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Linux How To Guide for Files and Directories

Linux, System Admin

This Linux How To will cover Deleting a File, Deleting a Directory, Making a File, and Making a Directory. Although this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of file and directory management it’s a quick intro for someone just starting their Linux journey.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Managing files and directories is an essential part of maintaining and using any Unix/Linux system.

The Linux file system works similarly to Windows and MacOS if you are familiar with those operating systems. Although Linux is much easier and faster to get around if you get comfortable with the Command Line Interface or CLI.

Directory Management

Linux How To: Make a Directory

There are two primary ways of making a directory. There is the visual way using a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and there is the CLI. I will primarily go over using the CLI.

Making a directory involves the use of the mkdir command, which stands for Make Directory but made into a short command.

mkdir has several arguments that can be passed in but only the name of the directory is mandatory.

The base command looks like the following:

[email protected]:~$ mkdir sampleDirectory

If you entered a command similar to the above you would now have a directory named sampleDirectory available. You can view this by entering the list contents command ls.

You should have similar output when you enter the ls command

[email protected]:~$ ls
sampleDirectory

If you enter the list command with the arguments -l which indicate that ls should use the long listing format then you will get an output similar to the following

[email protected]:~$ ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 2 exploitUser exploitGroup 4096 Jun 1 23:30 sampleDirectory

The following line is broken down as follows:

d is the file type, this indicates it is a directory.

rwx each three characters indicate whether the owner/group/others have permissions and what permissions they have. Our current directory allows the owner to r – read, w – write, and x – execute the directory.

r-x allows the group to read and execute but not write.

r-x allows all others to read and execute but nor write.

exploitUser is the owner of the directory.

exploitGroup is the group that the directory belongs to.

The rest is the size, date created, and name of the directory or file.

Linux How To: Delete a Directory

Deleting a directory involves a normal delete/remove command rm and appending an optional flag.

Although the flag is optional for the remove command when files are involved things differ slightly for directories. Attempting to delete a directory without an additional flag results in the following output.

[email protected]:~$ rm ./sampleDirectory/
rm: cannot remove './sampleDirectory/': Is a directory

This is easily fixed by appending a recurse flag -r. The following is an example of a complete command.

[email protected]:~$ rm -r ./sampleDirectory/

This results in the directory being deleted and all files and directories inside being deleted as well.

File Management

Linux How To: Make a File

Now that you can make and delete directories you will need to learn how to make and delete files. In Linux there are a multitude of file types in Linux but the majority of files are recognized simply as regular files. JPEG, PNG, MOV, PDFs, and etc are considered regular files. We will discuss other non-regular file types in another article.

Making a file can depend on the file contents and the application that will use it. Although a PDF and JPEG are both regular files the contents will differ. We will make a simple text file with a greeting.

[email protected]:~$ echo "hello" > someFile.txt

Here we are using the echo command to print our “hello” text out and then using the > pipe into command to put it into someFile.txt. It’s nice to note we don’t need the .txt extension but it’s nice to have to keep things easy to view. You can easily have a JPEG with a .txt file at the end because Linux tries to be smart about files and can usually determine the file type based off the content and not just the extension.

If we print out the content of the file using the cat command we would get the following:

[email protected]:~$ cat someFIle.txt
hello

It’s that simple to create a file. You can also use the touch command to make an empty file that you can then open up in a text editor to add content to and the possibility for file creation is endless. Here is an example of the touch command before we move on.

[email protected]:~$ touch someFile.txt

Linux How To: Delete a File

Deleting a file is generally just as easy if not easier than making a file. Deleting a file uses the same rm command as deleting a directory but does not require the recursive argument.

If we wanted to delete the file we created earlier we would simply use the following command:

[email protected]:~$ rm someFile.txt

If an error occurs then either run the command as a more privileged user or you can use the force -f flag. Note additional flags are advisable if you have more experience or are willing to make mistakes and learn from your mistakes while learning Linux.

Linux How To: Do a File Rename

An easy way to do a file rename in linux is to use the mv command. The command syntax is as follow

[email protected]: ~$ mv oldFileName.txt newFileName.txt

The above command is the quickest way to rename a file on linux.

Linux How To: Conclusion

This was a short introduction to making and deleting files and directories. A helpful hint is to use the --help flag with commands or to reference the man command if available. These are helpful as they usually provide extra information for users to read and try to figure out what to do next.

Freakout Botnet Attacks DVRs, Ricochet Problems, MyKings Botnet, & Twitch Hacked.

Podcasts

Exploit Brokers Hacker News Episode 09

Intro

Hey guys, welcome to exploit brokers today. We’re going to be going over four different articles. Let’s talk about Twitch. Let’s talk about ricochet, the freakout botnet and the Mykings botnet. Let’s jump into it.

Cool. So guys, welcome back. I know I’ve been offline for a little bit, but I am here to bring you back your hacker news goodness. So today we’re going to jump right into it.

Freakout Botnet Attacks DVRs

We’re going to talk about the freakout botnet. It turns out they are using their botnet to turn DVRs into Monero crypto miners. So Monero is one of the favorite type of crypto miners in the criminal industry, because it’s very hard to track compared to like Bitcoin and all that.

So the transactions are much more. Privacy oriented. I guess if you can say it that way, so let’s jump right into it. Let’s see. And I will list the articles and the show notes. This one is by threatpost.com titled freak-out botnet turns DVR’d into Monero, crypto miners. You what we’re talking about today.

I’ll start out by saying the article says the new Necro Python exploit targets visual tools DVRs used in surveillance systems. So we’re not talking about just like, you know, your old DVR. If anyone still has a DVR for tvservices. I imagine a lot of people. Still do, but no, this is specifically the visual tools, DVRs first surveillance systems.

