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US prescription market hamstrung for 9 days (so far) by ransomware attack

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US prescription market hamstrung for 9 days (so far) by ransomware attack

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Nine days after a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate took down the biggest US health care payment processor, pharmacies, health care providers, and patients were still scrambling to fill prescriptions for medicines, many of which are lifesaving.

On Thursday, UnitedHealth Group accused a notorious ransomware gang known both as AlphV and Black Cat of hacking its subsidiary Optum. Optum provides a nationwide network called Change Healthcare, which allows health care providers to manage customer payments and insurance claims. With no easy way for pharmacies to calculate what costs were covered by insurance companies, many had to turn to alternative services or offline methods.

The most serious incident of its kind

Optum first disclosed on February 21 that its services were down as a result of a “cyber security issue.” Its service has been hamstrung ever since. Shortly before this post went live on Ars, Optum said it had restored Change Healthcare services.

“Working with technology and business partners, we have successfully completed testing with vendors and multiple retail pharmacy partners for the impacted transaction types,” an update said. “As a result, we have enabled this service for all customers effective 1 pm CT, Friday, March 1, 2024.”

AlphV is one of many syndicates that operates under a ransomware-as-a-service model, meaning affiliates do the actual hacking of victims and then use the AlphV ransomware and infrastructure to encrypt files and negotiate a ransom. The parties then share the proceeds.

In December, the FBI and its equivalent in partner countries announced they had seized much of the AlphV infrastructure in a move that was intended to disrupt the group. AlphV promptly asserted it had unseized its site, leading to a tug-of-war between law enforcement and the group. The crippling of Change Healthcare is a clear sign that AlphV continues to pose a threat to critical parts of the US infrastructure.

“The cyberattack against…

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Ransomware associated with LockBit still spreading 2 days after server takedown

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A stylized skull and crossbones made out of ones and zeroes.

Two days after an international team of authorities struck a major blow at LockBit, one of the Internet’s most prolific ransomware syndicates, researchers have detected a new round of attacks that are installing malware associated with the group.

The attacks, detected in the past 24 hours, are exploiting two critical vulnerabilities in ScreenConnect, a remote desktop application sold by Connectwise. According to researchers at two security firms—SophosXOps and Huntress—attackers who successfully exploit the vulnerabilities go on to install LockBit ransomware and other post-exploit malware. It wasn’t immediately clear if the ransomware was the official LockBit version.

“We can’t publicly name the customers at this time but can confirm the malware being deployed is associated with LockBit, which is particularly interesting against the backdrop of the recent LockBit takedown,” John Hammond, principal security researcher at Huntress, wrote in an email. “While we can’t attribute this directly to the larger LockBit group, it is clear that LockBit has a large reach that spans tooling, various affiliate groups, and offshoots that have not been completely erased even with the major takedown by law enforcement.”

Hammond said the ransomware is being deployed to “vet offices, health clinics, and local governments (including attacks against systems related to 911 systems).”

Muddying the attribution waters

SophosXOps and Huntress didn’t say if the ransomware being installed is the official LockBit version or a version leaked by a disgruntled LockBit insider in 2022. The leaked builder has circulated widely since then and has touched off a string of copycat attacks that aren’t part of the official operation.

“When builds are leaked, it can also muddy the waters with regards to attribution,” researchers from security firm Trend Micro said Thursday. “For example, in August 2023, we observed a group that called itself the Flamingo group using a leaked LockBit payload bundled with the Rhadamanthys stealer. In November 2023, we found another group, going by the moniker Spacecolon,…

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Days After Google, Apple Reveals Exploited Zero-Day in Browser Engine

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Apple has patched an actively exploited zero-day bug in its WebKit browser engine for Safari.

The bug, assigned as CVE-2024-23222, stems from a type confusion error, which basically is what happens when an application incorrectly assumes the input it receives is of a certain type without actually validating — or incorrectly validating — that to be the case.

Actively Exploited

Apple yesterday described the vulnerability as something an attacker could exploit to execute arbitrary code on affected systems. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited,” the company’s advisory noted, without offering any further details.

The company has released updated versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, iPadOS, and tvOS with additional validation checks to address the vulnerability.

CVE-2024-23222 is the first zero-day vulnerability that Apple has disclosed in WebKit in 2024. Last year, the company disclosed a total of 11 zero-day bugs in the technology — its most ever in a single calendar year. Since 2021, Apple has disclosed a total of 22 WebKit zero-day bugs, highlighting the growing interest in the browser from both researchers and attackers.

In parallel, Apple’s disclosure of the new WebKit zero-day follows on Google’s disclosure last week of a zero-day in Chrome. It marks at least the third time in recent months where both vendors have disclosed zero-days in their respective browsers in close proximity to each other. The trend suggests that researchers and attackers are probing almost equally for flaws in both technologies, likely because Chrome and Safari are also the most widely used browsers.

The Spying Threat

Apple has not disclosed the nature of the exploit activity targeting the newly disclosed zero-day bug. But researchers have reported seeing commercial spyware vendors abusing some of the company’s more recent ones, to drop surveillance software on iPhones of target subjects.

In September 2023, Toronto University’s Citizen Lab warned Apple about two no-click zero-day vulnerabilities in iOS that a vendor of surveillance software had exploited to drop the Predator spyware tool on an iPhone belonging to an employee at a Washington, D.C.-based organization. The same month,…

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Xfinity waited 13 days to patch critical Citrix Bleed 0-day. Now it’s paying the price

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A parked Comcast service van with the
Enlarge / A Comcast Xfinity service van in San Ramon, California on February 25, 2020.

Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado

Comcast waited 13 days to patch its network against a high-severity vulnerability, a lapse that allowed hackers to make off with password data and other sensitive information belonging to 36 million Xfinity customers.

The breach, which was carried out by exploiting a vulnerability in network hardware sold by Citrix, gave hackers access to usernames and cryptographically hashed passwords for 35.9 million Xfinity customers, the cable TV and Internet provider said in a notification filed Monday with the Maine attorney general’s office. Citrix disclosed the vulnerability and issued a patch on October 10. Eight days later, researchers reported that the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-4966 and by the name Citrix Bleed, had been under active exploitation since August. Comcast didn’t patch its network until October 23, 13 days after a patch became available and five days after the report of the in-the-wild attacks exploiting it.

“However, we subsequently discovered that prior to mitigation, between October 16 and October 19, 2023, there was unauthorized access to some of our internal systems that we concluded was a result of this vulnerability,” an accompanying notice stated. “We notified federal law enforcement and conducted an investigation into the nature and scope of the incident. On November 16, 2023, it was determined that information was likely acquired.”

Comcast is still investigating precisely what data the attackers obtained. So far, Monday’s disclosure said, information known to have been taken includes usernames and hashed passwords, names, contact information, the last four digits of social security numbers, dates of birth, and/or secret questions and answers. Xfinity is Comcast’s cable television and Internet division.

Citrix Bleed has emerged as one of the year’s most severe and widely exploited vulnerabilities, with a…

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