Not all ransomware is the same! Oliver Tavakoli, CTO at Vectra AI, discusses the different species of this growing scourge.

It’s a question I get several times a year from anxious parents, either via a direct message, an email or even in line at the grocery store. It goes something like this: “What’s the one thing you wish you’d done better when monitoring your kids’ technology?” 

Both of my kids are now young adults, and together, we survived a handful of digital mishaps. So, I tend to have a few answers ready. I’ll go into one of those answers in this post, and here it is: I’d physically pick up their phone more often and ask questions about the apps I didn’t recognize.  

And here’s why.  

There are the apps on your child’s phone that are familiar. They are the easy ones. We know what color they are, what their graphic avatars look like — the little ghost on the yellow background, the little bird, the camera on the bright purple and orange background. We may have gone through the app together or even use one or two of the apps ourselves. There’s Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, Kik, and Instagram, among others. There are the mainstay photo apps (VSCO, Facetune, PicsArt) and games (The Sims, Fortnite, Minecraft). We may not like all the apps, but we’ve likely talked about the risks and feel comfortable with how your kids use them. With general recognition, it’s easy to have a false sense of security about what apps our kids are using.  

Then, there are the apps on your child’s phone you know nothing about — and there are plenty. Rather than dismiss your concern because you don’t understand the app or because you may not have the energy to start an argument, next time, think about pausing to take a closer look. If you have concerns, address them sooner rather than later.   

Questions to consider when analyzing an app or online community: 

• What’s the goal of this app? Why was it created? 
• What kind of community does this app attract?  
• What is the age requirement? 
• Are anonymous accounts allowed? 
• What privacy settings does it have? 
• Can kids run up charges on this app? 
• Does the app require location information to use it? 
• What red flags are people talking about (google it)?   
• What do the app reviews say? What do non-profit advocacy groups such as Common Sense Media say about this app?  

Potentially Risky Apps, Community Forums 

Here are just a few of the non-mainstream apps that kids use that may not be on your radar but may need a second look. Note: Every app has the potential to be misused. The apps mentioned here are also used every day for connection, entertainment, and harmless fun. Here are just a few this author has had experience with, and others commonly documented in the media.  

Quick Tip: It’s possible a child might bury an app inside a folder or behind other apps on their home screens, making it harder to find. By going into settings in either iOS (Settings > General > iPhone Storage) or Android (Google Play Store > Apps >All), you can usually get a quick view of all the apps that exist on a phone.  

• Privacy, Safety Gaps 

Almost every app has privacy gaps if settings and monitoring are neglected. However, apps such as Live.Me, Game Pigeon, and Zoomerang (among many others) may have loopholes when it comes to age verification, location tracking, and gaps in personal data security. These gaps can give potential predators access to kids and increases opportunities for cyberbullying.  

Safe Family Tip: Sit down with your kids, go through any unfamiliar apps, and use parental controls to monitor all family device activity.   

• Secrecy  

If a child wants to keep activity or content secret from a parent, they will likely find a way. Some of the apps kids use to hide games, photos, or texts are encryption apps (apps that scramble content to outside sources) such as WhatsApp, Proton VPN, ProtonMail, Telegram, and Signal. Other secrecy apps are called vault apps (apps that can be disguised, hidden, or locked), such as Calculator, Vault, HideItPro, App Locker, and Poof.  

Safe Family Tip: If you find one of these apps on your child’s phone, stay calm. Kids want privacy, which is normal. However, if the content you see is risky, remind your child that no content is 100% private, even if it’s in a vault app. In addition, commit to the ongoing dialogue that strengthens trust and together, considers setting safety expectations for devices, which may include parental controls.  

• Geotagging  
  

Some apps, especially dating-type apps, require users to allow geotagging to connect you with people in your area. Yubo, which is an app like Tinder, is one your kids may be using that requires location to use it. Live.Me is another geotagging app.  

Safe Family Tip: Go over the reasons location apps (and dating apps) are dangerous with your child. Sharing their location and meeting In Real Life (IRL) has become the norm to many kids. Remind them of the risks of this kind of behavior and together, put new boundaries in place.  

• Extremist Ideas 

The web is full of sketchy, dark pockets kids can stumble into. They can hear about a community forum or app from a friend and be wowed simply because it’s different and edgy. While there are plenty of harmless conversations taking place on these apps, spaces such as Discord, Reddit, and Twitch have reportedly housed communities’ extreme ideologies that target vulnerable kids.  