So if you think about surveillance systems, they’re going to be on all the time. They’re going to be pulling feed for everything. So, you know, Hey, if they’re always on anyways, and most people aren’t going to be checking them normally. ’cause, you know, you don’t really check them unless you need them, then you could totally put something on there.

The Juniper threat labs, researchers issued a new detail. There’s apparently something known as Niekro Python and Python, IRC bot. For some people IRC, they may be familiar with that. That’s the internet relay chat. It’s kind of like the predecessor to like messaging. You’d put up an IRC server.

People could join, you could talk Kind of like a messaging board, but more interactive . According to this the malware in late September was targeting the visual tools, DVR VX16 4.2.28.0 models with crypto mining attacks. What this usually seems to be is like, Hey, Grabbing their botnets and they’re targeting this specific model.

Maybe there’s a firmware of a vulnerability. Maybe there’s something else we’ll just kind of keep going and see if there’s anything we can find. Right. They’re using command injection. . The script can run in both windows and Linux environments and the script has a polymorphic engine to morph itself.

Ooh. So, okay. This is actually really cool. Polymorphic engines, if you think about like something being able to evolve itself or change itself over time you know, viruses or bacteria and stuff like that. The polymorphic engine is actually a very cool way that some viruses, I mean, I say cool, but it’s kind of devastating.

It’s a very cool way that some computer viruses, they keep morphing themselves and antivirus, sometimes use signature-based defenses. Right. So what that means is they’re looking for. A specific type of code or for the binary’s to look a certain way. And then that will allow it to be like, Hey, this looks an awful lot, like this kind of virus or this specific virus.

So by morphing itself, you’re changing your signature. Every couple executions or every execution, right? So the next time you infect somebody while you’re using the next variant of what it was. And typically I was looking into polymorphic, see how they kind of work. Right. And they have their base encrypted.

That’ll get re encrypted and then you have the actual delivery system. There’s a way that you can keep that encrypted in the program. Then you can decrypt it, recompile it, but also re encrypted as well. You have the payloads being constantly changed and the signature will look different.

According to the article freakout, which is the ones who originated the botnet have been doing this since at least January. They’ve been trying to launch distributed denial of service attacks and crypto mining attacks. So they’re trying to bring people down and trying to make money kind of makes sense. Right?

They have several iterations of the Necrobot. According to what I’m seeing here There’s been even recent changes. Cool. They’re using, what’s known as a domain generation algorithm for added persistence. Based off my research, the domain generation algorithm, how it works is it’ll guess a certain kinds of domains. And then it’ll go reach out and like, Hey, are you my C to C server?

Are you my command and control server? If it doesn’t find it well, then, Hey, that’s fine. It just tries again and tries again . The first Necrobot used to scan ports, 22, 80, 443, 8081, and 7001. Then if, if it detected it, then according to the article an XM rig, which is a high-performance Monero miner linked to a specific wallet.

Then it would just try to mine and then throw whatever Monero to that wallet. So the vulnerabilities for those of you that are kind of wondering. Is the CVE-2021-15568 TerraMaster TOS before 4.1.29, CVE-2021-2900. The Genexis. Sorry. If I butchered that Genexis platinum 4410 2.1 P4410-V2-1.28.

There’s five of these, we were already covered two. The third one is CVE-2020-25494 Xinuos, formerly SCO, OpenServer version five and version six. Next is the CVE-2020-28188 TerraMaster TOS every version up to, and including 4.2.06 and the last one is the CVE-2019-12725 Zeroshell 3.9.0.

So something I’d like to point out. We do have what looks to be like one extremely recent exploit 2021. Like, you know, last year, exploits, 2020s and the 2019. This virus has exploits that are pretty recent. The chances that an organization is using something that hasn’t been patched or that the software’s haven’t had a patch for like the 2021 let’s say, then, you know, that’s, that’s pretty high.

As a software engineer, turnaround time is not like, Hey, there’s an exploit. Cool. I could totally get that fixed by this afternoon. If you just find out about it and you’re in process of normal code delivery code release right. You may not have team members to go fix critical patches that night.

You may have to pull them off that could throw your deadlines off. Very much a cat and mouse and a delivery standpoint, right? So of course you have to do bug. But do you have time to do bug fixes and your main release as well? From this, I don’t know too much about TerraMaster or the CVS in question, but from a software engineering perspective, you got to be careful with that.

Ooh, so the head of Juniper labs has told threat posts, which is the article that I’m reading this off. Most security teams need to be able to handle DGA domain attempts. What I’m assuming he means right? From an IT perspective, if a computer, a box, right, is sending out 400 DNS requests looking for similar things will an average user, shouldn’t be sending 400 DNS requests in an hour.

Right. They might go to like four or five, but if they’re doing their job, Even if you’re Googling, right. You’re not going to hit 300 domains, 400 domains. Two hours, three hours. That’s my guess. By having a route switch firewall with a rule that kinda says like, Hey, if any machine is throwing like 300 or more than 200 or whatever threshold .

X amount of DNS requests in X time or Y time, then you need to throw an alert. You need a block that cause Hey, that could be a malicious or compromised box. I could totally see where that’s, kind of where they’re getting at. But you know, that’s just my opinion. So let’s roll into the next one.

