Marcus Hutchins -- The Guy Who Stopped Wannacry -- Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy Charges

from the enjoy-your-hollow-victory,-DOJ dept

Almost two years after Marcus Hutchins, a.k.a. MalwareTech, was detained by the FBI at the airport as he left a security conference in Las Vegas, the government finally has finally gotten its man.

Charges were stacked and restacked over the past couple of years, as the government brought pressure to bear on Hutchins, who maintained his innocence right up to the point he signed the plea agreement [PDF]. Faced with possibility of spending several years in jail -- and evidence of his past, somewhat shadier exploits continuing to surface -- the man who saved the world from the Wannacry ransomware has pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges. This means the government will be dropping the other eight charges against Hutchins, which will hopefully keep the researcher from spending several years in jail.

The defendant voluntarily agrees to plead guilty to Counts One and Two of the superseding indictment.

The defendant acknowledges, understands, and agrees that he is, in fact, guilty of the offenses described in paragraph 4. The parties acknowledge and understand that if this case were to proceed to trial, the government would be able to prove the facts in Attachment A, as well as the facts set forth in Counts One and Two of the superseding indictment, beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant admits that these facts are true and correct and establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The information in Attachment A is provided for the purpose of setting forth a factual basis for the plea of guilty. It is not a full recitation of the defendant's knowledge of, or participation in, the offenses.

The agreement says both counts carry a possible five-year sentence each, but it seems unlikely it will ask the judge to depart upward from the guidelines. Marcy Wheeler's back-of-the-envelope math puts this at about six months per charge, given Hutchins' lack of criminal history. It may end up being more than that if the DOJ pitches something longer as some twisted form of payback for Hutchins exercising his right to defend himself against criminal charges. That's not exactly unheard of.

Hutchins has also posted a short message at his personal website, admitting guilt and apologizing for the damage he may have caused.

As you may be aware, I’ve pleaded guilty to two charges related to writing malware in the years prior to my career in security. I regret these actions and accept full responsibility for my mistakes. Having grown up, I’ve since been using the same skills that I misused several years ago for constructive purposes. I will continue to devote my time to keeping people safe from malware attacks.

Hutchins' plea brings an end to a dubious DOJ prosecution -- one that makes the unproven assertion that creating and selling malware is a criminal act, whether or not Hutchins himself engaged in illegal acts using this malware. And it only further blurs the lines security researchers operate in, increasing the chance that research -- which often includes the creation and deployment of malware -- will be treated as criminal activity.

Filed Under: conspiracy, doj, fbi, guilty plea, malware, malwaretech, marcu hutchins, wannacry

Leaked NSA Exploits Shifting From Ransomware To Cryptocurrency Mining

from the now...-for-my-next-trick dept

Will we ever see a complete postmortem of the damage done by leaked NSA software exploits? All signs point to "no."

[M]ore than a year since Microsoft released patches that slammed the backdoor shut, almost a million computers and networks are still unpatched and vulnerable to attack.

Although WannaCry infections have slowed, hackers are still using the publicly accessible NSA exploits to infect computers to mine cryptocurrency.

This report, from Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch, says there's really no endpoint in sight for the unintended consequences of exploit hoarding. But at this point, it's really no longer the NSA or Microsoft to blame for the continued rampage. Stats from Shodan show more than 300,000 unpatched machines in the United States alone.

EternalBlue-based malware still runs rampant, but the focus has shifted from ransom to cryptocurrency. An unnamed company recently watched the NSA's exploit turn its computers into CPU ATMs.

Nobody knows that better than one major Fortune 500 multinational, which was hit by a massive WannaMine cryptocurrency mining infection just days ago.

“Our customer is a very large corporation with multiple offices around the world,” said Amit Serper, who heads the security research team at Boston-based Cybereason.

“Once their first machine was hit the malware propagated to more than 1,000 machines in a day,” he said, without naming the company.

Fun stuff. And all made possible by the US government. Sure, indirectly, but it's not like no one in the private sector ever expressed concerns about the agency's vulnerability hoarding and the possibility of exactly this sort of thing happening. The exploit the NSA thought was too good to give up was taken from it and handed over to the malware-crafting masses to inflict misery around the world. Enemies were made -- and not all of them were software and hardware developers.

There will never be a full accounting of the damage done. Yes, the NSA never thought its secret stash would go public, but that doesn't excuse its informal policy of never disclosing massive vulnerabilities until it's able to wring every last piece of intel from their deployment. And there's a chance this will happen again in the future if the agency isn't more proactive on the disclosure front. It was foolhardy to believe its tools would remain secret indefinitely. It's especially insane to believe this now.

