Tag Archives: Google

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Home Device Recordings May Not Be Private

Do you own a Google Home?  If so, you probably find it to be indispensable.  It’s a powerful, genuinely helpful piece of technology, but there’s a catch.  It’s so good and so useful because it listens constantly for voice commands from you.  Those commands get recorded. Recently, Google acknowledged that it hires third-party contractors to listen to and transcribe recordings made by the devices.

The stated purpose of the transcription is to help the company improve Google Home’s speech recognition.  That’s certainly valid, but the company found itself in hot water when a whistle-blower who works for a Dutch subcontractor came forward with some disturbing information.

According to the whistle blower, he heard a wide range of things on the recordings, including a variety of personal information including addresses, bedroom talk, business calls, domestic violence and conversations between parents and children.

Even worse, in a survey of a thousand recordings, it was discovered that 153 of them should never have been recorded at all because the “Ok Google” prefix command was never spoken.

Google has responded to the revelation, saying that only about 0.2 percent of all audio clips recorded by Google Home’s smart speakers are reviewed by third party partners. They also added:

“We partner with language experts around the world to improve speech technology by transcribing a small set of queries.  This work is critical to developing technology that powers products like Google Assistant.

We just learned that one of these reviewers had violated our data security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data.  Our Security and Privacy Response teams have been activated on this issue, are investigating, and we will take action.  We are conducting a full review of our safeguards in this space to prevent misconduct like this from happening again.”

Blaming the whistle blower is a curious response, but this is an admittedly thorny issue with multiple angles to consider.  Perhaps the most straightforward approach would be to keep such analysis in-house, and get to the bottom of why more than 150 recordings that weren’t triggered by the “Okay Google activation phrase” were made in the first place.

In any case, if you use the technology, be aware.  Someone is or may be listening.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Android Malware Can Replace Real Apps With Fake Apps

Security researchers at Check Point have discovered a disturbing new strain of Android malware that’s as ingenious as it is disturbing.  It is effective because it is designed to replace a rapidly expanding number of apps with poisoned copies.

The app copies still retain their core functionality, making the malware notoriously difficult to detect.

After all, if you downloaded JioTV, a photo editing app of some kind, or a game, and the app works as you expect it to, why would you even suspect that it was malware?  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what this new malware strain does.

Dubbed ‘Agent Smith,’ the malware takes advantage of different android vulnerabilities and injects malicious code into the APK files of targeted apps defined by a list inside the code. They then automatically update and re-install them without the device owner’s knowledge or consent.

The Check Point researchers had this to say about the new strain:

“It’s not enough for this malware family to swap just one innocent application with an infected double.  It does so for each and every app on the device, as long as the package names are on its prey list.

Over time, this campaign will also infect the same device repeatedly, with the latest malicious patches.  This leads us to estimate there are to be over 2.8 billion infections in total, on around 25 million unique devices, meaning that on average, each victim would have suffered roughly 112 swaps of innocent applications.”

Of course, the last thing the malware’s creators want is for the app to be legitimately updated. So part of the strain’s design is to disable that functionality from inside the app so the hackers can control the updates.

If there’s a silver lining, it is that to date, the malware doesn’t contain any data siphoning or data destroying code.  All it does is display ads.  Unfortunately, the malware strain’s owners can easily shift gears any time they want to.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

If You Use Evernote Your Data May Have Been Exposed

Do you use Evernote Web Clipper for the Chrome web browser?

If so, be advised that the developer recently reported that a critical flaw in the extension could allow hackers to access user information from third party online services.

Online security company Guardio discovered the flaw and had this to say:

“Due to Evernote’s widespread popularity, this issue had the potential of affecting its consumers and companies who use the extension – about 4,600,000 users at the time of discovery.”

The issue is being traced as CVE-2019-12592 and is a Universal Cross-Site Scripting (UXSS) coding error that makes it possible for an attacker to, in the words of Guardio’s research team, “bypass the browser’s same origin policy, granting the attacker code execution privileges in Iframes beyond Evernote’s domain.”