Source: https://threatpost.com/freakout-botnet-dvrs-monero-cryptominers/175467/

Ricochet Anti-Cheat Kernel

So ricochet call of duty for any of you gamers who are interested, ricochet is an anti cheat engine. Call of duty, wants to use for Warzone and Vanguard. The reason I’m bringing this up is they have a Kernel level driver. It’s first going to come to call of duty. Kernel level, for those of you who may or may not be aware, you have the user level and you have the kernel level.

Kerner level is anything that runs windows privileges versus user space is, you know, users kind of straight forward. Right? The problem with Kernel drivers is they tend to have a lot of control over the system due to the nature that they are integrated tightly with the operating system. They’re trying to calm people down.

I kind of pre-read this article right there, trying to calm people down by saying, Hey, it’s not always on and it only checks for software that interacts with call of duty, but that doesn’t mean it can’t change. That doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be false flags, right? So my biggest concern with any security tool with any AI thing..

Is false positives. Right? False positives could give people a really bad day. Do we want to stop hackers? Yeah, we want to stop hackers. Do we want to stop people from ruining the game ? Yeah, we want to stop people from ruining the game. What happens if the driver accidentally sees overclocking software as a flag.

So you’re going to have a lot of tech enthusiasts. A lot of people build gaming, rigs, gaming computers with the idea. Cool. I can play games, but I can also overclock this thing and get the most performance or just some people just like to do it for fun. Even I’ve played around with overclocking.

It’s just one of those things like, Hey, I have a really cool PC. Can I try this? My other concern as well. You have a kernel level driver that can interact with a system that’s been developed by this company. Well like any kernel level thing. What if there’s a vulnerability in that kernel?

How fast would they be able to patch it? How much will they care? Are they going to be invested to be able to like, Hey, a CVE came out on our kernel driver that is installing Monero miners or whatever should we patch it? Do we care?

That’s almost any company, but this is one more company. What I’m reading, the way I’m understanding is you will not be able to play the game unless the kernel driver is installed. For you to be able to play call of duty on your gaming PC, you would need to have this Kernel Installed.

That doesn’t make me feel great about it. Call of duty I’m seeing maybe a hundred million yeah, about a hundred million players, which means that if you target, let’s say, let’s say a quarter of them are gaming PC players, right

You have a quarter of the 100 million. So you have 25 million people who are now running this driver on their computers. If a CVE breaks out 25 million is, you know, pretty substantial base considering it’s one company. You should be worried about that for anything and everything.

Windows is not exactly, the most secure system there’s a lot of faults they’re getting better, but they do have a lot faults. Not related, but it appears that part of the driver is actually using or could possibly use machine learning algorithms. I don’t know this definitively, but they’re saying that they want to use machine learning to analyze server data, to determine patterns.

Now this goes back to my false positive concern, right? So machine learning algorithms are. At current time, most of them are not 100, truly 100% accurate. If you think it’s a hundred percent, you’re maybe you’re over-fitting, which means you’re, you’re saying, Hey, this data looks this way. Cool. But then when you throw real data at it, it doesn’t fit the training data exactly.

So you’ll overfit and that’s just, that’s just one thing I’m concerned about. Say, say it’s half a percent, right? What’s half a percent of a hundred million players is like 50,000 players that you may. Automatically flag. If you doing anything like an auto ban based on the flags, cool. You just falsely band 50,000 players.

Not to mentioned that even false positive, be like, well, Hey, what about the hackers that do get through? You are reducing the amount, but this is not a catchall solution. This is not a cool, we can fix everything.

You have to do it in a nuanced way. You can’t just have the machine learning, AI be able to auto ban people without some sort of appeal process, without some sort of safety checks to prevent those who get falsely flagged to be able to come back because it’s going to suck. You pay $60, a hundred dollars, or, you know, $60 plus DLC.

I mean, Warzone is free, but if you’re buying the season pass or whatever, you’re still paying, it’s going to suck that you falsely get flagged and you lose access to the thing that you were paying money. And I don’t think anybody wants that.

I was pulling the information, I’m going to put it in the show notes off CallOfDuty.com, it’s self.

Source: https://www.callofduty.com/blog/2021/10/ricochet-anti-cheat-initiative-for-call-of-duty

MyKings Botnet

Let’s kind of segment into the next article.

The next article comes from bleepingcomputer.com titled “MyKings botnet, still active and making massive amounts of money”. Cool. Botnets making money seems to be like a recurring theme. The MyKings botnet, according to the article is still actively spreading and is making tons of crypto.

The first appearance was like five years ago. Being that it’s one of the most analyzed I’m kind of pair I’m paraphrasing slash reading the article. MyKings is particularly interested in researchers thanks to his vast infrastructure versatile features. What does it mean by versatile features will list a few, right.

I’ll kind of touch on what they mean. So the article states that it includes: bootkits, miners, droppers, clipboard stealers, and more. Bootkits are particularly problematic because they install themselves in the boot sector of the operating system. You don’t want a virus that manipulates your system on boot or just as it’s booting, because it becomes very hard to truly get rid of that.

If the boot kit installs itself, well, you may have to completely wipe the entire system and there goes all your data, right? Minors going back to the Monero Miner, or if you know, Bitcoin minor that could be done. There’s there’s dozens of variations. There’s probably a couple different miners per coin.

Right? Droppers, I’ve heard this term before. I have to come back to you on that clipboard stealers, you know, straight up just steals your clipboard. The reason that could be problematic is if you’re mining or if you’re doing something else cool, now they have your wallet and have other stuff.

Every time that it sees your wallet, they could inject their wallet. And there you go. Now they’re now they’re using the hacker’s wallet for reasons that they would use there’s deposits, trades, et cetera.