Filed Under: cryptocurrency, eternalblue, exploits, mining, nsa, ransomware, wannacry

Homeland Security Adviser Pins Wannacry Attack On North Korea In Wall Street Journal Op-Ed

from the so-that's-the-way-we're-doing-things-now dept

With politically-expeditious timing, Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert has pinned the Wannacry attacks on North Korea. The delivery method for the news was odd as well: a "commentary" piece in the Wall Street Journal's op-ed pages.

Cybersecurity isn’t easy, but simple principles still apply. Accountability is one, cooperation another. They are the cornerstones of security and resilience in any society. In furtherance of both, and after careful investigation, the U.S. today publicly attributes the massive “WannaCry” cyberattack to North Korea.

The attack spread indiscriminately across the world in May. It encrypted and rendered useless hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, businesses and homes. While victims received ransom demands, paying did not unlock their computers. It was cowardly, costly and careless. The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible.

We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence. We are not alone with our findings, either. Other governments and private companies agree. The United Kingdom attributes the attack to North Korea, and Microsoft traced the attack to cyber affiliates of the North Korean government.

While it's nice to hear this is "based on evidence" and that a "careful investigation" was performed, the op-ed piece still raises questions. Attribution is always difficult, but there seems to be info missing.

Wannacry was ransomware, but nowhere in Bossert's piece is there any indication North Korea turned a profit. The article says Wanncry "cost" billions, but it doesn't say anything about North Korea suddenly being awash in illicitly-obtained cash.

Also glossed over in Bossert's tough-talking attribution announcement/cybersecurity muscle flexing is the original source of the Wannacry ransomware: purloined NSA exploits. There are all kinds of problems with Bossert's announcement, as Marcy Wheeler points out:

The guy who — well after it was broadly known to be wrong — officially claimed WannaCry was spread by phishing is now offering this as his evidence that North Korea is the culprit:

We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence.

A representative of the government whose tools created this attack, said this without irony.

The U.S. must lead this effort, rallying allies and responsible tech companies throughout the free world to increase the security and resilience of the internet.

And the guy whose boss has, twice in the last week, made googly eyes at Vladimir Putin said this as if he could do so credibly.

As we make the internet safer, we will continue to hold accountable those who harm or threaten us, whether they act alone or on behalf of criminal organizations or hostile nations.

None of this necessarily adds up to the US government pinning the attacks on the wrong entity, but given the pedigree of the mouthpiece and the administration's desire to minimize reports of Russian government-directed cyberattacks, pinning this on the President's favorite Twitter punching bag (MSM notwithstanding) seems more convenient than accurate.

Even if it's 100% accurate, there had to have been better ways to deliver this news than with a threat of actual, physical war appended. Bossert's piece -- after glossing over the NSA's inadvertent contribution to the worldwide ransomware attack and throwing some shade at the previous administration -- wraps everything up with this:

As for North Korea, it continues to threaten America, Europe and the rest of the world—and not just with its nuclear aspirations. It is increasingly using cyberattacks to fund its reckless behavior and cause disruption across the world. Mr. Trump has already pulled many levers of pressure to address North Korea’s unacceptable nuclear and missile developments, and we will continue to use our maximum pressure strategy to curb Pyongyang’s ability to mount attacks, cyber or otherwise.

Using cyberattacks as an excuse for IRL attacks is a scary idea. The Trump Administration seems willing to draw down on North Korea at any moment, which isn't good news for anyone anywhere in the world. And it follows the newly-minted tradition established by the Obama Administration: mixing and matching war metaphors to treat cyberattacks like Pearl Harbor.

Filed Under: attribution, north korea, ransomeware, tom bossert, wannacry

Guy Who Accidentally Stopped WannaCry Ransomware Detained After Defcon

from the and-thank-you-for-your-service dept

Update: He's been indicted for his alleged role in creating a different malware, Kronos. More below.

As you may recall, earlier this year, when the WannaCry ransomware was spreading like wildfire, it was accidentally stopped by a security researcher in the UK who was (mostly) known only by the pseudonym MalwareTech. He wrote about the whole experience after having tweeted about it earlier. Basically he spotted the domain that WannaCry was pinging and saw that it wasn't registered -- so he registered it, if just to track the spread of the malware. But, that process actually stopped WannaCry from spreading due to the way the ransomware was designed. The story of someone accidentally stopping a massive malware breakout was a good one and it was widely covered by the press. MalwareTech got lots of good press out of it... and as a thank you, at least one UK publication doxxed him and revealed his name, his age, some of his social media photos and even what he liked to eat. That wasn't very nice. Still, now it's known that Marcus Hutchens is MalwareTech, and people should be thanking him.

