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Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

classicshell.net

21–30 of 110 posts

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they have a dump of the Fosshub user database. Audacity was also affected: http://www.audacityteam.org/hacked-download/

Damn. You have no idea how close I was to reinstalling Audacity last night.

Downloaded it a couple days ago in my case! Close call, though I do backup my important files offsite.

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From their Twitter page Fun fact: We actually had an EFI payload. We just had issues with the installer and it was left unadded.

Damn. With the state of most consumer mainboards, an EFI "payload" could leave the system "bricked". I know I've got one el-cheapo laptop that can't boot because I made a mess of the EFI environment and there's no way to reset it.

[deleted]

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#24
post #10

Twitter account of the hackers: https://twitter.com/CultOfRazer

I'm not sure it's appropriate to give that kind of people unwarranted publicity.

Links on HN are rel="nofollow" so they're not going to get any google juice.

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#25
This is another reminder of how the security model of desktop OSes is pretty terrible. Every time you install software on Windows, you trust it with everything on your computer by giving it administrative rights.

OS X doesn't have this problem usually, as most apps don't require admin rights to install, you just copy them to /Applications, but it still has some apps that use installers.

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#26

This is another reminder of how the security model of desktop OSes is pretty terrible. Every time you install software on Windows, you trust it with everything on your computer by giving it administrative rights. OS X doesn't have this problem usually, as most apps don't require admin rights to install, you just copy them to /Applications, but it still has some apps that use installers.

There still is not (AFAIK) much partitioning between apps on most desktop OSes. So even if a malicious app doesn't have admin rights, it still can run under your UID, which is almost as bad as it then has access to nearly everything you care about.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1200/

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#27
post #6

Apparently the hacked one wasn't signed. Users would have clicked through a (very prominent) warning to install it.

I watched the video in this thread. I would not consider that a prominent warning at all. UAC uses a near identical prompt and I need to click through it daily (average of 2-3 times an hour while doing development). It is not something I would have noticed.

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#28

This is another reminder of how the security model of desktop OSes is pretty terrible. Every time you install software on Windows, you trust it with everything on your computer by giving it administrative rights. OS X doesn't have this problem usually, as most apps don't require admin rights to install, you just copy them to /Applications, but it still has some apps that use installers.

There still is not (AFAIK) much partitioning between apps on most desktop OSes. So even if a malicious app doesn't have admin rights, it still can run under your UID, which is almost as bad as it then has access to nearly everything you care about. Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1200/

Yeah, user account access is bad enough on its own.

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#29
post #27
post #6

Apparently the hacked one wasn't signed. Users would have clicked through a (very prominent) warning to install it.

I watched the video in this thread. I would not consider that a prominent warning at all. UAC uses a near identical prompt and I need to click through it daily (average of 2-3 times an hour while doing development). It is not something I would have noticed.

Seriously, I've clicked through that on purpose many times with a lot of open-source projects, in development stuff, hell, I've gotten unsigned programs from companies!

Re: Classic Shell hacked with compromised update that erases your partition table

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There still is not (AFAIK) much partitioning between apps on most desktop OSes. So even if a malicious app doesn't have admin rights, it still can run under your UID, which is almost as bad as it then has access to nearly everything you care about. Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1200/

Yeah, user account access is bad enough on its own.

Pretty much true. As these attackers stated on their own twitter "You ran it as admin, just be glad we didn't steal everything". All it takes is user access to dump all your stored passwords and run, which is what most attackers would do (there are even public tools they can deploy like iStealer that basically do this for them), from there they sell your accounts. From what I gather on their twitter these guys are pretty much doing it for the lulz.
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