Tracking a Hacker with OSINT

My blog has been hacked! Someone defaced the page and looking into the technical details didn’t provide any leads to the culprit. Maybe OSINT can help in this case.

Today’s article will look into cyber attribution and how OSINT can help identify the perpetrator of a cyberattack or other hacking exploits. Keep in mind, as long as the perpetrator does not make any mistakes it will be hard to track him down. Even if the actual person behind an attack cannot be found, hints on the hacker’s background may help narrow things down to a specific target group or origin. Let us have a closer look at the defacement shown above.

As stated, looking into technical details (IP-address, code, etc.) did not reveal anything useful. So we have to take a closer look at the tag and handle that was placed on our site. A reverse image search was conducted and did not show any results. The hacker goes by the name “drag0nw1ng١٩٨١”, this exact search-term also came up inconclusive. The Arabic numbers in the handle may be an indicator for the hacker’s cultural background. Next up, we will search for the handle in different variations, including a “standardized” one:

Not many results to look at here, so we can easily go through each and every page. Next to a Russian PlayStation profile named Dragonwing1981, we stumble upon some interesting results that might be related to our case.

Several data-breaches and leaks show an email address using the exact name. Dragonwing1981@yahoo.com was registered to a member of an internet forum called Kataib Hezbollah. This forum in Arabic language no longer exists and was used to disseminate terrorist propaganda. Since our hacker used Arabic numbers in his handle and the handle seems quite unique (based on the low amount of Google results), the email address might be linked to our guy.

The oldest mentioning of “dragonwing1981” came from another internet forum. In August 2004, the forum was hacked by someone with the email address we found before:

Research done by the forum members linked the perpetrator to Iraq:

Looks like things are coming together. There is one more approach we can try, in order to back our claims further. When using the password reset function in Yahoo, it gives you parts of the phone number (without the country code). Let us see what happens, when we try to reset Dragonwing’s password:

07 is the operator code used by Iraqi mobile networks and the length of the number also fits Iraqi mobile phone numbers. Luckily, Yahoo (unlike Google) displays the exact amount of digits of a phone number.

Let us review the evidence we have collected so far:

Use of Arabic numbers in the handle
Unique handle, not found often on the internet
Username and a related email address found in an Arabic internet forum
Email address used in a hack in 2004, identified as possibly originating from Iraq
Phone number linked to the email address possibly an Iraqi mobile phone number

Can we be sure that all these pieces of evidence are really linked to each other? Not really, but that is why we use words of estimative probability in intelligence analysis. Cyber attribution is not always about tradecraft, infrastructure or the malware/attack itself. Digging into individual actors may help shed light upon the origins of cyber-attacks and the OSINT process shown above should always be incorporated into any research effort as soon as “personal data” (e.g. tags, names, handles) is involved.

Of course, we could just send Dragonwing1981 an email and congratulate him on his defacement. However, unlike other stories on my blog, this one is completely made up and is based on a CTF-task I created for the OSINT courses I instruct. As far as I am concerned, Dragonwing1981 is innocent…

MW-OSINT / 02.05.2019

The Nigerian Prince from South Africa

Great, another Nigerian prince in your inbox. Instead of deleting it, why not answer for a change. I did and it turned out to be quite interesting.

Last week, I received my first Nigerian prince scam mail (also known as 419-scam) in German. I assume someone put a lot of work into this, so I thought I would answer. Although the message was apparently sent from jefaturaestudiositurbi@valencia.es, I was to reply to wong.shiu@accountant.com. This email supposedly belonged to Mr. Wong, the banker who was handling the case.

Let us have a look at the message header first, before answering.

Even if I would have answered to jefaturaestudiositurbi@valencia.es, the email would have been sent to wong.shiu@accountant.com. I assume the email was not actually sent from the @valencia.es domain in the first place and that this was just used to bypass my spam filter. Next up, I wanted to see if I could find any leads to where the email was sent from.

