Nexus: Hackers News

Meltdown and Spectre CPU Flaws Affect Intel, ARM, AMD Processors

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Unlike the initial reports suggested about Intel chips being vulnerable to some severe ‘memory leaking’ flaws, full technical details about the vulnerabilities have now been emerged, which revealed that almost every modern processor since 1995 is vulnerable to the issues.
Disclosed today by Google Project Zero, the vulnerabilities potentially impact all major CPUs, including those from AMD, ARM, and Intel—threatening almost all PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, regardless of manufacturer or operating system.
These hardware vulnerabilities have been categorized into two attacks, named Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) and Spectre (CVE-2017-5753 and CVE-2017-5715), which could allow attackers to steal sensitive data which is currently processed on the computer.

Both attacks take advantage of a feature in chips known as "speculative execution," a technique used by most modern CPUs to optimize performance.

"In order to improve performance, many CPUs may choose to speculatively execute instructions based on assumptions that are considered likely to be true. During speculative execution, the processor is verifying these assumptions; if they are valid, then the execution continues. If they are invalid, then the execution is unwound, and the correct execution path can be started based on the actual conditions," Project Zero says.

Therefore, it is possible for such speculative execution to have "side effects which are not restored when the CPU state is unwound and can lead to information disclosure," which can be accessed using side-channel attacks.

Meltdown Attack

The first issue, Meltdown (paper), allows attackers to read not only kernel memory but also the entire physical memory of the target machines, and therefore all secrets of other programs and the operating system.

“Meltdown is a related microarchitectural attack which exploits out-of-order execution in order to leak the target’s physical memory.”

Meltdown uses speculative execution to break the isolation between user applications and the operating system, allowing any application to access all system memory, including memory allocated for the kernel.

“Meltdown exploits a privilege escalation vulnerability specific to Intel processors, due to which speculatively executed instructions can bypass memory protection.”

Nearly all desktop, laptop, and cloud computers affected by Meltdown.

Spectre Attack

The second problem, Spectre (paper), is not easy to patch and will haunt people for quite some time since this issue requires changes to processor architecture in order to fully mitigate.
Spectre attack breaks the isolation between different applications, allowing the attacker-controlled program to trick error-free programs into leaking their secrets by forcing them into accessing arbitrary portions of its memory, which can then be read through a side channel.

Spectre attacks can be used to leak information from the kernel to user programs, as well as from virtualization hypervisors to guest systems.

“In addition to violating process isolation boundaries using native code, Spectre attacks can also be used to violate browser sandboxing, by mounting them via portable JavaScript code. We wrote a JavaScript program that successfully reads data from the address space of the browser process running it.” the paper explains.

“KAISER patch, which has been widely applied as a mitigation to the Meltdown attack, does not protect against Spectre.”

According to researchers, this vulnerability impacts almost every system, including desktops, laptops, cloud servers, as well as smartphones—powered by Intel, AMD, and ARM chips.

What You Should Do: Mitigations And Patches

Many vendors have security patches available for one or both of these attacks.

Windows — Microsoft has issued an out-of-band patch update for Windows 10, while other versions of Windows will be patched on the traditional Patch Tuesday on January 9, 2018

MacOS — Apple had already fixed most of these security holes in macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 last month, but MacOS 10.13.3 will enhance or complete these mitigations.

Linux — Linux kernel developers have also released patches by implementing kernel page-table isolation (KPTI) to move the kernel into an entirely separate address space.

Android — Google has released security patches for Pixel/Nexus users as part of the Android January security patch update. Other users have to wait for their device manufacturers to release a compatible security update.

Mitigations for Chrome Users

Since this exploit can be executed through the website, Chrome users can turn on Site Isolation feature on their devices to mitigate these flaws.

Here's how to turn Site Isolation on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS or Android:

Copy chrome://flags/#enable-site-per-process and paste it into the URL field at the top of your Chrome web browser, and then hit the Enter key.

Look for Strict Site Isolation, then click the box labeled Enable.

Once done, hit Relaunch Now to relaunch your Chrome browser.

There is no single fix for both the attacks since each requires protection independently.

Source: The Hackers News

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Petya Ransomware Spreading Rapidly Worldwide, Just Like WannaCry - News

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Watch out, readers! It is ransomware, another WannaCry, another wide-spread attack.