Anyway, like many security folks and hackers, MalwareTech made his way to Defcon and Black Hat this year... and got his second big "thank you." According to Motherboard, US authorities have detained him in an undisclosed location.

At the time of writing it is not clear what charges, if any, Hutchins may face. According to the now public indictment, Hutchins is accused of developing the Kronos malware that was a trojan that targeted banks. There's a second defendant, whose name and information is redacted (suggesting he hasn't been arrested just yet...) who then went out and appears to have promoted Kronos and tried to sell it.

So the specific charge includes:

MARCUS HUTCHINS, aka "Malwaretech" knowingly disseminated by electronic means an advertisement of any electronic, mechanical, or other device, knowing and having reason to know that the design of such device renders it primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of electronic communications, knowing the content of the advertisement and having reason to know that such advertisement will be transported in interstate and foreign commerce.

In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 2512(1)(c)(i), and 2.

There's also a conspiracy charge tying all of this together. As always, an indictment is just one side of the story, and at least from what's in there, the evidence isn't that strong (there may be a lot more evidence to come). There appears to be a lot more evidence against the other, unnamed, defendant who tried to sell Kronos. The only thing they say about Hutchins, really, is that he wrote it, and then the indictment tries to make it a conspiracy, claiming he conspired with the other defendant who tried to sell Kronos.

Needless to say this will be an interesting case to pay attention to.

On a separate note, in what hopefully is just a coincidence, the Bitcoin addresses that were connected to WannaCry (where they asked victims to send Bitcoins to decrypt their computers) were drained of all their money this morning...

Filed Under: defcon, detained, fbi, malwaretech, marcus hutchens, wannacry

Congressional Rep Pushes His 'Hack Back' Bill By Claiming It Would Have Prevented The WannaCry Ransomware Attack

from the yeah-probably-not dept

Legislator Tom Graves is pushing his cyber defense bill again. So far, his bill -- which we covered here in March -- is still in the drafting stages and has yet to be introduced. It has a unmemorable name (Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act) [but a much better acronym (ACDC)] and a handful of ideas that are questionable at best.

The bill would amend the CFAA to give companies the ability to "hack back" to shut down attacks and identify the attackers. It would not allow them to go on the offense proactively and it doesn't actually grant companies new statutory permissions. Instead, it provides them with an affirmative defense against CFAA-related charges, should someone decide to take them to court.

The good news about the bill's slow crawl is it's being rewritten before being introduced. According to the Financial Times, Graves and his team are consulting with cybersecurity experts to craft a better bill.

The Active Cyber Defense Certainty bill, co-sponsored with Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, is in its early stages. After consulting with cyber security executives at an event at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the bill is being redrafted to include safeguards such as the requirement for companies to notify law enforcement if they are using such techniques, so they can examine that they are being used responsibly.

However, Graves' consultation process seems to begin and end here. There are many more security experts out there who believe this bill will do more harm than good and there doesn't appear to have been much consultation with those who disagree with Graves' beliefs.

The other questionable aspect of this renewed push for hack-back legislation is Graves' belief this bill would have prevented something it likely wouldn't have: the WannaCry ransomware attack.

Mr Graves said he believed the WannaCry ransomware, that hit the UK’s National Health Service and US companies including FedEx, may have been prevented if his bill had already been passed. “I do believe it would have had a positive impact potentially preventing the spread to individuals throughout the US,” he said. “Our proposal is to empower individuals and companies to fight back basically and defend themselves during a cyber attack.”

First off, nothing prevented companies and individuals from defending themselves from these attacks. Well, something did prevent them from defending themselves adequately, but the two entities most at fault were the NSA and Microsoft, with the former's exploit making prodigious use of the latter's security holes. There are other intermediate defensive steps that might have been taken just in general, but Microsoft is the dominant force in business software and the NSA itself was concerned this exploit might be too powerful and result in too much collateral damage.

