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Using Newly Surfaced Data Breaches for OSINT Research
/in General NewsData breaches are an unfortunate reality for many websites, leading to leaked information often posted on dark web forums or discovered by security researchers. Before this data disappears or is removed, Data Breach Search Engines (DBSEs) gather, verify, and categorize it, making it accessible to people seeking to understand what information may have been compromised. DBSEs like Have I Been Pwned allow OSINT (open-source intelligence) investigators to enter an email address and see if it was used on a breached site, often revealing critical information about the target’s online footprint. These DBSEs serve as an important privacy service, allowing users to know if their information has been exposed and, in some cases, request its removal from these databases.
What are Data Breach Search Engines?
DBSEs provide a way to find out where an email address, phone number, username, or other identifier has been used, giving researchers a clearer sense of a person’s digital presence. If a DBSE search shows that an email was compromised in a LinkedIn breach, for example, an investigator knows the person likely had a LinkedIn account. This information is invaluable for OSINT researchers, as it offers hints about a target’s professional network, social media presence, and even connections to colleagues or alternate emails. Some of the most popular DBSEs include Have I Been Pwned (searchable by email or phone), IntelX.io (email), and dehashed.com (email, username, domain, password, IP). There are also more specific breach-focused tools, such as haveibeenzucked.com for Facebook data and checkashleymadison.com for the Ashley Madison breach. These tools maintain deep web databases, and the information within them can often be accessed only through the website itself. For OSINT investigators, understanding DBSE resources is critical, as each can reveal unique details about where an email address, phone number, or other identifier was registered and whether it has been compromised.
Data Breaches Now Available on Data Breach Information Sites
This month, four major data breaches have appeared on platforms like Have I Been Pwned, each offering unique insights into different user communities. Although some breaches occurred years ago, the data is newly available on DBSEs, presenting OSINT researchers with new avenues to explore.
1. Internet Archive (October 2024)
In October 2024, the Internet Archive, famous for its digital preservation efforts and the Wayback Machine, experienced a breach affecting 31 million user accounts. Data exposed includes email addresses, screen names, and bcrypt-hashed passwords. The Internet Archive responded to the breach quickly and transparently, immediately implementing security measures, disabling compromised libraries, and restoring service in read-only mode while the organization strengthened its defenses. This breach is notable for OSINT researchers interested in online archives and historical data access, as it suggests users engaged in digital research or preservation activities.
2. VimeWorld (October 2018)
VimeWorld, a Russian Minecraft service, experienced a data breach in 2018 that exposed data on 3.1 million users. The compromised information includes usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and hashed passwords (MD5 or bcrypt). This breach’s recent availability in DBSEs presents new opportunities for researchers interested in gaming communities, particularly among Russian-speaking audiences.
3. StreamCraft (July 2020)
The StreamCraft breach in July 2020 affected 1.8 million records, exposing usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and hashed passwords (MD5 or bcrypt). StreamCraft data, newly accessible for OSINT purposes, provides a look into the online behavior of gaming communities, especially among users who favor multiplayer gaming.
4. AlpineReplay (2019)
The 2019 breach of AlpineReplay, a fitness-tracking app later integrated into Trace, exposed 900,000 records, including email addresses, usernames, dates of birth, gender, weight, and passwords hashed with MD5 or bcrypt. Recently appearing in DBSEs, this data gives insights into the interests of fitness enthusiasts, particularly those who use digital tools to track performance in sports like skiing and snowboarding.
Why These Data Breaches Matter to Researchers
When an OSINT researcher finds an email address in one of these breaches, it can reveal valuable information about the target’s digital activities. Each platform represents a specific online community or interest, giving clues about an individual’s preferences, affiliations, or lifestyle.
• Internet Archive: If someone’s data is in the Internet Archive breach, it might indicate an interest in digital preservation, academic research, or access to open-source content. This can suggest a background in academia or a strong interest in historical records.
• VimeWorld and StreamCraft: The presence of someone’s account in these gaming-related breaches points to involvement in online gaming, possibly within Russian-speaking or international communities. This can help an investigator understand the target’s recreational interests and engagement in gaming culture.
• AlpineReplay: An account in the AlpineReplay breach implies an interest in fitness, specifically in winter sports like skiing and snowboarding. The individual is likely health-conscious and inclined toward tracking their performance, providing insights into their lifestyle and personal values.
Simply knowing that a target’s email address is associated with one of these platforms can reveal a lot about them. However, OSINT researchers should approach this data cautiously. While these accounts provide contextual information, they don’t give a complete picture of a person’s behavior or habits, so researchers should use this information as a starting point rather than a conclusive profile.