The initial ‘Received’ entry in the message header points to a South African IP-address belonging to a mobile provider. It also appears to have been sent through a Huawei 3G/4G WiFi router.

Next up, I set up a new Gmail account to communicate with this Nigerian (South African) prince. Sure enough, I received an answer within minutes. The reply contained additional information regarding the deal and was clearly a very bad Google translation of an English text. Again, this message was sent from the same IP-address. We emailed back and forth several times until I was asked to provide some ID, an address and a phone number. So I did.

Apparently, Mr. Wong thought this was funny as well. For the first time I actually received a response that was not just copied and pasted from a pretext.

3-1

“You dey gather my fmt” – This actually translates to: So, you are one of those guys that collect my pretext. At this point, Mr. Wong also started using a different email to communicate with me: wong.shiu@mail.com. Again, I checked each message header. While several different IPs were used, they all belonged to South African mobile providers.

The conversation went on for quite a while and I was surprised that Mr. Wong kept answering.

The following day I received another scam mail that looked just like to first one. The only difference was that the name of the banker had changed (and thus the reply email) and the promised sum of money was a lot higher than in the first email. It sure looked like this was also the work of my friend Mr. Wong, so I decided to answer to this new email as well.

Unfortunately, Mr. Wong did not answer any more. Looking into all the emails again, I could clearly see a pattern. Each IP-address could be traced to South African mobile providers and all emails were sent through Huawei 3G/4G WiFi routers. The language used also hinted towards Africa in general. Furthermore, over the course of two days I noticed that Mr. Wong began answering around 09:30 (CET), leading to the conclusion that he must have been in the same time zone (or nearby) if this was his 9 to 5 job.

If you ever try this yourself, please make sure to use a clean email address and do not download or open attachments. If you keep this in mind, you might have some fun with a Nigerian prince yourself. As for Mr. Wong:

Mr. Wong,

If you ever read this, feel free to contact me again. I can’t promise I’ll pay the advance fee you requested, but I’m always there for you if you need someone to chat.

Yours sincerely,

MW-OSINT / 19.03.2019

Hijacking WhatsApp without Hacking

You don’t have to be a hacker to hijack a WhatsApp account. Simple mistakes made by your target can easily give you access to WhatsApp and other messaging apps on their phones.

When I participate in meetings, I notice that some people place their phones face-up on the table. As a curious person, I always tend to glance over at their phones whenever they light up, for instance if they receive messages. Many people actually have messages displayed on the lock screens. That means they do not have to pick up their phones and unlock them to read incoming messages. Unfortunately, this also poses a serious security threat. Not only can curious people like me read these, displaying the full content of messages on your lock screen can lead to your instant messaging accounts being hijacked. No sophisticated hacking skills are required to do so!

Imagine the following scenario:

A company CEO mainly uses WhatsApp to communicate with business partners. An attacker first obtains the phone number that is linked to his WhatsApp account. People search engines, such as Pipl, are helpful to identify a target’s mobile phone number. Using an Android VM, the attacker can then setup a fully functional Android phone on his computer, including the installation of WhatsApp. WhatsApp on the VM is then registered with a burner phone. The CEO’s phone number is added to the contacts and WhatsApp will provide a profile picture, username and status. This information is saved, as the attacker will need it later when hijacking the actual account.

As an alternative, we could also use a real burner phone or a little gimmick called WhatsAllApp to obtain the aforementioned information. WhatsAllApp is a Chrome extension, that enables you to gather WhatsApp profile pictures, statuses and usernames based on any given phone number, even without adding these to your contacts.

The next step must happen quickly and this is where it starts to get criminal. Our attacker steals the CEO’s phone and instantly registers a WhatsApp account on the Android VM (or burner phone), using the CEO’s phone number. Of course, this will only work if the CEO’s phone displays incoming messages on the lock screen. The SMS verification code is then used to register WhatsApp on the burner phone or in the VM. From now on, all incoming WhatsApp messages will show up on the attacker’s WhatsApp. This works with other messaging apps as well. Of course, the attacker cannot see the chat history, but he will be able to interact with the contacts from that point on and possibly gain vital intelligence.