Second, hacking back wouldn't have halted the attack. What killed the attack wasn't an attempt to track down the ransomware purveyors but rather by examining the exploit itself. A security researcher accidentally found a kill switch for the malware: an unregistered domain name which he purchased to hopefully track the attack. It turns out it also stopped the attack. There was no legal change that is needed to enable that to happen. Even if Graves' bill were law, it would have had nothing to do with ending the WannaCry attack. Certainly this won't be the case in every attack, but the lessons learned from the WannaCry attack have almost nothing to do with the actions this legislator wants to make legal.

Filed Under: hack back, hackback, hacking back, tom graves, vulnerabilities, wannacry

NSA Was Concerned About Power Of Windows Exploit Long Before It Was Leaked

from the and-still-nothing-until-the-last-minute dept

The NSA's exploit toolkit has been weaponized to target critical systems all over the world. So much for the debate over the theoretical downside of undisclosed vulnerabilities. (It also inadvertently provided the perfect argument against encryption backdoors.) The real world has provided all the case study that's needed.

It appears the NSA finally engaged in the Vulnerabilities Equity Process -- not when it discovered the vulnerability, but rather when it became apparent the agency wouldn't be able to prevent it from being released to the public. What's happened recently has been devastating and Microsoft -- whose software was targeted -- has expressed its displeasure at the agency's inaction.

Maybe the agency will be a bit more forthcoming in the future. Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg of the Washington Post report former NSA employees and officials had concerns about the undisclosed exploit long before the Shadow Brokers gave it to the world.

When the National Security Agency began using a new hacking tool called EternalBlue, those entrusted with deploying it marveled at both its uncommon power and the widespread havoc it could wreak if it ever got loose.

Some officials even discussed whether the flaw was so dangerous they should reveal it to Microsoft, the company whose software the government was exploiting, according to former NSA employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the issue.

Officials called it "fishing with dynamite." The exploit gave the NSA access to so much on compromised computers, the agency obviously couldn't bear the thought of voluntarily giving up such a useful hacking tool. But when it was first deployed, some inside the agency felt the vulnerability might be too powerful to be left undisclosed.

But there were plenty of others who viewed disclosure as "disarmament." Somehow, despite three straight years of leaked documents, the NSA still felt it had everything under control. The Shadow Brokers NSA exploit auction made it clear the NSA was no better at securing its software stash than it was at keeping thousands of internal documents from wandering out the door.

The only upshot is the NSA has now witnessed what kind of damage its exploits can do in the wrong hands. Since the agency cannot possibly ensure this sort of thing won't happen again, the question now is how much of other people's security is the agency willing to sacrifice in the name of national security?

The NSA appears to believe it handled this as well as it could given the circumstances, but the outcome could have so much worse. The chain of events leading to the NSA's eventual disclosure helped minimize the collateral damage. It has very little to do with the steps the NSA took (or, more accurately, didn't take).

What if the Shadow Brokers had dumped the exploits in 2014, before the [US] government had begun to upgrade software on its computers? What if they had released them and Microsoft had no ready patch?

There's your intelligence community nightmare fuel. Had the vulnerability managed to take down US government hardware and software, the NSA would be facing even more criticism and scrutiny that it already is.

The NSA appears to only disclose vulnerabilities when forced to. It may possibly hand over those it finds to be of limited use. Former NSA head Keith Alexander says the agency turns over "90%" of the vulnerabilities it discovers, but that percentage seems inflated. The NSA spent years as "No Such Agency." It's only been the last four years that it's been forced to engage in more transparency and accountability, so it's tough to believe it's spent years proactively informing affected companies about the flaws in their products.

In any event, the NSA's second-guesswork will have do for now. Some legislators are hoping to shore up the vulnerabilities reporting process, but it's likely by the time it heads for the Oval Office desk, it will be riddled with with enough national security exceptions to make it useless. With the Shadow Brokers hinting they still have more dangerous exploits to release (including one affecting Windows 10), the decision to disclose these vulnerabilities will once again be informed by the NSA's inability to keep its hacking tools secure, rather than any internal examination of its hoarder mentality.

Filed Under: exploits, leaks, nsa, vep, vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities equities program, wannacry

Microsoft Is PISSED OFF At The NSA Over WannaCry Attack

from the as-it-should-be dept

So, for about a day, Microsoft followed the usual course of action concerning the WannaCry malware that made the rounds last week. As we noted, this ransomware/attackware was built off some leaked NSA exploit code utilizing a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows... that the NSA failed to tell Microsoft about. Microsoft had actually patched it a few weeks prior to the code leaking online via Shadow Brokers, but, still... the NSA is supposed to disclose most of these vulnerabilities, rather than hold them for offensive use (that's the theory, at least).

