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Old 14-05-21, 06:30 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 15th, ’21

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"There's no putting the genie back in of what we have now. But this is what we have, and it's not working well." – Ken Zeran






































May 15th, 2021




A Student Pirating Software Led to a Full-Blown Ryuk Ransomware Attack
Lawrence Abrams

A student's attempt to pirate an expensive data visualization software led to a full-blown Ryuk ransomware attack at a European biomolecular research institute.

BleepingComputer has long warned against software cracks, not only because they are illegal but because they are a common source of malware infections.

Threat actors commonly create fake software crack download sites, YouTube videos, and torrents to distribute malware, as shown below.

In the past, we have seen crack sites distribute ransomware, such as STOP and the Exorcist ransomware, cryptocurrency miners, and information-stealing trojans.

Fake crack leads to a Ryuk ransomware attack

After the research institute suffered a Ryuk ransomware attack, Sophos' Rapid Response team responded and neutralized the cyberattack.

This attack lost the institute a week's worth of research data and a week-long network outage as servers were rebuilt from scratch and data restored from backups.

After performing forensics on the attack, Sophos determined that the initial point-of-entry for the threat actors was an RDP session using a student's credentials.

The institute works with university students who assist in research and other tasks. As part of this cooperation, the institute provides the students with login credentials to log into their network remotely.

After gaining access to the student's laptop and analyzing the browser history, they learned that the student had searched for an expensive data visualization software tool that they used at work and wanted to install on their home computer.

Instead of buying the license for a few hundred dollars, the student searched for a cracked version and downloaded it from a warez site.

However, instead of receiving the expected software, they were infected with an information-stealing trojan that logged keystrokes, stole the Windows clipboard history, and stole passwords, including the same credentials used by the Ryuk threat actors to log into the institute.

"It is unlikely that the operators behind the ‘pirated software’ malware are the same as the ones who launched the Ryuk attack," said Peter Mackenzie, manager of Rapid Response at Sophos. “The underground market for previously compromised networks offering attackers easy initial access is thriving, so we believe that the malware operators sold their access on to another attacker. The RDP connection could have been the access brokers testing their access."

Marketplaces devoted to the selling of remote access credentials have been flourishing over the last couple of years and have become a common source of accounts used by ransomware gangs to gain access to corporate networks.

Many of these stolen credentials are gathered using information-stealing trojans and then sold one by one on these marketplaces for as little as $3.

Just recently, BleepingComputer was provided access to the leaked data for UAS, one of the largest Windows Remote Desktop credentials marketplaces.

This data showed that over the past three years, 1.3 million accounts were put up for sale on the UAS marketplace, providing a massive pool of victims for threat actors to target.

Unfortunately, there will always be the potential for human error. Users will continue to open phishing emails and download software cracks no matter how much we tell them not to.

However, properly configuring security on the network, such as requiring MFA for Remote Desktop connections and restricting access from specific locations or IP addresses, would have prevented this attack.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...omware-attack/





VLC Media Player 3.0.14 Fixes Broken Windows Automatic Updater
Sergiu Gatlan

VideoLan has released VLC Media Player 3.0.14 to fix an issue affecting Window users and causing the software's auto-updater not to launch the new version's installer automatically.

"VLC users on Windows might encounter issues when trying to auto update VLC from version 3.0.12 and 3.0.13," VideoLan explained. "We are publishing version 3.0.14 to address this problem for future updates."

This issue is caused by a bug introduced in the automatic updater code of VLC 3.0.12 and fixed with the release of VLC 3.0.14.

Because of this bug, VLC updates are downloaded to the users' computers, verified for integrity, but will not be installed as the auto-updater fails to launch the VLC 3.0.14 installer.

When trying to update to the latest version, you will get a prompt explaining that the auto-update system is broken.

"The upgrade you are doing will not launch the installer, because of a bug from our team. We are extremely sorry about that," the VLC 3.0.14 update prompt reads.

"You will need to manually launch from your temp folder after the download. This upgrade fixes security issues in the updater and in the application. Please update."

To update your VLC installation to the latest released version, you will need to download the 3.0.14 installer from VLC's download page and install it manually.

Once downloaded on your hard drive, you have to double-click the VLC installer and launch the guided installation process. Step-by-step instructions are also available here.

Users who have already tried updating VLC and downloaded the installer can find it in their Temporary files folder in File Explorer. To find the folder, you have to enter %TEMP% as the location.

VideoLan has also addressed multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in VLC Media Player 3.0.12 that could be used to "trigger either a crash of VLC or an arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the target user."

