats
• Rate-based threats
• Zero-day threats
• TCP segmentations and
IP fragmentation

The Sourcefire NGIPS uses contextual awareness to fuel intelligent automation in the following ways:

• Optimize defenses and system performance by automating protection policy updates based on network changes
• Reduce the number of “actionable” security events by up to 99% by correlating threats against target operating systems and applications and their inherent vulnerabilities
• Know instantly who to contact when an internal host is affected by a client-side attack
• Be alerted when a host violates a configuration policy or attempts to access an unauthorized system
• Detect the spread of malware by baselining “normal” network traffic and detecting network anomalies

Sourcefire NGIPS takes advantage of the best hardware technology in the industry, providing IPS inspected throughput options ranging from 50Mbps to 40+Gbps

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ISO 27001 | Certification | Overview

ISO 27001 | Certification | Overview

  March 05, 2019    Davinder

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ISO/IEC 27001, also known as ISO 27001, is a security standard that outlines the suggested requirements for building, monitoring and improving an information security management system (ISMS). An ISMS is a set of policies for protecting sensitive information, e.g., financial data, intellectual property, customer details and employee records.

ISO 27001 is a voluntary standard employed by service providers to secure customer information. It requires an independent and accredited body to formally audit an organization to ensure compliance.

The benefits of working with an ISO 27001 certified service provider include:

• Risk management – An ISMS helps govern who within an organization can access specific information, reducing the risk that said information can be stolen or otherwise compromised.
• Information security – An ISMS contains information management protocols detailing how specific data needs to be handled and transmitted.
• Business continuity – To remain ISO 27001 compliant, a service provider’s ISMS must be continuously tested and improved upon. This helps prevent data breaches that could impact your core business functions.

For service providers, compliance provides peace of mind to your customers, while allowing you to maintain due diligence regarding data security.

ISO COMPLIANCE AND INFORMATION SECURITY GOVERNANCE

ISO 27001 compliance can play an integral role in creating an information security governance policy-the plans, tools and business practices used by an enterprise to secure their sensitive data.

Creating an ISO compliant ISMS is a comprehensive process that includes scoping, planning, training and support. Below are some of the most important elements to be addressed before an enterprise can become certified.

1. ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

Internal and external issues that can affect an enterprise’s ability to build an ISMS, e.g., information security, as well as legal, regulatory and contractual obligations, need to be identified.

2. SCOPE

The information defined in step one is then used to document the scope of the ISMS, outlining relevant areas, as well as boundaries. The ISMS than needs to be implemented, maintained and continually improved according to specific information security risks and ISO 27001 requirements.

3. LEADERSHIP

The enterprise’s management needs the necessary leadership skills to maintain the ISMS. This includes:

• Creating an information security policy in line with the strategic direction of the organization.
• Integrating the ISMS into standard organization processes.
• Communicating the details of the information security policy and highlighting the importance of ISMS requirements.
• Promoting the continual improvement to the ISMS.
• Ensuring adequate support for staff who work to improve the system.

4. PLANNING

A plan for addressing information security risks needs to be integrated into the ISMS process. This involves:

• Establishing and applying a detailed information security risk management process that includes risk criteria, the identification of information security threats, risk analysis and the evaluation of risks relative to the established criteria.
• Defining and applying a process for mitigating threats that includes controls needed to implement each risk treatment option.

5. SUPPORT

The enterprise needs to obtain the resources, people, and infrastructure to effectively implement an ISMS.

Support involves training and mentoring staff to deal with sensitive information. Additionally, employees need to be informed as to how they can contribute to the effectiveness of the ISMS and the implications of not conforming to information security policies.

Lastly, internal and external communication policies relevant to the ISMS need to be established. Policies should include the definition of issues that need to be communicated, with whom these issues should be communicated and the methods of communication.

6. OPERATIONS

This step focuses on executing the plans and processes defined in previous sections. The organization needs to document all actions carried out to ensure that processes are executed as planned.

Additionally, outsourced processes need to be identified to evaluate and control information security risks.

7. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Performance evaluations ensure the continued effectiveness and future improvement of the ISMS. It also regularly identifies areas for potential improvement in information security.

Internal audits and management reviews need to be conducted and documented at defined regular intervals to evaluate ISMS performance.

8. IMPROVEMENT

Nonconformities with ISO 27001 requirements need to be addressed immediately upon discovery. Organizations need to identify and execute the steps to ensure that the same issues don’t recur.

Additionally, enterprises must continually attempt to improve the suitability, adequacy and effectiveness of their ISMS.