Detailed Look at the Internet Archive Data Breach
The October 2024 Internet Archive breach involved the exposure of data from around 31 million user accounts. This breach, linked to a compromised GitLab token, allowed attackers to access development servers, revealing email addresses, screen names, and bcrypt-hashed passwords. The first breach occurred on October 9, with attackers exploiting a GitLab configuration file on the Internet Archive’s servers that contained an exposed authentication token. This gave them access to the source code, credentials, and, ultimately, the database management system, where they downloaded user data and modified site elements. Reports suggest this token had been accessible since December 2022, giving attackers a prolonged opportunity to exploit it. On October 20, a second breach occurred, this time exploiting unrotated Zendesk API tokens to access user support tickets. During this period, hackers defaced the Internet Archive’s website using JavaScript alerts and launched DDoS attacks attributed to the hacker group SN_BlackMeta. In response, the Internet Archive implemented security measures, scrubbed compromised systems, and temporarily operated in a read-only mode before restoring full access. This quick and transparent response from the Internet Archive emphasized the organization’s commitment to user security.
An additional OSINT trick is available for researchers using the Internet Archive. By using the search function on the top right corner of the Internet Archive’s website, investigators can enter an email address associated with a target’s account to see if an account exists. Although the email address itself isn’t publicly identified in the profile, the search function will still locate the account, providing access to profile information and showing data and websites archived by the user. This technique can be particularly useful for tracing interests, historical engagements, and online behavior through the Internet Archive.
Founder Brewster Kahle reported that the organization is reinforcing its defenses and emphasized the Internet Archive’s commitment to secure its platform. For OSINT researchers, this breach provides a unique opportunity to explore user demographics and interests in digital archives, though it demands careful handling to avoid further privacy violations.
Citations
1. Internet Archive (Archive.org) Hacked for Second Time in a Month
URL: https://hackread.com/internet-archive-archive-org-hacked-for-second-time/
2. Internet Archive hacked, data breach impacts 31 million users
URL: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/internet-archive-hacked-data-breach-impacts-31-million-users/
3. Hackers Claim ‘Catastrophic’ Internet Archive Attack – Newsweek
URL: https://www.newsweek.com/catastrophic-internet-archive-hack-hits-31-million-people-1966866
4. Internet Archive Breach Exposes 31 Million Users – WIRED
URL: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-hacked/
5. The Internet Archive is finally mostly back online after a series of cyberattacks
URL: https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-internet-archive-is-finally-mostly-back-online-after-a-series-of-cyberattacks/
6. Internet Archive hacker claims to still have access, responds to Zendesk support tickets
URL: https://therecord.media/internet-archive-alleged-zendesk-account-breach
7. Hackers exploited GitLab tokens for Internet Archive breach
URL: https://www.breechingcomputer.com/news/security/internet-archive-breached-again-through-stolen-access-tokens
8. Hackers steal information from 31 million Internet Archive users
URL: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/20/nx-s1-5159000/internet-archive-hack-leak-wayback-machine
Secjuice – Read More
HTB MonitorsTwo Walkthrough
/in General NewsNot a bad BOX, the foothold towards the user flag is interesting, but privileges escalation to root is a little less convincing. Let’s begin.
The nmap scan.
As usual, we start from a portal; I don’t see any indications of particular domain names, so we proceed in the more traditional way, browsing the portal by IP address.
Wow, really nice! :D
And some more information via the wappalyzer.
From the news box, the Cacti 1.2.24 was released on Feb 27, 2023!
Anyway, searching for some exploit about it…
The script doesn’t seem to work, failing. I tried to reproduce the injection manually, but I get an “unauthorized” message, even though the returned http code is 200.
Let’s go ahead. Another link seems to suggest that there is a module on the metasploit framework.
Nothing, but we have a lot of exploits to try. Next one!
Let’s try if the target is vulnerable!
And it seems yes.
Really good, let’s understand who am I!
What I expected!
We can then to the reverse shell… listener listening (that’s horrible)…
…and attack!
After a lot of reverse shells, I found the right one:
That I have to pass in base64!
You can generate your reverse shell in a simple way using this site:
And the shell is served!
It seems I don’t have permission to read the /home folder; let’s look for any clues left in the surroundings before running a session with linpeas. Let’s check the list of the users in the meantime.
What? There doesn’t seem to be any user who can log in! there is something strange about this BOX!
I found a SQL script that creates the database for the portal and looking inside…
Undecided between a simple hexadecimal algorithm or an MD5, it was enough for me to search for the string online to discover the very mysterious password of the admin user.
However, the password must have been changed, as I cannot access the portal. Another interesting file was the config.php in the include folder.
Try to connect to the MySQL server. Unfortunately, I can’t spawn a tty shell and the mysql command line seems to not answer in the best way, so I have to execute commands manually using the mysql command line execution argument.
Let’s list the tables.
And the contents of some interesting tables.
Well, the admin user changed his password and a new user appeared in the list… we have a couple of interesting passwords to try and crack.
Save the password into a file.
Let’s that hashcat tries to identify the algorithm of the hashing method.
Mmmm, not so lucky today. Let’s try with my friend john!
Definitely better.
Even though he’s a portal user, he seems to have trouble logging in, but it’s much better if you use him to log in over ssh!