The WannaCry ransomware is not dead yet and another large scale ransomware attack is making chaos worldwide, shutting down computers at corporates, power supplies, and banks across Russia, Ukraine, Spain, France, UK, India, and Europe and demanding $300 in bitcoins.

According to multiple sources, a new variant of Petya ransomware, also known as Petwrap, is spreading rapidly with the help of same Windows SMBv1 vulnerability that the WannaCry ransomware abused to infect 300,000 systems and servers worldwide in just 72 hours last month.

Apart from this, many victims have also informed that Petya ransomware has also infected their patch systems.

"Petya uses the NSA Eternalblue exploit but also spreads in internal networks with WMIC and PSEXEC. That's why patched systems can get hit." Mikko Hypponen confirms, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure.

Petya is a nasty piece of ransomware and works very differently from any other ransomware malware. Unlike other traditional ransomware, Petya does not encrypt files on a targeted system one by one.

Instead, Petya reboots victims computers and encrypts the hard drive's master file table (MFT) and renders the master boot record (MBR) inoperable, restricting access to the full system by seizing information about file names, sizes, and location on the physical disk.

Petya ransomware replaces the computer's MBR with its own malicious code that displays the ransom note and leaves computers unable to boot.

Don't Pay Ransom, You Wouldn’t Get Your Files Back

Infected users are advised not to pay the ransom because hackers behind Petya ransomware can’t get your emails anymore.

Posteo, the German email provider, has suspended the email address i.e. wowsmith123456@posteo.net, which was behind used by the criminals to communicate with victims after getting the ransom to send the decryption keys.

At the time of writing, 23 victims have paid in Bitcoin to '1Mz7153HMuxXTuR2R1t78mGSdzaAtNbBWX' address for decrypting their files infected by Petya, which total roughly $6775.

Petya! Petya! Another Worldwide Ransomware Attack

Petya Ransomware Spreading Rapidly Worldwide, Just Like WannaCry

Screenshots of the latest Petya infection, shared on Twitter, shows that the ransomware displays a text, demanding $300 worth of Bitcoins. Here's what the text read:

"If you see this text, then your files are no longer accessible, because they are encrypted. Perhaps you are busy looking for a way to recover your files, but don't waste your time. Nobody can recover your files without our decryption service."

According to a recent VirusTotal scan, currently, only 16 out of 61 anti-virus services are successfully detecting the Petya ransomware malware.

Petya Ransomware Hits Banks, Telecom, Businesses & Power Companies

Supermarket in Kharkiv, East Ukraine

Petya ransomware has already infected — Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft, Ukrainian state electricity suppliers, "Kyivenergo" and "Ukrenergo," in past few hours.

"We were attacked. Two hours ago, we had to turn off all our computers. We are waiting for permission from Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) to switch them back on," Kyivenergo's press service said.

There are reports from several banks, including National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and Oschadbank, as well as other companies confirming they have been hit by the Petya ransomware attacks.

Maersk, an international logistics company, has also confirmed on Twitter that the latest Petya ransomware attacks have shut down its IT systems at multiple locations and business units.

"We can confirm that Maersk IT systems are down across multiple sites and business units. We are currently asserting the situation. The safety of our employees, our operations and customers' business is our top priority. We will update when we have more information," the company said.

The ransomware also impacts multiple workstations at Ukrainian branch's mining company Evraz.

The most severe damages reported by Ukrainian businesses also include compromised systems at Ukraine's local metro and Kiev's Boryspil Airport.

Three Ukrainian telecommunication operators, Kyivstar, LifeCell, Ukrtelecom, are also affected in the latest Petya attack.

How Petya Ransomware Spreading So Fast?

Symantec, the cyber security company, has also confirmed that Petya ransomware is exploiting SMBv1 EternalBlue exploit, just like WannaCry, and taking advantage of unpatched Windows machines.

"Petya ransomware successful in spreading because it combines both a client-side attack (CVE-2017-0199) and a network based threat (MS17-010)," security researcher using Twitter handle ‏HackerFantastic tweeted.

EternalBlue is a Windows SMB exploit leaked by the infamous hacking group Shadow Brokers in its April data dump, who claimed to have stolen it from the US intelligence agency NSA, along with other Windows exploits.