Microsoft did its standard "no comment" bit for a day or so, but then on Sunday, its President and Chief Legal Officer let loose on the NSA for its failures that resulted in all of this happening. First, it officially confirmed what people were saying about the code being built off of leaked NSA code:

The WannaCrypt exploits used in the attack were drawn from the exploits stolen from the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the United States.

The post does a good job discussing what Microsoft is doing about this and what it means, but then has this:

Finally, this attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. This is an emerging pattern in 2017. We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen. And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today – nation-state action and organized criminal action.

The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call. They need to take a different approach and adhere in cyberspace to the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world. We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits. This is one reason we called in February for a new “Digital Geneva Convention” to govern these issues, including a new requirement for governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than stockpile, sell, or exploit them. And it’s why we’ve pledged our support for defending every customer everywhere in the face of cyberattacks, regardless of their nationality. This weekend, whether it’s in London, New York, Moscow, Delhi, Sao Paulo, or Beijing, we’re putting this principle into action and working with customers around the world.

Whatever you might think of Microsoft and privacy and such, in the last few years (in part thanks to Smith's focus on this), it has been really good about pushing back on government surveillance and interference. This blog post seems to be the next step in that effort. I'm sure that plenty of readers here have a reflexive dislike of Microsoft (no need to express it in the comments, we know already), but the company has been taking a strong stand against excessive surveillance and other efforts to weaken the public's security. Calling out the failures of the intelligence community in not disclosing these kinds of vulnerabilities is another good step, and it's good to see Microsoft make such a clear statement on it.

Filed Under: exploits, nsa, ransomware, vep, vulnerabilities equities program, wannacry
Companies: microsoft

Leaked NSA Hacking Tool On Global Ransomware Rampage

from the who-trusts-the-nsa? dept

Welp. What was that we were saying about the problems of the NSA creating hacking tools that leak, rather than helping patch security flaws? Oh, right. That it would make everyone less safe.

And here we are. With a global ransomware rampage, referred to as "WannaCry" putting tons of people at risk, thanks to leaked NSA malware:

Leaked alleged NSA hacking tools appear to be behind a massive cyberattack disrupting hospitals and companies across Europe, Asia and the U.S., with Russia among the hardest-hit countries.

The unique malware causing the attacks — which been spotted in tens of thousands of incidents in 99 countries, according to the cyber firm Avast — have forced some hospitals to stop admitting new patients with serious medical conditions and driven other companies to shut down their networks, leaving valuable files unavailable.

Specifically, it appears that the ransomware is using an NSA tool called ETERNALBLUE, which was leaked in April by Shadow Brokers. This was among those that were quietly patched by Microsoft back in March, but not everyone installs security patches in a timely manner. Indeed, as some are reporting, some of the victims -- including the National Health Service Hospitals in the UK -- are running ancient Windows XP, an operating system that is not even remotely secure, and is no longer supported.

Thus, there's some debate online about whether the "problem" here is organizations who don't upgrade/patch or the NSA. Of course, these things are not mutually exclusive: you can reasonably blame both. Failing to update and patch your computers is a bad idea these days -- especially for large organizations with IT staff who should know better.

At the same time, the fact that this hack is built off of a leaked NSA hacking tool highlights a couple of key points:

1. The NSA's dual-hatted offensive & defensive structure is damaging: The NSA plays both offense and defense on computer security. That is, it is supposed to hack into other systems, but also help protect our systems. But it's quite clear that the offensive capabilities are valued much more than the defensive ones -- and that's a problem. Once again, it appears that people in the intelligence community are not doing a clear cost-benefit analysis of the tools that they use. They like their toys, but they rarely seem to take into consideration what happens should those toys get out.
2. Once again, this reinforces why we should not allow backdoors to encryption or any other such vulnerability. Over and over again, the proponents of backdooring encryption have insisted that it can be built in a "safe" way, where only government will get the backdoor access to encryption. The fact that some of the NSA's most powerful hacking tools have not only been leaked but are now wreaking havoc around the world, should put a complete end to the "going dark" debate. But it won't. It's not safe, but many in the law enforcement community, in particular, are in denial about this.

These problems are not new. Hell, we've been talking about both of them for the better part of a decade already. But this rapid spread of WannaCry is putting an exclamation point on those arguments. Unfortunately, the cynical side of my brain says this warning will still be ignored.

Filed Under: hacking tools, malware, nhs, nsa, ransomware, shadow brokers, wannacry