Safe Family Tip: Be aware of behavior changes. Talk with your kids about the wide range of ideals and agendas promoted online, how to think critically about conversations and content, and most importantly, how to spot these communities. 

• Anonymous Profiles  

Anonymity online is problematic for a plethora of reasons. Apps such as Yolo, Tumblr, and Tellonym, Omegle, YikYak, Whisper, LMK, MeetMe, are just a few of those apps to look for. Many of these apps are chat apps used to eventually meet up with new friends in real life (IRL). However, when apps allow anonymous accounts, it’s almost impossible to trace inappropriate content, threats, or bullying incidents.  

Safe Family Tip: Kids get excited about making friends and having new experiences— so much so, they can ignore potential consequences. Discuss issues that may arise (catfishing, sextortion, scams, bullying) when people hide behind anonymous names and profiles. If needed, give real examples from the news where these apps have been connected to tragic outcomes.   

• Inflammatory Content  
  

Several apps and online communities have been connected to violence, hate content, intolerance, and fanaticism. A few of these sites include 4Chan, 8Chan, AnyChan, Gab, SaidIt.Net, and 8Kun, among many others.  

Safe Family Tip: Note any behavior changes in your child. Talk often about digital literacy and being a responsible publisher (and consumer) of media online.   

Staying in step with your child’s latest and greatest app affinity isn’t easy, and every parent makes mistakes in how they approach the task. However, kids of all ages (no matter how tech-savvy they are) need boundaries, expectations, and consistent and honest dialogue when it comes to digital habits and staying safe online. If you don’t know where to start (or start over), one first step is to start today and commit to staying aware of the digital risks out there. In addition, make time to have regular, open conversations with your child about their favorite apps — the ones you know about and the ones you may not.  

Stay Updated

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The post Potentially Malicious Apps Your Kids May Use appeared first on McAfee Blogs.

Fake, positive reviews have infiltrated nearly every corner of life online these days, confusing consumers while offering an unwelcome advantage to fraudsters and sub-par products everywhere. Happily, identifying and tracking these fake reviewer accounts is often the easiest way to spot scams. Here’s the story of how bogus reviews on a counterfeit Microsoft Authenticator browser extension exposed dozens of other extensions that siphoned personal and financial data.

After hearing from a reader about a phony Microsoft Authenticator extension that appeared on the Google Chrome Store, KrebsOnSecurity began looking at the profile of the account that created it. There were a total of five reviews on the extension before it was removed: Three Google users gave it one star, warning people to stay far away from it; but two of the reviewers awarded it between three and four stars.

“It’s great!,” the Google account Theresa Duncan enthused, improbably. “I’ve only had very occasional issues with it.”

“Very convenient and handing,” assessed Anna Jones, incomprehensibly.

Google’s Chrome Store said the email address tied to the account that published the knockoff Microsoft extension also was responsible for one called “iArtbook Digital Painting.” Before it was removed from the Chrome Store, iArtbook had garnered just 22 users and three reviews. As with the knockoff Microsoft extension, all three reviews were positive, and all were authored by accounts with first and last names, like Megan Vance, Olivia Knox, and Alison Graham.

Google’s Chrome Store doesn’t make it easy to search by reviewer. For that I turned to Hao Nguyen, the developer behind chrome-stats.com, which indexes and makes searchable a broad array of attributes about extensions available from Google.

Looking at the Google accounts that left positive reviews on both the now-defunct Microsoft Authenticator and iArtbook extensions, KrebsOnSecurity noticed that each left positive reviews on a handful of other extensions that have since been removed.

Like an ever-expanding venn diagram, a review of the extensions commented on by each new fake reviewer found led to the discovery of even more phony reviewers and extensions. In total, roughly 24 hours worth of digging through chrome-stats.com unearthed more than 100 positive reviews on a network of patently fraudulent extensions.

Those reviews in turn lead to the relatively straightforward identification of:

-39 reviewers who were happy with extensions that spoofed major brands and requested financial data
-45 malicious extensions that collectively had close to 100,000 downloads
-25 developer accounts tied to multiple banned applications

The extensions spoofed a range of consumer brands, including Adobe, Amazon, Facebook, HBO, Microsoft, Roku and Verizon. Scouring the manifests for each of these other extensions in turn revealed that many of the same developers were tied to multiple apps being promoted by the same phony Google accounts.

Some of the fake extensions have only a handful of downloads, but most have hundreds or thousands. A fake Microsoft Teams extension attracted 16,200 downloads in the roughly two months it was available from the Google store. A counterfeit version of CapCut, a professional video editing software suite, claimed nearly 24,000 downloads over a similar time period.