Remote attackers can exploit these security flaws by creating specially crafted media files and tricking the targeted users into opening them with VLC.

If you are running VLC 3.0.11 or earlier, you should immediately update to VLC 3.0.14 for Windows or VLC 3.0.13 on macOS and Linux, the latest released versions that include patches for these severe security issues.

Luckily, VLC versions up to and including 3.0.11 do not include the auto-update breaking bug, so they can easily be upgraded to a patched release using the app's built-in automatic update system.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...matic-updater/





Judge Rejects Plea Deal for Darknet Child Porn Purveyor
Michael Kunzelman

A federal judge rejected a plea agreement on Wednesday that called for 15 to 21 years in prison for a man authorities described as the world’s largest purveyor of child pornography.

Eric Eoin Marques is entitled to withdraw his guilty plea from last year if the judge departs from the sentencing range prosecutors and defense attorneys recommended.

But U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang isn’t bound by the terms of the Justice Department’s plea deal.

“It’s too flawed, and I also don’t agree with the outcome,” Chuang said.

The judge said he’s inclined to give Marques a longer sentence for operating a web hosting service that enabled users to anonymously access millions of illicit images and videos, many depicting the rape and torture of infants and toddlers.

The judge criticized a provision of the plea deal that wouldn’t give Marques credit for six years he spent in custody in Ireland while fighting extradition after his 2013 arrest in Dublin. Chuang said he can’t tell the federal Bureau of Prisons to refrain from counting those years when Marques likely is entitled to get credit for that time.

The judge said he isn’t prepared to impose a sentence of 15 to 21 years if Marques does get credit for those six years.

“I want a sentence higher than that,” Chuang added. “It’s not going to be 21 minus 6 to 15. That’s not going to happen. I don’t have to follow what you all did. It’s clear neither of you really understood what you were doing.”

Chuang also expressed frustration that prosecutors and defense lawyers still couldn’t agree on certain facts of the case even after spelling them out in writing as part of the deal.

“I certainly think the process was such that I shouldn’t defer to the parties’ agreement when I’m not sure they really thought it out that carefully,” he said.

Defense attorney Brendan Hurson told the judge that his remarks give them a “platform to negotiate further.”

“If we can’t get somewhere, then we would ask for some time to set a trial date,” Hurson said.

Chuang instructed the attorneys to provide him with a status report by June 25.

Marques, a 35-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland, was extradited to Maryland in March 2019, and pleaded guilty in February 2020 to conspiracy to advertise child pornography. He faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in prison before the plea deal.

Marques created and operated a free, anonymous web hosting service, called “Freedom Hosting,” on the darknet between 2008 and 2013. The darknet is part of the internet but hosted within an encrypted network. It is accessible only through anonymity-providing tools, such as the Tor browser, and allows users to access websites without revealing their IP addresses.

Marques’ attorneys have questioned how federal investigators were able to pierce the Tor network’s anonymity and trace the IP address of the server to a web hosting company in Roubaix, France. “This anonymity is notoriously difficult for government investigators to penetrate,” they wrote.

Defense attorneys said they received an initial answer to that question when the government revealed “vague details” of how they discovered the IP address and location of the server. “It appears that this disclosure was delayed, in part, because the investigative techniques employed were, until recently, classified,” they wrote in December 2019.

Investigators found what appeared to be more than 8.5 million images and videos of child pornography on the Freedom Hosting server, including nearly 2 million images that were new to authorities, according to a court filing that accompanied Marques’ guilty plea.

Marques was living in Ireland at the time of the offenses. He used the encrypted server in France to host more than 200 websites that site administrators and users used to upload and download child pornography.

In 2013, FBI agents in Maryland connected to the network and accessed a child pornography bulletin board with more than 7,700 members and more than 22,000 posts. Agents downloaded more than 1 million files from another website on the network, nearly all of which depicted sexually explicit images of children.

In July 2013, Irish authorities searched Marques’ home and vehicle and detained him. When investigators entered his home, Marques moved toward his computer but was subdued before he could turn it off, authorities said.

After his release from custody, Marques purchased a new laptop and logged into his server to lock out the FBI and other law enforcement, the filing says.

Authorities seized nearly $155,000 in U.S. currency from Marques. During an August 2013 extradition hearing, Marques said his business had been “very successful” and profitable.