Let’s jump into the article. Bleeping computer seems to be referencing the Avast threat labs. The earnings reflected in the wallet linked to the makings are approximately 24.7 million. So they’ve been, they, they make quite a bit of money off this, right. They’re using substitution.

Oh, cool. Kind of what I was touching on. So they are using the clipboard manipulation thing to inject their to inject their wallet. The latest I’m going to read from the article. The latest version of the malware also features a new url manipulation system in the clipboard stealer module, which the attackers created to hijack steam item trade transactions. Cool they’re even targeting Steam here, the module changed the trade off offer URLs.

So the actors placed at the receiving end. So not only are they trying to probably look for digital wallets, now they’re even targeting games. So they’re targeting steam. Which is kind of interesting. I mean, in games, items sell for a lot I know there’s this one game don’t remember off the top of my head that uses real world money to kind of be like a one-to-one, but you’re not supposed to take the money out.

At least the developers, I think don’t want you to . Hey, that’s one way that now criminals are trying to make more money. Now let’s go after games too. So there was also functionality added for the Yandex, disc storage, cloud service, and it looks like they’re essentially using that for a social engineering style spread. They are putting a photos archive, you unzip it, it’s actually the malware, but you are a trusted person sending your other friend, this link, they’re going to download it, run it because it came from you and it’s actually gonna infect them because your clipboard was manipulated behind the scenes.

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mykings-botnet-still-active-and-making-massive-amounts-of-money/

Twitch Hacked

Now onto our last article.

Article by 9to5mac.com, “PSA: Twitch.tv was hacked, everything leaked, including creator payouts”. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen this on the news. It’s been everywhere. Right? So Twitch TV, the very popular streaming channel for, or streaming website for games. And I guess other stuff was hacked.

So if you have an account there they’re recommending you change your password, which I will recommend if your data’s ever in a breach. Yes. Change your password. Yeah, do it. Password managers are also pretty cool. Those can get hacked too, but Hey, at least you have like only one master password that you need to be changing often and you don’t got to remember the other ones.

Going through the article. There was an anonymous hacker who posted a huge download link. Apparently the entire website source code, various console phone stuff. Ooh, an unreleased steam competitor talking about steam earlier, right?. Payouts and encrypted passwords all got leaked. So encrypted passwords that could or could not be problematic depending on how good the encryption is. By the way don’t trust it, change your password. Payouts, that’s just, ah, man. Now you’re going to know what every streamer makes. Apparently 125 gigabyte torrent link was posted to 4Chan. I think last Wednesday. This was October 6th.

Ooh. So very early Wednesday, I think like maybe late September Wednesday. So I’m a little bit late to this article. One anonymous company told and I’m reading from the art from the article. “One anonymous company told VGC”, which I’m guessing is where 9to5Mac original quoted their stuff.

“That the leak data is legitimate. Including the source code for the Amazon owned streaming platform. Internally, Twitch is aware of the breach, the source said, and it’s believed that the data was obtained as recently as Monday. We’ve requested comment from Twitch and will update this story when it replies”.

I guess there hasn’t been any update, going over, right. All of that. That’s, that’s rich. So as well as the data that got. Internal penetration testing tools got leaked too. Right? So the hackers got hacked. Twitch TV isn’t exactly hackers, but they’re hacking tools got hacked. Reminds me of, I think it was a government agency, got their stuff stolen by hackers too.

It kinda reminds me of that realm, right. When you look in, when you look into the abyss, the abyss will stare back kind of thing. ‘ The entirety of Twitch’s source code with comment history “going back to its early beginnings”‘. They got all the Twitch, pretty much all the repo all the creator payouts from 2019, mobile desktop and console client, proprietary SDK and internal AWS services used by twitch. So they can completely make a Twitch clone tomorrow. Wow. ‘”Every other property that Twitch owns”, including IGDB and CurseForge’.

No idea what those are, but Hey, it’s Amazon owned, so it’s big. “An unrelased Steam competitor, codenamed Vapor from Amazon Game Studios”. So something I’ve, I’ve been seeing from the Amazon side. Right. As a developer, I like AWS. It’s kind of cool. I’m not super big on only one platform, but anyways, I’ve seen where Amazon is pushing I think I forget their name of it, but they, they have, they’re starting to push into the game market and I think it’s because Hey, Vapor or whatever this thing is. If it’s a steam competitor, they want to get in on selling games. I know they’re trying to get in on the game engine side.

It kind of makes sense. Gaming is a very profitable or not profitable, but is a very big industry people game on their mobile people game on console people game on PC , it’s what people do. The last point of what was stolen includes a penetration tools, which I was talking about, it looks like it was red team tools for my listeners who are not aware, red team essentially means attacker, right?

You have red team attack, the blue team defends, and kind of variations of those. You have some people that try to do both. That will be another episode. Another thing to talk about. A Twitter user has actually been quick to post spreadsheets about who the highest-paid earners were. So I will link the article in the description or in the show notes, if you want to go check out what that Twitter is and see, you know, who were the higher paid ones? All I will say here is it’s like a couple of million dollars from August 2019 to October 2021. I mean that. That’s pretty big.

Most people don’t make a couple of million dollars unless you’re a CEO or something also, Hey, props to them.

‘The hacker said their motivation was to disrupt the space because “their community is a disgusting, toxic cesspool”‘, nine to five quoting somebody else. Not me.

It seems just like the hacker was disgruntled because of Twitch’s politics. Not going to get into that, but Hey, if you don’t like Twitch, don’t get on Twitch. If you like Twitch, well, then get on Twitch. It’s going to be completely up to you, I do agree with the notion rules should be applied evenly.