Thus obtaining the user flag! At first glance, it seems like I can’t do much with this user, so let’s download linpeas and make it available from our native php web server.
Let’s get ready to receive the scan from the BOX.
And we initiate the attack on the remote machine without leaving any traces.
Let’s look at the most interesting points of scan linpeas.
This time I don’t seem to have found much of interest in the linpeas session, apart from an open port locally; we will investigate this shortly. Let’s try to take a look at the suggested CVEs, even if by now, most of the time they are false positives.
If I really can’t find anything else, I’ll come back to it.
It doesn’t seem to come back to me much. I can’t find any info on which process is using port 35077 with the conventional methods (netstal, lsof, ecc…). After double-checking the CVEs suggested by linpeas, but without getting any success, I started reading posts in the official HTB forum. Many users talk about SUID and docker (things I’ve already checked among other things but maybe not good enough at this point). So I focus on these two clues.
Files available with SUID permissions don’t help me and I can’t even launch docker commands due to lack of permissions. Searching for some exploits I find a lot of docker stuff.
The docker version available on the machine could help me identify a specific exploit.
I download the results for an easier search (fortunately it’s only two pages). I import the data into an excel file and perform a quick search based on the docker version in the BOX. Three results come out.
The CVE-2021-41092 (execution vulnerability), CVE-2021-21285 (unknown) and CVE-2021-21284 (Traversal path vulnerability).
The CVE-2021-41092 inspires me, it allows the execution of commands following a login to a personal docker registry, I look for some exploits, but I can’t find anything useful and even by approaching some personal experiments, I get nothing.
CVE-2021-21285 doesn’t really work for me, causing the docker daemon to crash when pulling an image (which I can’t do due to a lack of permissions, among other things). The CVE-2021-21284 remains for which I can’t find anything as interesting as the previous ones. After a while, I search online for some other exploits on the specific version (Docker 20.10.5 exploit) and among the first results there is an interesting git repository.
The exploit is not on the docker CLI, but on the docker engine itself (the Moby). Taking a look at the script and executing some commands from the BOX’s shell to understand if the vulnerability is actually present, I don’t get excellent results, but trying doesn’t cost anything anyway, so I download the script on my machine and then execute it, as always, without a trace!
Ready!
Woooo, what a fantastic surprise, even if from the preliminary tests it didn’t seem feasible to me. Anyway, another interesting BOX indeed. As always, while waiting for another machine, have good hacking. That’s all folks.
Secjuice – Read More
These alternatives to popular apps can help reclaim your online life from billionaires and surveillance
/in General NewsNot every app or service is trying to monetize your personal data. Here are some of our favorite alternatives to popular apps.
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Security News | TechCrunch – Read More
Why New York is a Prime Location for Leading Mobile Development Agencies
/in General NewsNew York, the city that never sleeps, is renowned as a global epicentre for innovation, creativity, and business…
Hackread – Latest Cybersecurity, Tech, Crypto & Hacking News – Read More
Andrew Tate’s University Breach: 1 Million User Records and Chats Leaked
/in General NewsAndrew Tate’s “The Real World” platform has been breached, again, leaking user data including emails and private chat…
Hackread – Latest Cybersecurity, Tech, Crypto & Hacking News – Read More
Russia’s Ballistic Missile Attack on Ukraine Is an Alarming First
/in General NewsThis is the first time Russia has used its so-called Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in combat. The launch also serves as a warning to the West.
Security Latest – Read More
The rise and fall of the ‘Scattered Spider’ hackers
/in General NewsThe prolific hacking group broke into Caesars Entertainment, Coinbase, DoorDash, Mailchimp, Riot Games, Twilio (twice), and dozens more.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Security News | TechCrunch – Read More
Meet three incoming EU lawmakers in charge of key tech policy areas
/in General NewsThe European Union looks to have clinched political agreement on the team of 26 commissioners who will be implementing President Ursula von der Leyen’s policy plan for the next five years. A final vote is still pending next week, but on Thursday, Politico’s Brussels Playbook newsletter reported a deal in the European Parliament on the […]
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Security News | TechCrunch – Read More
North Korean Hackers Steal $10M with AI-Driven Scams and Malware on LinkedIn
/in General NewsThe North Korea-linked threat actor known as Sapphire Sleet is estimated to have stolen more than $10 million worth of cryptocurrency as part of social engineering campaigns orchestrated over a six-month period.
These findings come from Microsoft, which said that multiple threat activity clusters with ties to the country have been observed creating fake profiles on LinkedIn, posing as both
The Hacker News – Read More
Google Exposes GLASSBRIDGE: A Pro-China Influence Network of Fake News Sites
/in General NewsGovernment agencies and non-governmental organizations in the United States have become the target of a nascent China state threat actor known as Storm-2077.
The adversary, believed to be active since at least January 2024, has also conducted cyber attacks against the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), aviation, telecommunications, and financial and legal services across the world, Microsoft said.
The Hacker News – Read More