Microsoft has since patched the vulnerability for all versions of Windows operating systems, but many users remain vulnerable, and a string of malware variants are exploiting the flaw to deliver ransomware and mine cryptocurrency.

Just three days ago, we reported about the latest WannaCry attack that hit Honda Motor Company and around 55 speed and traffic light cameras in Japan and Australia, respectively.

Well, it is quite surprising that even after knowing about the WannaCry issue for quite a decent amount of time, big corporates and companies have not yet implemented proper security measures to defend against such threat.

How to Protect Yourself from Ransomware Attacks

What to do immediately? Go and apply those goddamn patches against EternalBlue (MS17-010) and disable the unsecured, 30-year-old SMBv1 file-sharing protocol on your Windows systems and servers.

Since Petya Ransomware is also taking advantage of WMIC and PSEXEC tools to infect fully-patched Windows computers, you are also advised to disable WMIC (Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line).

Prevent Infection & Petya Kill-Switch

Researcher finds Petya ransomware encrypt systems after rebooting the computer. So if your system is infected with Petya ransomware and it tries to restart, just do not power it back on.

"If machine reboots and you see this message, power off immediately! This is the encryption process. If you do not power on, files are fine." ‏HackerFantastic tweeted. "Use a LiveCD or external machine to recover files"

PT Security, a UK-based cyber security company and Amit Serper from Cybereason, have discovered a Kill-Switch for Petya ransomware. According to a tweet, company has advised users to create a file i.e. "C:\Windows\perfc" to prevent ransomware infection.

To safeguard against any ransomware infection, you should always be suspicious of unwanted files and documents sent over an email and should never click on links inside them unless verifying the source.

To always have a tight grip on your valuable data, keep a good back-up routine in place that makes their copies to an external storage device that isn't always connected to your PC.

Moreover, make sure that you run a good and effective anti-virus security suite on your system, and keep it up-to-date. Most importantly, always browse the Internet safely.

Source: The Hacker News

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WannaCry Ransomware Decryption Tool - WanaKiwi

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If your PC has been infected by WannaCry – the ransomware that wreaked havoc across the world last Friday – you might be lucky to get your locked files back without paying the ransom of $300 to the cyber criminals.

Adrien Guinet, a French security researcher from Quarkslab, has discovered a way to retrieve the secret encryption keys used by the WannaCry ransomware for free, which works on Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 operating systems.

WannaCry Ransomware Decryption Keys

The WannaCry's encryption scheme works by generating a pair of keys on the victim's computer that rely on prime numbers, a "public" key and a "private" key for encrypting and decrypting the system’s files respectively.
To prevent the victim from accessing the private key and decrypting locked files himself, WannaCry erases the key from the system, leaving no choice for the victims to retrieve the decryption key except paying the ransom to the attacker.

But here's the kicker: WannaCry "does not erase the prime numbers from memory before freeing the associated memory," says Guinet.

Based on this finding, Guinet released a WannaCry ransomware decryption tool, named WannaKey, that basically tries to retrieve the two prime numbers, used in the formula to generate encryption keys from memory, and works on Windows XP only.

Note: Below I have also mentioned another tool, dubbed WanaKiwi, that works for Windows XP to Windows 7.

"It does so by searching for them in the wcry.exe process. This is the process that generates the RSA private key. The main issue is that the CryptDestroyKey and CryptReleaseContext does not erase the prime numbers from memory before freeing the associated memory." says Guinet

So, that means, this method will work only if:

The affected computer has not been rebooted after being infected.
The associated memory has not been allocated and erased by some other process.

"In order to work, your computer must not have been rebooted after being infected. Please also note that you need some luck for this to work (see below), and so it might not work in every case!," Guinet says.

"This is not really a mistake from the ransomware authors, as they properly use the Windows Crypto API."
While WannaKey only pulls prime numbers from the memory of the affected computer, the tool can only be used by those who can use those prime numbers to generate the decryption key manually to decrypt their WannaCry-infected PC’s files.

WanaKiwi: WannaCry Ransomware Decryption Tool

Good news is that another security researcher, Benjamin Delpy, developed an easy-to-use tool called "WanaKiwi," based on Guinet's finding, which simplifies the whole process of the WannaCry-infected file decryption.