You can’t just pick and choose, you know, you’re profitable people can bend the rules, stuff like that. I don’t, I, it should be across the board. Right. It said Twitch is working hard to address this, but many people are unhappy about the results. According to the article, I mean kind of makes sense.

Your whole data was leaked or your tools are leaked or internal stuff was leaked. Now everyone knows how much they made. You know, people can see how much they made from this year to this year.

According to this, you know, but you, people are unhappy. And I know a lot of people have been unhappy with the touch platform as a generality, but you reap what you sow I guess.

Source: https://9to5mac. com/2021/10/06/twitch-tv-was-hacked/

Outro

Guys that’s the last article. So thank you for sticking with me again. This has been Exploitbrokers Hacker News with your host Lauro, and I will see you in the next one

Golang Setup for VS Code on Windows

Golang

Welcome to Go language setup for Visual Studio Code on Windows, we are going to set up our development environment so we can code and work on go lang code on our computers easily, Let’s dive into it.

Installing Go

We must first download and install go to set up our environment. Go to the following website to download the executable for windows.

https://golang.org/dl/

Once you navigate to Go’s download page you should select the appropriate windows installer for you. It looks something like this:

Featured Downlods for Go’s Windows installer

Once you click it, it will download a file similar to the following:

go1.16.5.windows-amd64.msi

I’m downloading go 1.16 for a 64 bit Windows machine. This will differ slightly depending on when you’re reading this and what your windows version is.

Simply run it and click through the executable. Once it is installed you can verify it’s installed by running this command on a cmd prompt.

go version

As well, the output will depend on the go version you installed and your windows version but it will look similar to this:

go version go1.16.5 windows/amd64

Once you get this message then congratulations! You’ve successfully installed go. You can begin coding go with powershell and a notepad or you can chose an ide such as Visual Studio Code. Following this idea, we will install Visual Studio Code.

Installing Visual Studio Code and setting up for Go development

So now that we’ve installed go we can start setting up the IDE for our development.

Visual Studio Code

You can download Visual Studio Code from the following link:

https://code.visualstudio.com/download

Again you should pick the windows version that matches your environment, but in general, the download page looks something similar to the following:

Visual Studio Code Download Section

As a general rule of thumb.

  • User Installer: installs only for the current user
  • System Installer: installs for all users of the system
  • .zip: is the files without the installer

The downloaded file looks something like:

VSCodeSetup-x64-1.58.0.exe

I recommend the system installer but that’s ultimately up to you and what you’re installing VS code on. Once you download the file run through the installation steps.

Once installed you can search for the app under the name, Visual Studio Code. As well you can open it from a cmd prompt using the following command:

code

Now that you have Visual Studio Code installed we can move on setting it up for our Go development.

Go development setup in VS Code

We must first go to our package manager noted by the symbol noted below.

Then we can search for the GO package by simply typing go in search.

We are looking for the “Go” package authored by “Go Team at Google”.

Once you’ve located this package simply press install and let VS code install it. If VS code prompts to install tools for Go then accept and let vs code setup thing necessary for you.

Wrap-up

We’ve set up a simple Go language environment for Visual Studio Code on WIndows. You can also start looking at a simple introduction by following our building and running tutorial https://exploitbrokers.com/programming/golang/golang-how-to-build-and-run-golang-apps/

Happy Golang Coding!

Golang Tutorial – How to build and run golang apps

Golang

Golang, how to build and run your first Golang application is meant to be a simple introduction to building and running a simple Golang application. We will also cover some information about modules and a general overview of the building, running, and executing Golang apps.

Specifically, we will cover: go run, go build, and go install. Let’s jump into it.

Golang - How to build and run golang apps
Golang – How to build and run golang apps

Golang, how to build Golang applications and use the run and build commands.

Specifically, we will cover: go run and go build. We will cover syntax, usage, examples, and some example code you can run. This tutorial expects you to have a local golang development environment setup. If you don’t have one or want to follow along exactly you can check out our golang development setup here https://exploitbrokers.com/programming/golang/golang-setup-visual-studio-code-for-windows/.

GO example file

Here is the example file we will use to show how to use the build and run commands. This is a simple application to print out a simple message.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
	fmt.Println("Hello, i'm learning golang from exploitbrokers.com")
}

You should copy and save this to any file name you want but it must end in a .go extension. It should look something like

helloExploitBrokers.go

GO build

We will first learn how to build golang applications using the build command built in to go. The “build” command does pretty much what it sounds like, it builds an executable that can be run at a later point in time. 

go build helloExploitBrokers.go

The go build command will create an executable but needs the file name to be specified.

If we want “go build” to work without explicitly calling the file name explicitly then we will need to set up a go.mod which we will go over later in the article.

So if we run the command above in a windows environment we will get a file that looks like:

helloExploitBrokers.exe

We can then execute the helloExploitBrokers.exe and get the following output. To execute you can use a terminal, command prompt, or if you’re in visual studio code you can use the interactive. See the image below.

Right clicking the file opens the menu to find the Open in Integrated Terminal options
How to find the “Open in Integrated Terminal” option

Executing the executable from an interactive terminal/command prompt/etc is as simple as:

./helloExploitBrokers.exe

The execution above will print out our message:

Hello, i'm learning golang from exploitbrokers.com

Now we will learn how to make a go.mod file that allows visual studio code to run it instead of using the terminal. It’s important to note that any console apps needs console input from the user will still need to be run similar to our current application as only interactive terminals allow user input when using visual studio code.

GO Mod Init

Go’s “mod init” command allows us to set up a go.mod file which makes our current file act as a module. A module is go’s way to have packages. If you’ve ever used packages in other languages the concept is the same.