Using this technique could give an attacker a 1-2 day timeframe to hijack WhatsApp and other messaging apps. As soon as the CEO notices his phone is stolen, he will obviously have his phone and SIM card locked. However, how many people would actually think about giving all their contacts a heads-up that they currently are not available? Quite a challenge without a phone.

So much for the theory behind such an attack. I have noticed that my colleague’s phone displays messages on the lock screen and his wife texts him quite often. I decided to hijack his phone this morning.

While he was in a meeting across the hall, he left his phone on the desk. I used his phone number to set up a WhatsApp account on my Android VM. The SMS verification was immediately visible on his lock screen, I didn’t even have to touch his phone.

After entering this code, his account was mine! Of course, I used his profile picture, username and status in the hijacked account. Shortly afterwards I received the first incoming message. It was sent by his wife, asking about their lunch plans for the day (she works nearby). I texted back and suggested pizza, upon which his wife named a meeting place and time.

When my colleague returned from his meeting, I was happy to inform him that he would be meeting his wife at 1230 in front of the mall and that they would have pizza.

There are several lessons to be learned here:

DO NOT leave your phone unattended (especially around me)!
DO NOT publically disclose your WhatsApp profile information (profile pic, username, status)!
DO NOT enable your phone to display messages on the lock screen!
If your phone is stolen, try to inform your contacts!

And as of now I will live in fear, because I am sure my colleague will retaliate this prank soon.

MW-OSINT / 27.02.2019

The World’s Best Sock Puppet…Not!

There are lots of great guides on how to create sock puppets. Rather than showing you a good example on how to do so, this post shows a horrible example that has been used in a recent phishing attempt.

I received a request to connect on LinkedIn from what clearly is coming from a badly created sock puppet. This request is actually a cheap phishing attempt, aimed at getting a hold of my phone number. Basically, the perpetrator made every mistake in the book when creating the profile. Let me walk you through the red flags I encountered. Or: How not to create a sock puppet!

Red Flag 1:

Bad English. Have a look at the message I received.

When looking at the vita, it is clear that Liya Lei should have better English skills!

Red Flag 2:

No contacts (blue box). As you can see, the profile has no listed number of contacts. This is an indicator that it was just recently created or that it is not well-tended.

Red Flag 3:

UKTI does not exist anymore (red box). UKTI stands for UK Trade & Investment, a UK government department working with businesses based in the UK. In July 2016, UKTI was replaced by the Department for International Trade. Again, either this is just a bad sock puppet or an account that is not well-tended. In both cases, it does not seem trustworthy enough to hand over my phone number to.

There are some additional steps that can be conducted to verify accounts. The first step is, of course, running the name through Google. In our case, it did not produce any results directly linked to the person shown in the picture. Furthermore, a reverse image search should be performed as well. Forget Google, use Yandex for this. Unfortunately, neither Yandex nor Google were able to find the picture.

Another method to verify LinkedIn accounts, is searching for the person’s email. Assuming the account is real, we should be able to identify a company email address. A quick Google query reveals that the domain ukti-invest.com was among those used by said organization. Next up, run the domain through hunter.io to gain information on the pattern used for their email addresses.

Ukti-invest.com uses “firstname.lastname”, so we can now check if an email address belonging to Liya Lei exists. I checked the email address on verifyemailaddress.org and it clearly shows that while the domain exists, the email address we provided does not.

I also tried a couple variations, including different domains, such as gov.uk, as well as other naming patterns just to be sure.

Following these steps, I have pretty much proven that Liya Lei’s account is a total hoax. A very bad sock puppet set up to phish my phone number. A final note to whomever tried to fool me:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Next time try harder! There are plenty of guides out there on how to build a credible sock puppet. Your cheap attempt is actually quite insulting and did not even push my OSINT skills to a limit.

Yours sincerely

MW-OSINT / 21.01.2018