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Phishing is taking a wider look by Spear or Whaling attacks

Phishing is taking a wider look by Spear or Whaling attacks

  February 28, 2019    Davinder

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WHAT IS SPEAR PHISHING

Spear phishing is a social engineering attack in which a perpetrator, disguised as a trusted individual, tricks a target into clicking a link in a spoofed email, text message or instant message. As a result, the target unwittingly reveals sensitive information, installs malicious programs (malware) on their network or executes the first stage of an advanced persistent threat (APT), to name a few of the possible consequences.

While similar to phishing and whaling attacks, spear phishing is launched in a unique way and its targets differ from other social engineering assaults. As a result, the attack deserves special attention when formulating your application security strategy.

SPEAR PHISHING EXAMPLE

The following example illustrates a spear phishing attack’s progression and potential consequences:

1. A spoofed email is sent to an enterprise’s sysadmin from someone claiming to represent www.itservices.com, a database management SaaS provider. The email uses the itservices.comcustomer mailing template.
2. The email claims that itservices.com is offering a free new service for a limited time and invites the user to sign up for the service using the enclosed link.
3. After clicking on the link, the sysadmin is redirected to a login page on itservice.com, a fake website identical to the itservices.com registration page.
4. At the same time, a command and control agent is installed on the sysadmin’s machine, which can then be used as a backdoor into the enterprise’s network to execute the first stage of an APT.

SPEAR PHISHING VS. PHISHING AND WHALING ATTACKS

Spear phishing, phishing and whaling attacks vary in their levels of sophistication and intended targets. Their differences are highlighted below.

PHISHING

Phishing involves sending malicious emails from supposed trusted sources to as many people as possible, assuming a low response rate. For example, a phishing email might purport to be from PayPal and ask a recipient to verify their account details by clicking on an enclosed link, which leads to the installation of malware on the victim’s computer.

Phishing emails are impersonal, sent in bulk and often contain spelling errors or other mistakes that reveal their malicious intent. The problem is that not everyone notices these subtle hints. Trusted logos and links to known destinations are enough to trick many people into sharing their details.

Spear phishing emails, on the other hand, are more challenging to detect because they appear to come from sources close to the target. Cyber-criminals send personalized emails to particular individuals or groups of people with something in common, such as employees working in the same department.

WHALING

Whaling uses deceptive email messages targeting high-level decision makers within an organization, such as CEOs, CFOs, and other executives. Such individuals have access to highly valuable information, including trade secrets and passwords to administrative company accounts.

The attacker sends emails on issues of critical business importance, masquerading as an individual or organization with legitimate authority. For example, an attacker may send an email to a CEO requesting payment, pretending to be a client of the company.

Whaling attacks always personally address targeted individuals, often using their title, position and phone number, which are obtained using company websites, social media or the press.

The difference between whaling and spear phishing is that whaling exclusively targets high-ranking individuals within an organization, while spear phishing usually goes after a category of individuals with a lower profile.

SPEAR PHISHING MITIGATION

The targeted nature of spear phishing attacks makes them difficult to detect. However, several risk prevention measures can help, including two-factor authentication (2FA), password management policies and educational campaigns.

TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION

2FA helps secure login to sensitive applications by requiring users to have two things: something they know, such as a password and user name, and something they have, such as a smartphone or cryptographic token. When 2FA is used, even if a password is compromised using a technique like spear phishing, it’s of no use to an attacker without the physical device held by the real user.

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Digital Signature - Detailed Explanation

Digital Signature - Detailed Explanation

  February 27, 2019    Davinder

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A digital signature is a mathematical technique used to validate the authenticity and integrity of a message, software or digital document.

1. Key Generation Algorithms : Digital signature are electronic signatures, which assures that the message was sent by a particular sender.
2. Signing Algorithms: To create a digital signature, signing algorithms like email programs create a one-way hash of the electronic data which is to be signed. The signing algorithm then encrypts the hash value using the private key (signature key). This encrypted hash along with other information like the hashing algorithm is the digital signature. This digital signature is appended with the data and sent to the verifier. The reason for encrypting the hash instead of the entire message or document is that a hash function converts any arbitrary input into a much shorter fixed length value. This saves time as now instead of signing a long message a shorter hash value has to be signed and moreover hashing is much faster than signing.
3. Signature Verification Algorithms : Verifier receives Digital Signature along with the data. It then uses Verification algorithm to process on the digital signature and the public key (verification key) and generates some value. It also applies the same hash function on the received data and generates a hash value. Then the hash value and the output of the verification algorithm are compared. If they both are equal, then the digital signature is valid else it is invalid.

