A technique for controlling a compromised system’s browser, widely used in Brazilian banking schemes, will likely become more widespread worldwide in the next few years, say security experts. The technique abuses a legitimate way to control where a browser sends its requests, known as proxy auto-configuration or PAC, to take over a victim’s browser and send traffic–say, requests to a bank–to an attacker-controlled server instead. While the attackers still have to find a way to execute code on a victim’s system, once that is done, they can set a proxy for the browser, capture selected traffic, and re-route it invisibly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“You can essentially have the end users interact with a shadow Internet, essentially an Internet experience that is designed by the bad guys,” says Daniel Ingevaldson, chief technology officer for Easy Solutions, a fraud-prevention company that operates extensively in South America. “We haven’t seen anything that sophisticated yet, but I can see a scenario when this attack can be used to implement a server-side or cloud-based man-in-the-middle attack,” Ingevaldson says.<\/p>\n
In an analysis of one attack, cloud security firm Zscaler detailed a PAC file that would set a victim’s browser to forward traffic for several Brazilian banking sites and American Express’s site to an attacker-controlled server. With a PAC file, the attackers can be a lot more choosy, redirecting requests to a group of sites or to one site in particular, says Anup Ghosh, co-founder and CEO of Invincea, a firm which detect and blocks Web and e-mail threats.<\/p>\n
Preventing PAC files from compromising browsers is not a simple task, as client-side security software will likely find it difficult to detect whether a give PAC file is a valid change or a malicious attack, he adds.<\/p>\n
In addition, companies that use a proxy for security or DNS–and so use a proxy auto-configuration file to configure their employees’ browsers–have a good chance of detecting changes that affect their infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Link: http:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/advanced-threats\/167901091\/security\/attacks-breaches\/240150191\/cybercriminals-predicted-to-expand-use-of-browser-proxies.html.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-warnings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4929,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442\/revisions\/4929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}