Once Chrome’s Site Isolation security feature is circumvented, account data from other websites the user visits using Chrome, “including authentication, financials, private conversations in social media, personal emails, and more” are vulnerable and can be harvested with ease.

According to Guardio’s CTO Michael Vainshtein:

“The vulnerability we discovered is a testament to the importance of scrutinizing browser extensions with extra care.  People need to be aware that even the most trusted extensions can contain a pathway for attackers.  All it takes is a single unsafe extension to compromise anything you do or store online.  The ripple effect is immediate and intense.”

Guardio reported the issue to Evernote on May 27th and the company moved quickly to patch the code. At this point, the only thing you need to do in order to be sure you’re protected is check the version of your Evernote extension. If you’re using version 7.11.1 or later, you’re all set. Updating this extension should be given your highest priority. The risks of exposure are enormous.

 

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Hackers Placing Hidden, Malicious Code In Media

If you’re not familiar with the term, ‘Steganography’ is the term used to describe the act of hiding code in images and video.  It’s a creative strategy that allows hackers to slip past even the most robust defenses. Recently, researchers at Kaspersky have discovered evidence of a novel approach to using steganographic techniques. They were apparently developed by a group well-known for their innovation.

Platinum is an advanced, persistent threat group that security researchers around the globe have been tracking since 2012.  The group has made headlines more than once for their creativity and for specifically targeting government, military, and diplomatic targets. What’s interesting about Platinum’s approach is that they’ve managed to embed malicious code into what appears to be legitimate text.

The Kaspersky researchers happened across it almost by mistake, when they were tracking what they first believed to be two separate campaigns.  The first being a back door that was implemented as a .DLL file that also worked as a WinSock Nameservice Provider (which is how it was able to maintain persistence).  In the second, PowerShell scripts were being used to fingerprint systems for the purpose of basic data theft.

The Kaspersky team connected the dots and reached the conclusion that rather than being two separate campaigns, the backdoor disguised as a .DLL is actually the second stage in one elaborate attack. Although what Platinum’s ultimate purpose might be remains unknown at this time.

The researchers had this to say about their recent discovery: 

“A couple of years ago, we predicted that more and more APT and malware developers would use steganography, and here is proof:  the actors used two interesting steganography techniques in this APT…one more interesting detail is that the actors decided to implement the utilities they need as one huge set – this reminds us of the framework-based architecture that is becoming more and more popular.”

Unless you’re working in a governmental or military facility, you’re unlikely to be on Platinum’s radar. Even if you’re not, their strategies will no doubt filter out to the global community of hackers in due time.  Stay vigilant.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

New Adware Discovered On Hundreds Of Androids Apps

Bad news for Android users.  Recently, Google discovered that more than two hundred apps on the Play Store had been infected with the ‘BeiTaAd’ plugin. This plugin is the latest in a large and growing collection of advertising libraries that have been misused and abused by advertisers.

It should be noted that BeiTaAd didn’t start off being problematic.

The plugin has been around since early 2018, and in the beginning, there was no problem.  It was a simple package that allowed for the easy automation of online ads inside of perfectly legitimate apps.  Further, it was highly trusted because it came from a legitimate company with a market of more than a hundred million users.

Unfortunately, that didn’t hold. In February of 2019, the app began behaving badly, forcing a large influx of popup ads onto users even when the apps weren’t running.  Worse, the plugin’s developers seemed to understand that the change in behavior wouldn’t sit well with those subjected to increasing numbers of ads. They then took steps to obfuscate their code to make it less obvious that BeiTaAd was the culprit.

In the end, the aggressive display of ads caught the attention of seasoned researchers who tracked the issue to its source.  Google moved swiftly to shut down the misbehaving plugin, but in order to do so, they were forced to remove 238 apps from the Play Store. These were apps that had been installed hundreds of millions of times by users all over the world.

If you’ve recently been bombarded by popup ads that seem to come out of nowhere, BeiTaAd is likely the cause.  Check the apps on your phone and update to the latest versions as a first step.  If that doesn’t do the trick, you’ll need to go through your apps one by one to chase down the specific culprit.  It’s not an elegant solution, but it will stop those unwanted ads.

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