The steps followed in creating digital signature are :

1. Message digest is computed by applying hash function on the message and then message digest is encrypted using private key of sender to form the digital signature. (digital signature = encryption (private key of sender, message digest) and message digest = message digest algorithm(message)).
2. Digital signature is then transmitted with the message.(message + digital signature is transmitted)
3. Receiver decrypts the digital signature using the public key of sender.(This assures authenticity,as only sender has his private key so only sender can encrypt using his private key which can thus be decrypted by sender’s public key).
4. The receiver now has the message digest.
5. The receiver can compute the message digest from the message (actual message is sent with the digital signature).
6. The message digest computed by receiver and the message digest (got by decryption on digital signature) need to be same for ensuring integrity.

Message digest is computed using one-way hash function, i.e. a hash fucntion in which computation of hash value of a is easy but computation of a from hash value of a is very difficult.

Digital Certificate

Digital certificate is issued by a trusted third party which proves sender's identity to the receiver and receiver’s identity to the sender.
A digital certificate is a certificate issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) to verify the identity of the certificate holder. The CA issues an encrypted digital certificate containing the applicant’s public key and a variety of other identification information. Digital signature is used to attach public key with a particular individual or an entity.
Digital certificate contains:-

1. Name of certificate holder.
2. Serial number which is used to uniquely identify a certificate, the individual or the entity identified by the certificate
3. Expiration dates.
4. Copy of certificate holder's public key.(used for encrypting messages and digital signatures)
5. Digital Signature of the certificate issuing authority.

Digital ceritifcate is also sent with the digital signature and the message.

Digital certificate vs digital signature :
Digital signature is used to verify authenticity, integrity, non-repudiation ,i.e. it is assuring that the message is sent by the known user and not modified, while digital certificate is used to verify the identity of the user, maybe sender or receiver. Thus, digital signature and certificate are different kind of things but both are used for security. Most websites use digital certificate to enhance trust of their users.

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Emotet leads to ICEDID and than to TRICKBOT

Emotet leads to ICEDID and than to TRICKBOT

  February 22, 2019    Davinder

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ICEDID a new banking active TROGEN searved by Emotet. Emotet as a distribution operation for banking Trojans and other malware codes this year.

Emotet itself comes via malspam, usually inside rigged productivity files that contain malicious macros. Once Emotet infects the endpoint, it becomes a silent resident and is operated to serve malware from other cybercriminal groups

The TrickBot malware family has been live for several years, mainly focused on stealing victim’s online banking information.

TrickBot downloaded by opening an excel file .Using a malicious Macro VBS code that is executed when the victim opens the file in Microsoft Excel.

The VBA code starts with the function “Workbook_Open”, which is called automatically when the Excel file is opened. It then reads data from Text control, which is encoded Powershell code.

Finally, the Powershell code is executed to download the file from “hxxp://excel-office.com/secure.excel” and save it to a local temporary folder with the name “pointer.exe” whereupon it runs it.  As you may have guessed, the “pointer.exe” file is actually TrickBot.Task Schduler Starts TrickBot to load pwgrab32

IOC >>>>>

<handler>http://173.171.132.82:8082</handler>

<handler>http://66.181.167.72:8082</handler>

<handler>http://46.146.252.178:8082</handler>

<handler>http://97.88.100.152:8082</handler>

<handler>http://174.105.232.193:8082</handler>

<handler>http://23.142.128.34:80</handler>

<handler>http://177.0.69.68:80</handler>

<handler>http://5.228.72.17:80</handler>

<handler>http://174.105.232.193:80</handler>

<handler>http://177.0.69.68:80</handler>

<handler>http://23.226.138.220:443</handler>

<handler>http://23.226.138.196:443</handler>

<handler>http://23.226.138.221:443</handler>

<handler>http://92.38.135.151:443</handler>

<handler>http://198.23.252.204:443</handler>

How to remove this malware:

1) Open Task Scheduler and go to Task Scheduler(Local) -> Task Scheduler Library

2) Select the item named “Msnetcs”, press the Delete key, and then click Yes.

3) Restart your system and delete the entire folder of %AppData%

IoC - URL:

"hxxp://excel-office.com/secure.excel "

Sample SHA256:

41288C8A4E58078DC2E905C07505E8C317D6CC60E2539BFA4DF5D557E874CDEC

D5CADEF60EDD2C4DE115FFD69328921D9438ACD76FB42F3FEC50BDAAB225620D

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