Cryptomining Software Discovered on Tennessee Hospital’s EMR Server

Por David Bisson em 08/02/2018 no site The Sate of Security

A Tennessee hospital discovered cryptomining software installed on a server that hosts its electronic medical records (EMR) system.

In January 2018, Decatur County General Hospital began notifying patients of a incident involving its electronic medical record systems. Its breach notification letter (PDF) reveals the hospital first learned about the security event from its EMR vendor:

On November 27, 2017, we received a security incident report from our EMR system vendor indicating that unauthorized software had been installed on the server the vendor supports on our behalf. The unauthorized software was installed to generate digital currency, more commonly known as “cryptocurrency.”

Decatur County General Hospital. (Source: Nashville Public Radio)

Decatur County General Hospital subsequently launched its own investigation into the incident. So far, it’s determined that a remote actor likely accessed the server on which its EMR system stores patients information including their names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security Numbers, insurance details, and medical treatment records. It’s also found that the cryptomining software had been active since at least 22 September 2017.

The hospital’s EMR vendor replaced the server and operating system four days after discovery.

At this time, Decatur County General Hospital cannot confirm whether the individual responsible for the breach accessed patients’ information stored on the server. It tells patients as much:

Again, while our investigation continues into this matter, we have no evidence that your information was actually acquired or viewed by an unauthorized individual, and based upon reports of similar incidents, we do not believe that your health information was targeted by any unauthorized individual installing the software on the server. Our investigation to date, however, has been unable to reasonably verify that there was not unauthorized access of your information.

Cryptomining emerged as a salient threat in 2017. Tools responsible for generating new units of cryptocurrency preyed upon 1.65 million users over the first eight months of the year. Since then, researchers have discovered a single Monero mining campaign that victimized 15 million users in the fall of 2017. Such findings have led some security experts to wonder whether cryptomining will supplant ransomware as the most widespread form of digital crime in 2018.

Given that possibility, it’s important that hospitals and other healthcare organizations maintain the security and integrity of their EMR systems. They can find guidance for that objective here.

To learn more about how Tripwire can protect your healthcare organization against digital threats, click here

Nearly 2000 WordPress Websites Infected with a Keylogger

Swati Khandelwal em 29/01/2018

More than 2,000 WordPress websites have once again been found infected with a piece of crypto-mining malware that not only steals the resources of visitors' computers to mine digital currencies but also logs visitors' every keystroke.

Security researchers at Sucuri discovered a malicious campaign that infects WordPress websites with a malicious script that delivers an in-browser cryptocurrency miner from CoinHive and a keylogger.

Coinhive is a popular browser-based service that offers website owners to embed a JavaScript to utilise CPUs power of their website visitors in an effort to mine the Monero cryptocurrency.

Sucuri researchers said the threat actors behind this new campaign is the same one who infected more than 5,400 Wordpress websites last month since both campaigns used keylogger/cryptocurrency malware called cloudflare[.]solutions.

Spotted in April last year, Cloudflare[.]solutions is cryptocurrency mining malware and is not at all related to network management and cybersecurity firm Cloudflare. Since the malware used the cloudflare[.]solutions domain to initially spread the malware, it has been given this name.

The malware was updated in November to include a keylogger. The keylogger behaves the same way as in previous campaigns and can steal both the site's administrator login page and the website's public facing frontend.

If the infected WordPress site is an e-commerce platform, hackers can steal much more valuable data, including payment card data. If hackers manage to steal the admin credentials, they can just log into the site without relying upon a flaw to break into the site.

The cloudflare[.]solutions domain was taken down last month, but criminals behind the campaign registered new domains to host their malicious scripts that are eventually loaded onto WordPress sites.

The new web domains registered by hackers include cdjs[.]online (registered on December 8th), cdns[.]ws (on December 9th), and msdns[.]online (on December 16th).

Just like in the previous cloudflare[.]solutions campaign, the cdjs[.]online script is injected into either a WordPress database or the theme's functions.php file. The cdns[.]ws and msdns[.]online scripts are also found injected into the theme's functions.php file.

The number of infected sites for cdns[.]ws domain include some 129 websites, and 103 websites for cdjs[.]online, according to source-code search engine PublicWWW, though over a thousand sites were reported to have been infected by the msdns[.]online domain.

Researchers said it's likely that the majority of the websites have not been indexed yet.

"While these new attacks do not yet appear to be as massive as the original Cloudflare[.]solutions campaign, the reinfection rate shows that there are still many sites that have failed to properly protect themselves after the original infection. It’s possible that some of these websites didn't even notice the original infection," Sucuri researchers concluded.

If your website has already been compromised with this infection, you will require to remove the malicious code from theme's functions.php and scan wp_posts table for any possible injection.

Users are advised to change all WordPress passwords and update all server software including third-party themes and plugins just to be on the safer side.