Unlike malicious browser extensions that can turn your PC into a botnet or harvest your cookies, none of the extensions examined here request any special permissions from users. Once installed, however, they invariably prompt the user to provide personal and financial data — all the while pretending to be associated with major brand names.

In some cases, the fake reviewers and phony extension developers used in this scheme share names, such as the case with “brook ice,” the Google account that positively reviewed the malicious Adobe and Microsoft Teams extensions. The email address brookice100@gmail.com was used to register the developer account responsible for producing two of the phony extensions examined in this review (PhotoMath and Dollify).

As we can see from the spreadsheet snippet above, many of the Google accounts that penned positive reviews on patently bogus extensions left comments on multiple apps on the same day.

Additionally, Google’s account recovery tools indicate many different developer email addresses tied to extensions reviewed here share the same recovery email — suggesting a relatively few number of anonymous users are controlling the entire scheme. When the spreadsheet data shown above is sorted by email address of the extension developer, the grouping of the reviews by date becomes even clearer.

KrebsOnSecurity shared these findings with Google and will update this story in the event they respond. Either way, Google somehow already detected all of these extensions as fraudulent and removed them from its store.

However, there may be a future post here about how long that bad extension identification and removal process has taken over time. Overall, most of these extensions were available for two to three months before being taken down.

As for the “so what?” here? I performed this research mainly because I could, and I thought it was interesting enough to share. Also, I got fascinated with the idea that finding fake applications might be as simple as identifying and following the likely fake reviewers. I’m positive there is more to this network of fraudulent extensions than is documented here.

As this story illustrates, it pays to be judicious about installing extensions. Leaving aside these extensions which are outright fraudulent, so many legitimate extensions get abandoned or sold each year to shady marketers that it’s wise to only trust extensions that are actively maintained (and perhaps have a critical mass of users that would make noise if anything untoward happened with the software).

According to chrome-stats.com, the majority of extensions — more than 100,000 of them — are effectively abandoned by their authors, or haven’t been updated in more than two years. In other words, there a great many developers who are likely to be open to someone else buying up their creation along with their user base.

The information that informed this report is searchable in this Google spreadsheet.

Florian “The Shark” Tudor, the alleged ringleader of a prolific ATM skimming gang that siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from bank accounts of tourists visiting Mexico over the last eight years, was arrested in Mexico City on Thursday in response to an extradition warrant from a Romanian court.

Tudor, a native of Craiova, Romania, moved to Mexico to set up Top Life Servicios, an ATM servicing company which managed a fleet of relatively new ATMs based in Mexico branded as Intacash.

Intacash was the central focus of a three–part investigation KrebsOnSecurity published in September 2015. That series tracked the activities of a crime gang working with Intacash that was bribing and otherwise coercing ATM technicians to install sophisticated Bluetooth-based skimmers inside cash machines throughout popular tourist destinations in and around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula — including Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

Follow-up reporting last year by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found Tudor and his associates compromised more than 100 ATMs across Mexico using skimmers that were able to remain in place undetected for years. The OCCRP, which dubbed Tudor’s group “The Riviera Maya Gang,” estimates the crime syndicate used cloned card data and stolen PINs to steal more than $1.2 billion from bank accounts of tourists visiting the region.

Last year, a Romanian court ordered Tudor’s capture following his conviction in absentia for attempted murder, blackmail and the creation of an organized crime network that specialized in human trafficking.

Mexican authorities have been examining bank accounts tied to Tudor and his companies, and investigators believe Tudor and his associates paid protection and hush money to various Mexican politicians and officials over the years. In February, the leader of Mexico’s Green Party stepped down after it emerged that he received funds from Tudor’s group.

This is the second time Mexican authorities have detained Tudor. In April 2019, Tudor and his deputy were arrested for illegal firearms possession. That arrest came just months after Tudor allegedly ordered the execution of a former bodyguard who was trying to help U.S. authorities bring down the group’s lucrative skimming operations.

Tudor’s arrest this week inside the premises of the Mexican Attorney General’s Office did not go smoothly, according to Mexican news outlets. El Universal reports that a brawl broke out between Tudor’s lawyers and officials at the Mexican AG’s office, and a video released by the news outlet on Twitter shows Tudor resisting arrest as he is being hauled out of the building hand and foot.

A Mexican judge will decide on Tudor’s extradition to Romania in the coming weeks.

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