The syntax and sample usage is as follows:

go mod init helloExploitBrokers

Once the command is ran you will notice a new file will appear.

go.mod

The file go.mod will contains something similar to the following.

module helloExploitBrokers

go 1.16

This tells go that this module is named helloExploitBrokers and has a go version of 1.16. The technicalities are beyond the scope of this tutorial and are best looked up at a later point. The big takeaway is that now using’s visual studio code’s built-in run will work now.

Go Run

Go’s run command makes it easier to run our code when in our ide because it essentially makes a temporary exe and runs it for us. It saves time by running the code instead of building it and making us run it manually.

The run syntax will differ slightly depending on whether you have the go.mod file setup.

If you have the go.mod file setup then you can run the following command.

go run .

The . (dot) tells go to look in the current module for the main function we set up in our earlier file.

If you don’t have the go.mod file setup then you can run the following command.

go run helloExploitBrokers.go

The main difference is whether you specify the file or go looks for the main function is the files.

Maze ransomware hits Cognizant, More Covid-19 Scams, Pulse Secure vulnerable, ruby libraries contain malware, and more

Podcasts

Hey Guys It’s your host Lauro with Exploit Brokers, back with episode 08.

IT Multinational Corporation Cognizant hit with Ransomware, COVID-19 Scams in April, Pulse VPN Patch is not patchy enough, and over 700 developer libraries contains malicious code We have some interesting stuff to cover, so let’s login.

Maze ransomware hits Cognizant

The Multinational Corporation Cognizant known for providing IT services has been hit by malware. In an article by BleepingComputer titled, “IT services giant Cognizant suffers Maze Ransomware cyber attack“, Cognizant has informed the public of a Maze ransomware attack.

The article by bleeping computer indicates a few Indicators of Compromise including some IP Addresses of servers and file hashes for kepstl32.dll, meme.tmp, and maze.dll files. These are IP and files known to be used in Maze ransomware attacks.

The article also indicated a Yara rule that was released by an InfoSec researcher Vitali Kremez. For my readers who may not be familiar with YARA. YARA is a cyber security tool to help researcher identify and classify malware and a YARA Rule is a way to define what to flag as an identified malware.

Although it appears BleepingComputer reached out to Maze Operators to discuss the attacks nothing promising has come of it yet.

There is something that distinguishes Maze ransomware from other ransomware. Maze likes to steal files before the ransom process begins. This is done to be able to release some files to increase urgency to pay the ransom. It also appears as though this practice is becoming more prevalent among ransomware operators.

To clarify for some of my listeners ransomware is a type of malware. Ransomware encrypts a victim’s computer and puts up a ransom to be able to recovery the precious data. It can not be stressed enough the importance of creating backups locally and offsite.

As more is released, I will report on it in a future episode.

Furthemore, I want to point a few ways you can strength yourself or your network assets from ransomware attacks.

  • Firstly, use strong passwords, don’t reuse passwords, and always make sure default passwords are changed.
  • Secondly, Make backups as often as makes sense and make sure you have offsite backups. You don’t want your backup machine to be encrypted because you’re still out of luck if your backups get encrypted too.
  • Thirdly, Use anti-ransomware protection as often as possible.
  • Fourthly, Cautiously patch and keep up to date as many of your systems as possible. Sometimes patches cause a lot of trouble but in general patching can help prevent previously effective malware from taking over an asset.
  • Lastly, lock down Remote Desktop Protocol or RDP to prevent abuse. Minimize who can and how to access RDP on windows machines. Try using 2 factor or rdp within a VPN to help improve security.

source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/it-services-giant-cognizant-suffers-maze-ransomware-cyber-attack/

COVID-19 April Scams

So the US is receiving stimulus checks and Scammers are trying to take those checks. It’s a game of Cat and Mouse but with a new target, stimulus money.

In an article by Tripwire titled, “COVID-19 Scam Roundup – April 20, 2020″, tripwire discusses the latest COVID-19 scams found in April 2020.

In a report by the FTC there was 22,853 COVID-19 complaints reported between Janurary 1st 2020 and April 20th 2020. During that period was was a total fraud loss of 17.53 million and a median fraud loss of $533. Let’s break down the types of scams that were being used.

Firstly, there is a phishing email, found by inky.com,  that opens up a digital twin of the White Houses’s official COVID-19 informational website. Once you open up that fake twin there is a download button that proceeds to download a malicious Microsoft word documents. If you’ve listened to previous episodes then you are already familiar with malicious word documents. When the victim opens the word document and enables or has enabled macros, then the malicious document proceeds to download malware and infect the computer.

Next up is another malicious email found by Bitdefender. The malicious email pretends to be from a health related sender and is themed around being sent to a business related email. It uses wording similar to hey your staff is infected click a malicious file. Although the scam email uses similar techniques to the previously noted attack, the file in question is disguised as an image file. The image file is actually a malicious file that mounts as a DVD and has a malicious executable to find the victim’s machine.

In addition to the previous email scams the next one is primarily aimed at older individuals. The scam refers to a U.S. Emergency Grants Foundation but instead of an email relies on Facebook posts to spread the malicious payload. Once a victim clicked the link it would redirect to a website labeled as the “U.S. Emergency Grants Federation” and touted that it could help individuals apply for funds to help their situation amidst the current pandemic that is spreading. In reality a victim who gives the fraudulent website their social just opened themselves up to identity fraud and other attacks at a later point.

