Cyber News Rundown: Phishing campaigns taking advantage of COVID back on the rise

Hackers go to great lengths to crack passwords. I wouldn’t think keyboards would hold heat signatures long enough to allow a hacker to come in and guess the password. This is probably a rare method based on the conditions required. 

Here is an excerpt from the article: 

“Using ThermoSecure to analyse images using AI, 86% of passwords were revealed when thermal images were taken within 20 seconds, 76% could be guessed using images within 30 seconds, and 62% could be discovered after 60 seconds. 

The longer the password, the more difficult it was to reveal, but it still proved possible in the majority of cases. ThermoSecure could crack two-thirds of passwords of up to 16 characters and, as passwords get shorter, the more success the system had – 12-character passwords were guessed up to 82% of the time and eight-character passwords were guessed up to 93% of the time.  “

I assume a user would have to log in with their password and then walk away for this method to work. I can say I rarely enter my password and then walk away from my computer. 

Sensitive info of 2.1 million Australians?? Jeez not a small number then. 

Great rundown summary, thank you for sharing

This is like something out of Mission Impossible. Tom Cruise dangling overhead, using some spy gadget to detect heat signatures and crack the password.

Amazing stuff. I wonder if you can take the photos and come back later with some guesses. I’m with you, I wouldn’t normally walk away right after logging in.

Thanks for the rundown. Good to have a heads up on the COVID-related phishing attacks. Guess the pandemic isn’t over after all.

Yes. I thought it sounded more like something from a spy movie! All these finger print copies they manage to replicate perfectly for biometrics!

covid ones are cheeky as a lot of people won’t be surprised to get a notification. Same with the energy bill scams here in the uk. My sister in law got caught out with one of those recently 

It’s not even just COVID now - with all the DWP payments and payments that help low income households, there’s always just something new that tempt these scammers and low lifes!

Just got to be vigilant at all costs, it doesn’t matter how busy you are, if you are on an unsolicited call from someone you don’t know, then it most likely is bogus!

I once spoke to a client on Helpdesk and they had fallen for a common scam where they had a scammer pose as their own family member, had to prevent them from paying more money to a “PC health check” scam... it’s crazy how they will go through all lengths.

@AsadP I agree...unfortunately they will never run out of topics to use to lure in their next victims. 

Great read.

It is scary to think that the Everest ransomware group have root access to the Eskom servers 😮

Everest ransomware group offers full access to South African electricity company As if South Africa is not already really in a jam with Electricity Supply. This will make things even worse for all of us here. :-) 

@tmcmullen  the old saying, curiosity killed the cat is unfortunately true with the human race as well. That why you still get  people clicking on wrong links etc. “Lets just see what this is all about” and boom, your company is compromised. 

@AsadP  not just crazy, it is sad as well to think that people loose so much due to others being just to lazy to put in the effort to earn an honest income themself. 

I still don’t know how these people can do such things. How can you be so free of guilt and humanity?!

That is scary, but what is even more “scary” is if you think that our state owned electricity provides in SA has been compromised. As if we are not already having enough issues with Electricity supply here. 

So much sophistication, yet we know that for many, you merely get an end user to send through their password via a simple web site… This week along the amount of people nearly resetting their Microsoft passwords because of issues, was really worrying, but thankfully, on my side most are savvy enough to ask before doing anything!

COVID related scams were always going to pick up at this time of year. It goes hand in hand with the increased cases.

Surely they are just filming the keyboard anyway or have access to do so.  If you allow cameras everywhere data is easy to grab without thermal imaging.

I agree that there would have to be some well-timed social engineering to go along with this technical hack to get a “clean” shot of a keyboard just after password entry but without hands in the way nor other keypresses having taken place.  This would, however, be killer for physical security entry keypads or the like. A camera hidden in a non-secure portion of the building aimed at an entry door keypad would pick up not only the visible image of keying the code but the thermal image in case someone was hiding their keystrokes. A door, safe, secure file cabinet, etc are all excellent targets because once you enter the code you’re done interacting with the keypad.

“So much sophistication, yet we know that for many, you merely get an end user to send through their password via a simple web site… “ I think this is the most alarming part really, I am unsure how you change that without just constant user education

I think this is obviously 1 factor authentication.  Its easier to get a password in other ways as people have said. We are not yet at the blade runner steal the right eye level of hacking, so that sort of 2FA is still hard to beat, I’m sure they will discover phone fingerprint access is flawed as well (without stealing fingers), Everything is crackable (brute force or now via social engineering) and passwords are now getting more and more easy to defeat even without an infrared camera.  Maybe the fact that opentext owns a DR company as well (carbonite) says something.

Heat signatures!!!  Holy crap BatAdmin, who would've thought?