All victims have to do is download WanaKiwi tool from Github and run it on their affected Windows computer using the command line (cmd).

WanaKiwi works on Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, confirmed Matt Suiche from security firm Comae Technologies, who has also provided some demonstrations showing how to use WanaKiwi to decrypt your files.

Although the tool won't work for every user due to its dependencies, still it gives some hope to WannaCry's victims of getting their locked files back for free even from Windows XP, the aging, largely unsupported version of Microsoft's operating system.

Source:The Hacker News

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That's Hitting World Right Now Uses NSA Windows Exploit - WannaCry Ransomware

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Earlier today, a massive ransomware campaign hit computer systems of hundreds of private companies and public organizations across the globe – which is believed to be the most massive ransomware delivery campaign to date.

The Ransomware in question has been identified as a variant of ransomware known as WannaCry (also known as 'Wana Decrypt0r,' 'WannaCryptor' or 'WCRY').

Like other nasty ransomware variants, WannaCry also blocks access to a computer or its files and demands money to unlock it.

Once infected with the WannaCry ransomware, victims are asked to pay up to $300 in order to remove the infection from their PCs; otherwise, their PCs render unusable, and their files remain locked.

In separate news, researchers have also discovered a massive malicious email campaign that's spreading the Jaff ransomware at the rate of 5 million emails per hour and hitting computers across the globe.

Ransomware Using NSA's Exploit to Spread Rapidly

What's interesting about this ransomware is that WannaCry attackers are leveraging a Windows exploit harvested from the NSA called EternalBlue, which was dumped by the Shadow Brokers hacking group over a month ago.

Microsoft released a patch for the vulnerability in March (MS17-010), but many users and organizations who did not patch their systems are open to attacks.

The exploit has the capability to penetrate into machines running unpatched version of Windows XP through 2008 R2 by exploiting flaws in Microsoft Windows SMB Server. This is why WannaCry campaign is spreading at an astonishing pace.

Once a single computer in your organization is hit by the WannaCry ransomware, the worm looks for other vulnerable computers and infects them as well.

Infections from All Around the World

In just a few hours, the ransomware targeted over 45,000 computers in 74 countries, including United States, Russia, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Philippines and Vietnam, and that the number was still growing, according to Kaspersky Labs.

According to a report, the ransomware attack has shut down work at 16 hospitals across the UK after doctors got blocked from accessing patient files. Another report says, 85% of computers at the Spanish telecom firm, Telefonica, has get infected with this malware.

Another independent security researcher, MalwareTech, reported that a large number of U.S. organizations (at least 1,600) have been hit by WannaCry, compared to 11,200 in Russia and 6,500 in China.

Screenshots of the WannaCry ransomware with different languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, were also shared online by various users and experts on Twitter.

Bitcoin wallets seemingly associated with WannaCry were reportedly started filling up with cash.

The Spanish computer emergency response organization (CCN-CERT) has even issued an alert that warns users of the "massive attack of ransomware" from WannaCry, saying (translated version):

"The ransomware, a version of WannaCry, infects the machine by encrypting all its files and, using a remote command execution vulnerability through SMB, is distributed to other Windows machines on the same network."

It is unclear how the WannaCry ransomware is infecting systems, but obvious attack vector can be phishing emails or victims visiting a website containing malware.

"Power firm Iberdrola and utility provider Gas Natural were also reported to have suffered from the outbreak.," according to BBC.

How to Protect Yourself from WannaCry

First of all, if you haven't patched your Windows machines and servers against EternalBlue exploit (MS17-010), do it right now.

To safeguard against such ransomware infection, you should always be suspicious of uninvited documents sent an email and should never click on links inside those documents unless verifying the source.

To always have a tight grip on all your important files and documents, keep a good backup routine in place that makes their copies to an external storage device that is not always connected to your PC.

Moreover, make sure that you run an active anti-virus security suite of tools on your system, and most importantly, always browse the Internet safely.

Source: The Hacker News

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Kali Linux 2017.1 Release

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Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution for digital forensics and penetration testing, developed and maintained by Offensive Security. Mati Aharoni and Devon Kearns rewrote BackTrack. Kali Linux is the most versatile and advanced penetration testing tool release operating system. Kali tools are often updated and can be used on other platforms, such as VMware and ARM.