Next up is a scam that is interesting if you travel frequently. A fake email was being sent to unsuspecting victims masquerading as a canceled flight refund. The email had a link that would redirect to a website where users could submit personal information. Among the personal information collected included mobile phone number, email address, and payment information. Once a user submitted the form the malicious actor would harvest the data to fraudulently charge the card or attempt to steal a victim’s identity.

Lastly, if any of my listeners use Internet Explorer then be careful with a new Malicious Advertising Campaign also known as Malvertising. Malicious actors registered the domain “covid19onlineinfo[dot]com and multiple other domains to host an exploit kit on. The use of multiple domains is used as a tactic to attempt to evade Anti-Virus detection. The exploit kit attempted to use a vulnerability found in older IE browsers. The exploit kit attempted to install Kpot v2.0, a virus intended to steal credentials such as personal information and passwords.

That wraps up the COVID-19 wrap up. Again as I’ve noted in previous episodes to my listeners. Please help spread the world about these scams and any information you find important to non-technical and non-security oriented users. There are many people who fall victims to these scams and it’s up to the security oriented and security interested community to help those who are not as security or technically inclined.

source: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-awareness/covid-19-scam-roundup-april-20-2020/

source: https://www.inky.com/hubfs/Understanding%20Phishing%20-%20Operation%20White%20House.pdf

source: https://hotforsecurity.bitdefender.com/blog/malicious-spam-is-adapting-to-the-pandemic-bitdefender-telemetry-shows-22917.html

source: https://www.wnct.com/news/north-carolina/bbb-scam-alert-government-economic-impact-payments-trigger-latest-coronavirus-scam/

source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/15/flight_refund_email_scam/

source: https://blog.avast.com/malvertising-campaign-targeting-internet-explorer-users

Pulse VPN Patches May Not Be Enough

So Virtual Private Networks or VPNs are generally not a new concept to many people. Whether using or managing a VPN, it’s become a vital part of many corporate environments. This widespread adoption and underlying value of a VPN makes it a high value target for hackers to try to compromise.

An article by SecurityWeek.com titled, “Patching Pulse Secure VPN Not Enough to Keep Attackers Out, CISA Warns” covers details and critical information about a Pulse Secure VPN related issue.

In 2019 10 major vulnerabilities were disclosed to Pulse Secure. One of the vulnerabilities being a CVSS or Common Vulnerability Scoring System score of 10/10. The reason it scored so high is that it allowed a remote and unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code. In general Remote Code Execution ranks a CVSS high. For my users who may be wondering why, allowing a random person to run a malicious program on a company server can cost the company lots of money and can wreak havoc on the network.

To further make this a problem, in August of 2019 the NSA found that 14,500 servers were vulnerable and sent out alerts. Furthermore as recent of January 2020, it was found that cyber-criminals were still trying to exploit the vulnerability and were trying to distribute ransomware.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, also known as CISA, noticed that although servers were patched compromised credentials were being used months later. If the administrator applied a patch but did not change the credentials then the attacker may still be able to get in, even though the underlying vulnerability was patched.

The attackers use Tor and Virtual Private Servers or VPSs to avoid being detected and many would create a persistent connection. The persistent connection involved scheduled tasks, Remote Access Trojans also known as RATs, and using legit software like TeamViewer to keep a line to the compromised victims. Many hackers opted to execute ransomware or steal data to sell.

There is good news. CISA was able to create a tool to determine if a network was compromised before they could have been patched. CISA recommends administrators use the tool to validate and find any possible Indicator of Compromise to finish clearing their systems of malicious actors and malware.

source: https://www.securityweek.com/patching-pulse-secure-vpn-not-enough-keep-attackers-out-cisa-warns

Ruby Developers Beware

So if any of my listeners develop on Ruby I have an interesting warning for you. In an article by threatpost.com titled, “Bitcoin Stealers Hide in 700+ Ruby Developer Libraries“, new malicious libraries are brought to light.

Hackers are using typos to spread malicious libraries. Close to 760 malicious libraries were found. These libraries were found to sniff around trying to snatch some Bitcoin. Researchers at ReversingLabs found that simple mistakes or slightly off wording could leads unsuspecting users to download and use the library. Simple things like replacing a letter i with a 1 could lead to an erroneous download and use of the malicious library.

It didn’t seem to be targeted and was more geared as a spray tactic. The malicious library developers used ruby’s extensions system to execute malicious code on a victim’s computer. Ruby’s extension system essentially wraps C code and libraries in a ruby wrapper for execution within ruby. In one of the researcher’s finding there was a malicious extension file that would rename an image file that was included in the library to a dot exe and would execute it on windows. The malicious program would extract a Vb-script that would create a new Vb-script and create an auto-run registry key. The primary focus of the malware was to replace a cryptocurrency address in a user’s clipboard data with the attackers address. This would eventually lead to someone transferring currency to the attacker’s wallet instead of the intended address.

Although the researcher’s reached out to the RubyGems security team, the attacks seem to keep cropping up on more malicious ruby libraries. The signature file path and cryptocurrency motive point to the thought that all the attacks are coming from a consolidated source. Only time will tell as more data is revealed. The researches also noticed they found compromised libraries in NPM and PyPI in the past.

To all my developer listeners, remember to vet and carefully use external libraries. Although adding functionality using an import statement is useful it is a double edged sword that can easily cut you.

There are more libraries being attack and the researchers are still working to report malicious libraries.

source: https://threatpost.com/bitcoin-stealers-700-ruby-developer-libraries/154937/

Conclusion

To wrap up, we’ve discussed several interesting hacking events occurring. Keep security on the back of your mind as we traverse this unique time in our history. Lastly, It’s always going to be a back and forth fight between security White hats and malicious actors.

This has been Lauro your host, i’m signing off until next time!