In an April 28 court filing, a prosecutor said a government witness was prepared to testify at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing that law enforcement had identified Marques as the largest purveyor of child pornography in the world and that he made approximately $3.6 million in U.S. currency from his servers.
https://apnews.com/article/europe-te...d130389e5456f3





Poll: Nearly Two-Thirds of Americans Say Social Media Platforms are Tearing Us Apart

Sixty-four percent of Americans think social media does more to divide than unite us, a majority that cuts across party lines.
Mark Murray

Most Americans admit they use social media at least once a day, but they also believe platforms like Facebook and Twitter are doing more to divide the nation than to bring it together, according to brand-new results from the latest national NBC News poll.

Overall, 66 percent of adults say they use social media once a day or more, versus 33 percent who don't.

The numbers are essentially unchanged from when the poll asked this same question in 2018 and 2019.

But 64 percent of Americans think social media platforms do more to divide us, and that includes majorities of Republicans (77 percent), independents (65 percent) and Democrats (54 percent), as well as majorities of whites (70 percent), Latinos (56 percent), young adults (61 percent) and seniors (71 percent).

By contrast, just 27 percent of all adults believe that those platforms do more to bring us together.

Notably, Black respondents are the one demographic split on this question, with 42 percent saying it’s more divisive, while 40 percent say it’s more unifying.

When the poll last asked this question in March 2019, 57 percent of respondents said social media platforms do more to divide us, while 35 percent said they more to unite us.

But there’s a different finding when the question turns to quality of life.

Among daily social media users, 49 percent say social media platforms make their lives better, while 37 percent say they make their lives worse.

Democrats, women and college graduates are more likely to say that social media make their lives better, versus Republicans, men and those without college degrees who are more likely to disagree.

An increase in screen time

The NBC News poll also finds a majority of parents — 54 percent — saying the time their children have spent on computer screens, phones, tablets and TVs has increased during the pandemic.

Thirty-eight percent of parents say the amount of screen time for their children has stayed the same, and just 4 percent say it’s declined.

When the parents who said their children’s screen time has increased during the pandemic were asked to quantify just how many more minutes per day their children spend on devices, the average spike was 154 minutes — so nearly two hours more per day.

Among all adult respondents in the poll, 43 percent say their screen time had increased during the pandemic while 49 percent say it has stayed the same, and 8 percent say it’s decreased.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/mee...s-are-n1266773





How One Man's Fight Against An AOL Troll Sealed The Tech Industry's Power
Bobby Allyn

In April 1995, Ken Zeran's phone started ringing. And ringing. And ringing.

"Lots of calls. It wasn't like every second. But it was just lots of calls," Zeran said in an interview with NPR.

He ran a real estate magazine in Seattle. But his phone ringing off the hook had nothing to do with that — these callers were irate, often screaming.

"'How could you do this? What a loser you are,'" he remembers them saying. "You can use your own sense and think of what they might be saying given what had just happened in Oklahoma City."

What had just happened in Oklahoma City was a domestic terrorist attack at a federal building that left 168 people dead and rattled the nation.

Unbeknownst to Zeran, an Internet troll fired up a dial-up modem and posted a message to America Online, now AOL, under the username "Zen ZZ03." They hawked T-shirts emblazoned with offensive messages like "Visit Oklahoma ... It's a BLAST!!!," and other tasteless messages about the victims. The ad directed readers to call Zeran, offering the number to his home office in Seattle.

"Ask for Ken," the ads read. "Due to high demand please call back if busy."

Zeran wanted these ads removed. He got on the phone with AOL.

"And basically I told them, my phone's ringing off the hook. And I can't get anything done, and it's all these people upset about something they saw on AOL," he said.

It took a day, but AOL did delete the post. Yet more popped up. AOL was slow to respond. Meanwhile, Zeran continued to be bombarded with calls, about one call every two minutes during the worst of it.

His business ground to a halt. He was sleepless for days and was emotionally drained.

He talked to AOL's legal department, the FBI, the Secret Service. Nonetheless, the calls persisted. Zeran went from being frazzled to worried for his safety.

"I didn't want the things to go any further and have some nitwit show up with a shotgun on my property," he said. "The problem was AOL would not post something on their server telling their audience that this is a bunch of baloney, a hoax or whatever. And so the calls kept coming."

This predicament launched a battle between Zeran and AOL that would end up making history and would lay the legal foundation for the Internet of today.

Facebook, Google, Amazon, Yelp, Wikipedia and countless other social media, e-commerce and discussion sites that rely on user-generated content could not exist without the precedent that emerged from Zeran's case.

And some experts blame the growth of the most pernicious content — disinformation, hate, bullying, harassment — on the how the court viewed Zeran's fight with AOL.