Today, Offensive Security has been released Kali Linux 2017.1.

What’s new?

Support for RTL8812AU Wireless Card Injection
Streamlined Support for CUDA GPU Cracking
Amazon AWS and Micsosoft Azure Availability (GPU Support)
OpenVAS 9 Packaged in Kali Repositories
More info, please visit Kali Linux home page.

How to update to Kali Linux 2017.1

Open terminal and run command

apt update

apt dist-upgrade

reboot

If you want to download Kali Linux image for fresh installing, you can download Kali Linux 2017.1 here

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Obama expels 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for US election hacking

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The Obama administration on Thursday announced its retaliation for Russian efforts to interfere with the US presidential election, ordering sweeping new sanctions that included the expulsion of 35 Russians.
Syria ceasefire appears to hold after rivals sign Russia-backed deal
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US intelligence services believe Russia ordered cyber-attacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other political organizations, in an attempt to influence the election in favor of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

In a statement issued two weeks after the president said he would respond to cyber-attacks by Moscow “at a time and place of our choosing”, Obama said Americans should “be alarmed by Russia’s actions” and pledged further action.

“I have issued an executive order that provides additional authority for responding to certain cyber activity that seeks to interfere with or undermine our election processes and institutions, or those of our allies or partners,” Obama said in the statement, released while he was vacationing with his family in Hawaii.

“Using this new authority, I have sanctioned nine entities and individuals: the GRU and the FSB, two Russian intelligence services; four individual officers of the GRU; and three companies that provided material support to the GRU’s cyber operations.

“In addition, the secretary of the treasury is designating two Russian individuals for using cyber-enabled means to cause misappropriation of funds and personal identifying information.” He also announced the closure of two Russian compounds in the US.

Obama added that more actions would be taken, “some of which will not be publicized”.

On Thursday, Trump, who has previously dismissed reports of Russian interference in the election, said in a statement: “It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.”
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He added, however, that “in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”

In a conference call with reporters, senior White House officials said the president-elect’s transition team was informed of the sanctions before they were announced on Thursday. Trump and Obama spoke on Wednesday, they said.

The officials added that the actions were a necessary response to “very disturbing Russian threats to US national security”.

“There has to be a cost and a consequence for what Russia has done,” a senior administration official said. “It is in a extraordinary step for them to interfere in the democratic process here in the United States of America. There needs to be a price for that.”

In Moscow, a Putin spokesman said Russia regretted the new sanctions and would consider retaliatory measures.

Diplomatic expulsions are normally met with exactly reciprocal action. In this case, however, Moscow may pause for thought. With Trump, who has spoken positively about Russia and Vladimir Putin, just three weeks away from the White House, Russia may feel it is inadvisable to kick out 35 US diplomats.

However, Russian authorities on Thursday ordered the Anglo-American School of Moscow closed, according to CNN, citing a US official briefed on the matter. The school serves children of US, British and Canadian embassy personnel, and would effectively make a Russian posting difficult for US diplomats with families.

Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, was quoted by the RIA news agency as saying the US move represented “the death throes of political corpses”.

The Twitter feed of the Russian embassy in London, meanwhile, called the Obama administration “hapless” and attached a picture of a duck with the word “LAME” emblazoned across it.

On the White House call, officials were asked about the prospect of Trump overturning the sanctions. They acknowledged that a future president could reverse course but warned against such an “inadvisable” step.

“We have no reason to believe that Russia’s activities will cease,” a senior official said. “One reason why I think it is necessary to sustain these actions is because there’s every reason to believe Russia will interfere with future US elections.”

On Capitol Hill, Democrats applauded the president’s action, called for further measures and emphasized bipartisan support for a thorough investigation into Russian hacking.

“I hope the incoming Trump administration, which has been far too close to Russia throughout the campaign and transition, won’t think for one second about weakening these new sanctions or our existing regime,” incoming Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

“Both parties ought to be united in standing up to Russian interference in our elections, to their cyber attacks, their illegal annexation of Crimea and other extra-legal interventions.”

Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, called for further sanctions from the new Congress when it convenes in January.

