Attackers hijack country-code domains to impersonate Google and other services


According to Google, attackers compromised infrastructure behind three country-code domain namespaces—.gh (Ghana), .sl (Sierra Leone), and .as (American Samoa)—and used it to obtain unauthorized HTTPS certificates for Google domains and other organizations. These domain endings aren’t limited to sites serving those countries, so the risk can extend to users elsewhere.

This wasn’t a break in encryption, and Google’s systems weren’t compromised. Instead, attackers manipulated the internet’s addressing infrastructure so they could pass the checks required to obtain certificates for domains they didn’t legitimately control.

The Domain Name System (DNS) helps direct internet traffic to the right destination. Control over DNS can also provide a way to demonstrate apparent control of a domain when requesting an HTTPS certificate.

Read more…
Source:  MalwareBytes Labs


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • CVE-2023-47218: QNAP QTS and QuTS Hero Unauthenticated Command Injection (FIXED)

    February 13, 2024

    Rapid7 has identified an unauthenticated command injection vulnerability in the QNAP operating system known as QTS and QuTS hero. QTS is a core part of the firmware for numerous QNAP entry- and mid-level Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, and QuTS hero is a core part of the firmware for numerous QNAP high-end and enterprise NAS devices. ...

  • Community Alert: Ongoing Malicious Campaign Impacting Azure Cloud Environments

    February 12, 2024

    Over the past weeks, Proofpoint researchers have been monitoring an ongoing cloud account takeover campaign impacting dozens of Microsoft Azure environments and compromising hundreds of user accounts, including senior executives. This post serves as a community warning regarding the attack and offers suggestions that affected organizations can implement to protect themselves from it. Proofpoint researchers detected ...

  • UK: Contact details and national security numbers could have been stolen from Southern Water customers following cyber attack

    February 12, 2024

    The announcement, which went live on Southern Water’s website earlier today (February 12), confirms that ‘a limited part’ of the company’s server estate is at risk following an illegal intrusion earlier this year. Apologising for the breach, a spokesperson confirmed that the company is working with “expert technical advisers to confirm who is at risk,” and ...

  • US Government Accounting Office says it was notified of data breach by IT contractor CGI Federal

    February 12, 2024

    The U.S. Government Accounting Office says it was notified of a data breach by IT contractor GCI Federal. Reuters could not immediately ascertain the size and scope of the breach. The GAO said that about 6,000 people, “primarily current and former GAO employees from 2007 to 2017,” had been affected but did not immediately respond when ...

  • Hackers uncover new TheTruthSpy stalkerware victims

    February 12, 2024

    A consumer-grade spyware operation called TheTruthSpy poses an ongoing security and privacy risk to thousands of people whose Android devices are unknowingly compromised with its mobile surveillance apps, not least due to a simple security flaw that its operators never fixed. Now, two hacking groups have independently found the flaw that allows the mass access of ...

  • Kenya: Cyber attacks on computer systems, mobile apps surge

    February 10, 2024

    Cyber attacks on computer systems and mobile applications recorded the highest increase in the three months to December last year, the latest data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows. According to the CA’s Cyber Security report for the period, system attack threats that were detected increased 10-fold compared to the preceding three-month period that ...