Once installed, the bot blocks remote communication ports and begins to scan the network for other vulnerable machines. Controlled via IRC, the worm itself can be terminated by restarting the router as it is installed in RAM. However, variations may exist that install itself into NVRAM that may not be so easily removed.

While the Czech experts identified the BoTnet’s footprint only to have extend across Europe, China & South America, North America may not be far behind. Earlier last year, DroneBL – an organization that monitors abuse of infected machines identified a potential PoC (proof of concept) BoTnet called Psyb0t that was soon shut down.

According to this white paper on Psybot, ADSL modem/routers based on the Texas Instruments TNETD7300, similar to the NB5 modem/router manufactured by NetComm were exploitable using their web interfaces that were exposed on the WAN side.

DroneBL team summarized the Psybot characteristics as:

• was the first botnet worm to target routers and DSL modems
• contained shellcode for many mipsel devices
• was not targeting PCs or servers
• used multiple strategies for exploitation, including bruteforce username and password combinations
• harvested usernames and passwords through deep packet inspection
• could scan for exploitable phpMyAdmin and MySQL servers

The DroneBL blog on this botnet estimated about 100,000 Mipsel – a port of Debian Linux for MIPS processors – devices as infected. While the BoTnet is no longer supposed to be active, the short time it took to spread to 100,000 devices is certainly cause for alarm.

The average gateway device used by small-businesses and/or individual users does not enjoy the typical protection the user’s computers may have on the internal network such as virus and malware scanners or periodic software updates. This makes it all the more appealing to potential attackers. In addition, as any external traffic gets routed through the device, it’s the ideal location to intercept sensitive information to/from all network resources.

Guidelines to protect your Gateways & Routers

To reduce potential risk of compromise to your network, ensure the gateway devices at least have;

1. No administrative interfaces (Web, Shell) exposed to the WAN side
2. Strong password policies
   • Use alphanumerically complex passwords
   • Change passwords regularly
   • Do not reuse passwords
3. Changed default user/admin names (Such as ‘admin’)
4. Latest firmware/patches applied
5. Logging enabled and monitored routinely.

The company claims its iPhone version of the software supports

• SMS Logging to intercept all incoming and outgoing SMS messages.
• Reviewing Call History & Sent Emails
• GPS Location monitoring
  
• Remote Control using SMS commands
• Monitoring via secretly calling the iPhone and listening in using the iPhone’s Microphone
• Remotely uninstalling the software
• … and more

The company sells five flavors of its software varying in features and prices that start from USD 39.00.

Luckily, the product only works on Jail-Broken iPhones for now. Physical access to install the spying software is also needed. However, once installed FlexiSpy can hide all signs of the phone being jail-broken.  The best defense against FlexiSpy at this time seems to be physical security controls.

Among the CEOs surveyed, 53 percent responded the chief information officer is accountable for data protection, while only 25 percent of senior executives sided with that opinion. However, nearly 85 percent of executives felt that a failure to prevent security breaches during their tenure would not jeopardize their job.

Who is responsible for security in your organization

[Source: Business Case for Data Protection - Study of CEO and other C-level Executives, Ounce Labs]

Only 3% of the CEOs responded that they perceived cyber crimes to be the the source of greatest risk to their data security, while the majority of CEOs – 31% – believed stolen or lost laptops and data storage devices to be the greatest risk.

[Source: Business Case for Data Protection - Study of CEO and other C-level Executives, Ounce Labs]

The survey also showed a great gap between measures that should be used versus those that are currently used to measure the effectiveness of data protection efforts. Respondents felt asset protection and reputation management measures should be used more.

The effectiveness of data protection efforts

[Source: Business Case for Data Protection - Study of CEO and other C-level Executives, Ounce Labs]

Over all, the survey concluded that C-level executives understand the need for good data protection measures. Even though they might be driven by regulatory and compliance needs, a rising majority understands the need for data protection practices that address reputation protection and customer trust and loyalty. The complete research report can be downloaded from Ounce Labs – the sponsor for the survey.

Here is Part 2

Conclusion

Successful SQL injection attempts can cause an attacker to not only steal data from a database, but also modify and/or delete it. Certain SQL Servers may also contain Stored and Extended Procedures (database server functions). If an attacker can obtain access to these Procedures it may be possible to compromise the entire system and through it, access other systems on the network.

Testing for SQL injection vulnerabilities is often a tedious and labor intensive process. Sqlmap is a powerful tool that aid in this test process. Currently at version 0.7 release candidate 1, sqlmap is a command-line automatic SQL Injection tool developed in python.

Its goal is to detect and take advantage of SQL injection vulnerabilities in web applications. Once it detects one or more SQL injections on the target host, the user can choose among a variety of options to retrieve remote DBMS databases, user names, tables, columns, enumerate entire DBMS, read system files and much more taking advantage of web application programming security flaws that lead to SQL injection vulnerabilities.

sqlmap implements multiple techniques to attempt and exploit a SQL injection vulnerability. Inferential blind SQL injection, also known as boolean based blind SQL injection, UNION query (inband) SQL injection, also known as full UNION query SQL injection and Batched (stacked) queries support, also known as multiple statements support.

In addition to the common input sources, the tool can also test cookies. Since many applications store their session information using a cookie, this is a common practice during SQL injection attempts — one that most penetration tests often overlook.

Sqlmap excels more at exploiting an identified SQL injection vulnerability than finding it. Even with the high degree of automation, it still takes some time to identify vulnerabilities and requires some knowledge of SQL injection techniques.

Latest version of sqlmap is available at sourceforge. For information on preventing SQL injection vulnerabilities, refer to this cheat sheet.