GOP leaders were quick to frame the new sanctions as too little, too late.

“While today’s action by the administration is overdue,” House speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement, “it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia. And it serves as a prime example of this administration’s ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world.”

Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two of Russia’s fiercest critics, echoed Ryan but also called for tough Congressional sanctions.

“Ultimately, [the sanctions] are a small price for Russia to pay for its brazen attack on American democracy,” the two men said in a joint statement. “We intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia.”

The 35 Russian diplomats being expelled are “intelligence operatives”, Obama said. The state department has declared them “persona non grata” and they will be given 72 hours to leave the country.

Starting on Friday at noon, the White House said, Russia will be denied access to compounds in Maryland and New York that have been used for intelligence-related purposes.

A statement from the state department said the diplomatic expulsions were a response not only to hacking but to “a pattern of harassment of our diplomats overseas, that has increased over the last four years, including a significant increase in the last 12 months”.

The statement said the harassment has included “arbitrary police stops, physical assault, and the broadcast on state TV of personal details about our personnel that put them at risk”.

For some time, US diplomats in Russia have anecdotally reported being followed and harassed by police.

In June, a US diplomat was wrestled to the ground by a policeman as he scrambled to get inside the embassy. Russian authorities said the man was a CIA agent operating under diplomatic cover.

Source: theguardian

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BackBox Linux 4.7 released!

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BackBox Linux 4.7 released!

The BackBox Team is pleased to announce the updated release of BackBox Linux, the version 4.7.

We thought to release a new minor version to give our users the opportunity to have a stable and up-to-date sytem till the next official major release, i.e. BackBox 5, stilll under development.

In this release we have fixed some minor bugs, updated the kernel stack, base system and tools.

The ISO images for 32bit & 64bit can be downloaded from the official web site download section:

BackBox

What's new

Updated Linux Kernel 4.4
Updated hacking tools: beef, metasploit, openvas, setoolkit, sqlmap, wpscan, etc.

System requirements

32-bit or 64-bit processor
1024 MB of system memory (RAM)
10 GB of disk space for installation
Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
DVD-ROM drive or USB port (3 GB)

Upgrade instructions

To upgrade from a previous version (BackBox 4.x) follow these instructions:



sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get install -f



sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-lts-xenial xserver-xorg-core-lts-xenial xserver-xorg-lts-xenial xserver-xorg-video-all-lts-xenial xserver-xorg-input-all-lts-xenial libwayland-egl1-mesa-lts-xenial



sudo apt-get install ruby ruby-dev ruby2.1 ruby2.1-dev ruby2.2-dev ruby2.2 --reinstall

sudo apt-get purge ri1.9.1 ruby1.9.1 bundler libruby2.0 ruby2.0 ruby2.0-dev libruby1.9.1 ruby-full

sudo gem cleanup

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/gems/1.*

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/gems/2.0.*

sudo apt-get install backbox-default-settings backbox-desktop backbox-menu backbox-tools --reinstall

sudo apt-get install beef-project metasploit-framework whatweb wpscan setoolkit --reinstall

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

sudo apt-get install openvas sqlite3

sudo openvas-launch sync

sudo openvas-launch start

sudo update-rc.d apache2 disable

sudo update-rc.d polipo disable

sudo update-rc.d openvas-gsa disable

sudo update-rc.d openvas-manager disable

sudo update-rc.d openvas-scanner disable



sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

BackBox Download

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USB Kill to Destroy any Computer within Seconds! - USB Kill 2.0

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A proof-of-concept USB prototype that was designed by a Russian researcher, Dark Purple, last year, to effectively destroy sensitive components of a computer when plugged in.

Now, someone has actually created the Killer USB stick that destroys almost anything – such as Laptops, PCs, or televisions – it is plugged into.

A Hong Kong-based technology manufacturer is selling a USB thumb drive called USB Kill 2.0 that can fry any unauthorized computer it's plugged into by introducing a power surge via the USB port. It costs $49.95.

How does USB Kill 2.0 work?

As the company explains, when plugged in, the USB Kill 2.0 stick rapidly charges its capacitors via the USB power supply, and then discharges – all in a matter of seconds.