What is Ethical Hacking? How to Be an Ethical Hacker?

Hacking Tutorials

What is Ethical Hacking
What is Ethical Hacking

What is Ethical Hacking?

Ethical hacking is essentially acting as a White Hat or Good Hacker. A hacker using their skills with permission and for good are ethical hackers but without a hacker can easily be classified as a Black or Gray Hat. Ethical hacking involves the same skills that bad hackers use but for the purpose of defense and strengthening against malicious third parties. You can consider this skill a technical IT related skill set to help secure systems, programs, environments, and networks. The ability to find vulnerabilities and bugs in a network is critical for companies and governments alike when trying to defend their digital assets.

Finally, Ethical hacking can take on many form such as penetration testing, bug hunting, network mapping, and so many more but it all comes down to helping government, companies, and special interests defend against losses.

Who are Ethical Hackers

Ethical hackers are hackers with Cyber Security skills and permission to hack a system. On one hand, developers need to review code and maintain complex programs. Similarly, hackers need to find bugs and vulnerabilities in both programs, networks, and overall systems.

What is Ethical Hacking Not?

Hacking with good intention but without permission easily makes an Ethical Hacker into a Grey or Black hat. Ethical hacking is not a general way to describe the ability to hack but is a way to describe hackers with rules and legal permission to act on a system.

What are Ethical Hacking Tools?

Ethical Hacking Tools are any tech tool used for the purpose of helping a hacker find vulnerabilities or holes in a software, network, or an overall system. Network scanners, Logic Fuzzers, Password Cracker, Enumerators, and more are just a drop in the types of tools that exist. Furthermore, the commercially and open source tools available for hackers doesn’t even begin to touch on the multitude of custom crafted tools and resources hackers with development/coding skills have created.

What kind of Hackers are there?

Most Known

Three most notable kind of hackers are White Hat, Gray Hat, and Black Hat.

White Hat Hackers

These hackers are the Ethical Hackers being discussed in this article. They are good guy hackers helping to find and improve vulnerabilities in companies and software. White Hat Hackers make money providing services and helping the good guys defend against Black Hat Hackers.

Black Hat Hackers

These hackers are the complete opposite of White Hat Hackers. Black Hat Hackers are the hackers most think about when they hear Hacker. These hackers are generally malicious and criminal hackers. Also known as crackers black hat hackers are criminals who use the hacking skill to steal data, destroy systems, and wreak havoc online.

Gray Hat Hackers

Gray Hat Hackers are somewhere in between White and Black hat hackers. Similarly to their Gray color these hackers are neither good guys or complete bad guys. A Gray Hat Hacker is a hacker with good motive but does questionable things at times.

Other Kinds

Furthermore, there are numerous other kinds of hackers including: Script Kiddie, Red Hat, Blue Hat, Green Hat, Social Engineers, Hacktivists, Cyber Terrorist, State Hackers, Whistle-Blowers, and Hardware Hackers.

Script Kiddies

Script Kiddies are hackers that primarily use other people’s scripts and tools and don’t care to innovate or build their own. Most, if not all the time, script kiddies are malicious and their actions are on the illegal side.

Red Hat

Red Hat Hackers are like anti-hero’s their primary focus is to take down Black Hats using any means possible. They sometimes use Black Hat techniques to take down Black Hats. They want to destroy Black Hat Hackers to keep the world safe.

Blue Hat

Blue Hat Hackers are rookies that are primarily motivated by revenge. They may be completely new or have some experience but their motives rely primarily on hurting a particular person or group.

Green Hat

Green Hat Hackers are the rookies who want to learn. Their intention is observation and growth. If you’re reading this to learn and looking through tutorials and videos about hacking this is where you start. Although every hacker is constantly learning this is where the complete beginner starts.

Social Engineers

Social Engineering Hackers are hackers who hack humans. The weakest part of a security system is it’s weakest link. It is easier to make a user click a malicious link than it is to find a way to get past firewalls and look for exploitable machines, most of the time.

Hacktivists

Hackivists are Hackers who use their hacking skills for a social cause. They break into systems, deface websites, or any hacking related activity with the motivation of an Activist.

Cyber Terrorist

A Cyber Terorrist’s primary motive is generally politically motivated to create violence and panic to advance a political reason.

State or Nation Hackers

State Hackers are hackers who are backed by a government entity. Think Cyber Warfare and Hacking Soldiers. Those employed by Governments to attack other governments or critical companies are State or Nation Hackers.

Whistle-Blowers

A hacker who uses their internal access to expose/leak data about a company or government entity.

Hardware Hackers

A hacker who uses their skills to manipulate hardware for a number of reasons. They have a modified/different from general network or programming since they can require skills involving lower level hardware principles.

How to Become an Ethical Hacker?

Firstly, there are many paths that can be taken on your quest to become an ethical hacker. Below are just some ways someone can become an Ethical Hacker.

  1. Degree in IT/Cyber Security
  2. Degree in Computer Science
  3. Start in IT and work your way up with degrees and opportunities
  4. Participate in Capture the Flag, Hacking Events, and other tournaments to make network contacts and get noticed
  5. Participating in Bug Bounty Programs gets you experience and potentially money

Lastly, no one magically becomes an ethical hacker over night. Nor does anyone become a proficient hacker overnight.

Conclusion

To Conclude, there are many kinds of hackers and hacking itself is just a skill set like any other IT related skill. Although It is not easily learned, hacking provides an interesting challenge and rewards those who are interested in it. It’s a skill we need to help defend against the bad guys. The constantly changing battle field requires this to be a constantly changing skill.