'The most important Internet law ruling ever'

In his lawsuit, Zeran's lawyers wrote that AOL, in operating a "computer bulletin board," that was put on notice about a defamatory and incendiary post and did not act fast enough to remove it, was liable. Therefore, his attorney's argued, AOL should pay monetary damages to Zeran.

Two months before Zeran's suit, Congress had enacted the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a mostly anti-porn law that the Supreme Court would later strike down on First Amendment grounds. The law contained something else, though: a provision now best known as Section 230.

At the time of its drafting, lawmakers were afraid that if websites got into the business of removing harmful content, they would be considered publishers, rather than simply distributors, under the law. That could expose this nascent industry to a flood of defamation lawsuits.

To fix what's become known as "the moderator's dilemma," Section 230 did two things. First, it said websites cannot be sued for what users post. Second, it let companies dictate what would be allowed on, and what would be taken down from, their websites. Enforcing those rules would be up to the companies.

But just how sweeping was this law?

Before Zeran, it was hard to say. The 26 words of Section 230 that give "interactive computer services" immunity were inscrutable. Debate raged about how broad or narrow the words should be seen.

But when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit issued its opinion in Zeran's case, it strongly favored AOL, expanding and strengthening the law and leaving little doubt about just how powerful this legal shield is.

"Congress recognized the threat that tort-based lawsuits pose to freedom of speech in the new and burgeoning Internet medium," the court wrote. "The imposition of tort liability on service providers for the communications of others represented, [is] for Congress, simply another form of intrusive government regulation of speech."

With that ruling, tech companies no longer had to fear getting sued for something users posted, even if the online service was put on notice about defamatory content. It helped propel tech startups into multi-trillion-dollar global behemoths. Scholars call the Zeran decision "the most important Internet law ruling ever."

"They took this really exceptionalist view by saying Congress wanted to treat the Internet differently than other media and provide this strong protection in an effort to encourage innovation and speech on the internet," said lawyer Jeff Kosseff, who's written a book all about Section 230.

A review of federal court decisions by NPR shows that the Zeran case has been cited by judges 350 times, a number that scholars say is likely a low estimate.

That's because nearly every time a digital platform is sued for hosting comment that someone sees as defamatory, the case is tossed before it can ever be heard, often with a reference to the Zeran case. There are some exceptions for child pornography, copyright infringement and a violation of federal criminal law, but the protection is otherwise just about absolute.

Congress is now considering a flurry of changes to Section 230 to hold tech companies more accountable for content that spreads on their platforms.

And last week, a federal appeals court delivered a blow to Section 230 in a case against Snap, Inc., the maker of Snapchat. The court said the law would not protect the company against a suit brought by parents of young men who died in a fatal car crash while using the app's "speed filter" feature.

While the full impact of the decision remains to be seen, it provided hope to plaintiffs' lawyers who have long been frustrated with how nearly impossible it is to take an Internet company to court.

Zeran: 'There's no putting the genie back in'

To this day, Zeran has not been able to figure out who trolled him back in the '90s and what may have motivated the cyberattack.

"My lawyers asked me hundreds of times, 'Who do you think it was?' 'Who do you think it was?' The only theory I can come up with is that my number was well known out there, and that it was just a case of random trolling," he said.

Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University Law School who has written extensively about the Zeran case, has a hard time believing that Zeran was not intentionally targeted, but he admits that the real culprit may forever be a mystery.

"I just cannot accept the idea that he was a random drive-by victim. That just doesn't pass the smell test," Goldman said. "It is one of the great whodunits of our time."

Zeran is now 74. He works in real estate in Seattle, and he's also an artist. Though he has largely moved on from this chapter of his life, he said it still bugs him that the appeals court sided against him (At the time, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it refused to review the case).

"The judge made a huge mistake," Zeran said. "Because by removing responsibility, they created chaos."

Experts largely agree this court decision has added to online chaos, arguably making confronting harassment, disinformation and other abuse less urgent for Silicon Valley. But defenders say the law has enabled the growth of the "open Internet," and that without the court's broad interpretation of Section 230, platforms would be forced to censor loads of content for fear of litigation exposure.

Zeran, meanwhile, thinks AOL played a major part in his grief by allowing whoever posted the ads to remain anonymous. He hopes Congress pushes websites to authenticate users' real identities.

"People register their cars and they get a license," before they drive, Zeran said. "There should be a registration process for the web, too."

His nightmarish experience, he said, was a preview of the kind of trouble a nearly impenetrable legal shield for any industry could wrought.

"There's no putting the genie back in of what we have now," Zeran said. "But this is what we have, and it's not working well."
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/11/99439...ndustrys-power

















Until next week,

- js.



















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Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved.


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