The USB stick discharges 200 volts DC power over the data lines of the host machine and this charge-and-discharge cycle is repeated several numbers of times in just one second, until the USB Kill stick is removed.

"When tested on computers, the device isn't designed or intended to erase data," the company says. "However, depending on the hardware configuration (SSD [solid-state drive] vs. platter HDD [hard disk drive]), the drive controllers may be damaged to the point that data retrieval is impractical."

"Any public facing USB port should be considered an attack vector," the company says in a news release. "In data security, these ports are often locked down to prevent exfiltration of data or infiltration of malware, but are very often unprotected against electrical attack."

When And For Whom USB KILL Would Be Useful?

USB Kill stick could be a boon for whistleblowers, journalists, activists, and, not to forget, cyber criminals, who want to keep their sensitive data away from law enforcement as well as cyber thieves.

It is like, if you're caught, kill yourself. In the same fashion as terrorists do. Here I mean to kill the data from your laptop if the law enforcement has caught your laptop. And USB Kill stick does the same for you.

However, the company claims to have developed USB Kill 2.0 stick for the sole purpose of allowing companies to test their devices against USB Power Surge attacks and to prevent data theft via "Juice Jacking" attacks.

Video Demonstration

You can watch the video demonstration below by the company that shows USB Kill 2.0 stick in action.

The company claims about 95% of all devices available on the market today are vulnerable to power surge attacks introduced via the USB port.

However, the only devices not vulnerable to USB kill attacks are recent models of Apple's MacBook, which optically isolate the data lines on USB ports.

Juice jacking is a type of cyber attack wherein malware installed on a computer can surreptitiously copy data from a smartphone, tablet or other computers using a USB charging port that doubles as a data connection, typically over USB.

While USB Kill 2.0 has been "designed and tested to be safe," the company warns that the USB stick "is a high-voltage device" and is only meant for "responsible adults." Also, the company's website "strongly condemns the malicious use of its products."

USB Kill 2.0 also comes with a USB Protection Shield, called Test Shield, sold for additional $15.70, which is designed to allow testing of the USB Killer stick without destroying the host machine.

Source: UsbKill

By OffSec

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The Best Penetration Testing Distribution - Kali Linux 2016.2

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This release brings a whole bunch of interesting news and updates into the world of Kali.

New KDE, MATE, LXDE, e17, and Xfce Builds

Although users are able to build and customize their Kali Linux ISOs however they wish, we often hear people comment about how they would love to see Kali with $desktop_environment instead of GNOME. We then engage with those people passionately, about how they can use live-build to customize not only their desktop environment but pretty much every aspect of their ISO, together with the ability to run scripted hooks at every stage of the ISO creation process – but more often than not, our argument is quickly lost in random conversation. As such, we’ve decided to expand our “full” 64bit releases with additional Desktop Environment flavored ISOs, specifically KDE, Mate, LXDE and Enlightenment. These can now be downloaded via our Kali Download page. For those curious to see what the various Desktop Environments look like, we’ve taken some screenshots for you:

Gnome

E17

KDE

LXDE

Mate

Xfce

Kali Linux Weekly ISOs

Constantly keeping Kali on the bleeding edge means frequent updates to packages on an ongoing basis. Since our last release several months ago, there’s a few hundred new or updated packages which have been pushed to the Kali repos. This means that anyone downloading an ISO even 3 months old has somewhat of a long “apt-get dist-upgrade” ahead of them. To help avoid this situation, from this release onwards, we’ll be publishing updated weekly builds of Kali that will be available to download via our mirrors. Speaking of mirrors, we are always in need of support in this area – if you’re capable of running a high-bandwidth mirror and would like to support our project, please check out our Kali Mirrors page.

Bug Fixes and OS Improvements

During these past few months, we’ve been busy adding new relevant tools to Kali as well as fixing various bugs and implementing OS enhancements. For example, something as simple as adding HTTPS support in busybox now allows us to preseed Kali installations securely over SSL. This is a quick and cool feature to speed up your installations and make them (almost) unattended, even if you don’t have a custom built ISO.

To set a preseed file during an install process, choose the “install” option, then hit “tab” and enter the preseed directive, together with a URL pointing to your actual preseed file.

preseed/url=https://www.kali.org/dojo/preseed.cfg

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