It seemed odd to me that a Web site could write to or read from the clipboard without the user approving it. That would be a pretty obvious security and privacy issue. From what I gather, on Chrome sites can write to the clipboard without approval, but they need approval to read.
On Firefox and others any access requires permission. Thus this exploit seems limited to Chrome users.@SkaveRat pointed out that it doesn't require permission, only interaction. So likely there's a button that's clicked that writes to the clipboard, and most browsers are susceptible to this.
not when there was a user intent like clicking a button.
For example in this screenshot, it's likely that there's only the "verify I'm human" button first, you click it, the steps pop up, and at the same time the command ist copied into your clipboard
Why isn't the default behavior for browsers to not allow access to the clipboard? Similar to how it prompts you for access to camera/microphone
Edit: On a per-site basis, like if you use the Zoom website it asks you for access to the webcam, would something like this work for clipboard as well or would it break stuff?
It seemed odd to me that a Web site could write to or read from the clipboard without the user approving it
Yeah, that's a security hole that I hadn't been aware of.
That's a sneaky one.
This is actually pretty smart because it switches the context of the action. Most intermediate users avoid clicking random executables by instinct but this is different enough that it doesn't immediately trigger that association and response.
This reminds of when I was 13 I used to tell my opponents in Warcraft 3 that pessing alt+q+q quickly reveals the map. It's a shortcut for closing the game. Worked way to many times
I do see this working
ALT+F4 for free funds, opened alot of slots on bfh servers whenever my friends couldn't join.
Haha, god I loved doing this on Counter-Strike. “Did you guys hear about the hidden tit pics in counter strike? No shit, hold alt and press f4 and it shows the best tits I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how game developers get away with this stuff.”
Half the lobby is gone, the other half is laughing.
was funny when someone said "alt f4" and 3 people immediately leave LOL
btw if you want to try and hack me, my IP is 127.0.0.1
We'd constantly get people by telling them holding alt and typing fax would get mirc to give them ops. Usually about a quarter of the channel would drop out.
also makes the victims self selecting, much like the deliberate spelling errors in scam mails.
Don't have to tell me, I just tried summoning quillbeasts while looking at health bars
/disco mode on
"Cheat Enabled."
So inventive these guys. If only we could harness that ingenuity for the common good instead, it would have a huge impact.
Fwiw there are a large number of people who volunteer their time and effort toward worthwhile projects. It's just they don't get rewarded anywhere near the level of benefit that they provide.
Yup, I used to do that as a hobby, but now that I have kids, I just don't have the time. There's no way I could do it full-time, so I have a regular 9-5 that pays reasonably well for a cause I don't hate. For me, that's enough.
I hope I can make enough at my day job to go back to working on FOSS projects before I lose my ability to write competent software.
"To prove that you are human, donate $$$ to Doctors Without Borders."
"To prove that you are human, register to vote."
"To prove that you are human, adopt a pet from the local animal shelter."
I almost fell for an unrelated scam just a couple months ago. Basically, I was on vacation visiting family, had just gotten a new phone (w/ GrapheneOS, so it didn't have Google's network of spam detection), and was out and about at the time. Here's how it went down:
- received text earlier that day saying that my CC was used for an unauthorized purchase (happens a couple times/year)
- got a call from someone claiming to be my bank (not one of the popular chains like Chase or whatever)
- caller asked me to verify myself through text code, and I didn't read the text message carefully and provided it (later inspection showed that it was a password reset code)
- after going through some (fake) recent transactions, I told them they all sounded fraudulent (they were on the other side of the country)
- they asked me to confirm myself again through another code to finalize, at which point I told them they don't need a second code since I already proved my identity, and they hung up
I immediately went to go reset my password and found I was locked out, so I called my bank. They confirmed that my account had been automatically locked for suspicion of fraud (good job!!) and confirmed what I suspected, the scammer had reset my password (first code) and was attempting to add an external account (second code). Had I given them that second code, they likely would have been able to submit the transfer and it would've been a giant headache to try to get that money back.
I didn't lose anything and I immediately improved the security on my account, but I felt like an idiot for letting them get that far. I had also recently consolidated my other accounts to this one, so this would've been a big blow. They changed my account numbers, I changed my username and password, and they held my account for a week or so to ensure everything was good. This bank is one of the few that actually cares about security, so I set up voice recognition (they said they track it anyway, this just turns on an extra feature) and Symantec VIP (I prefer my regular TOTP app, but they don't support that).
I don't think it'll happen to me again, but I was still surprised that I got so far through the process before recognizing that it's a scam. And I consider myself pretty security conscious (e.g. I use TOTP everywhere, password manager, keep credit bureaus frozen, etc). I guess they got my info from a breach somewhere because they knew my name, my username (to be fair, I used it everywhere), and the bank I use (could've gotten lucky). I have since changed most of my usernames to be random, so hopefully I'll be more safe going forward.
Anyway, stay on your guard, it can happen to you.
Pro-tip: Whenever you receive a call/text/email from "your bank" saying something is wrong, don't interact!
Open their app/website or call them yourself to verify.
I've gotten legitimate calls and texts from my bank about fraud (Citi and Capital One in the last year or so), and it's usually a quick 5-min discussion (yes that was me, no that wasn't me, etc). They usually ask for confirmation of identity at the start of the call, so that wasn't out of the ordinary.
What I usually do is go to my computer and login to my bank to check transaction history, so I can verify what they're saying. However, I was out of town and wouldn't be back in town for a couple weeks, and it was a new phone so I hadn't set up the app yet. Even so, there were some red flags I should have noticed, but didn't (probably due to being somewhat exhausted from traveling the entire previous day):
- text number wasn't from my bank's normal notification number - should've been a huge red flag, but just looked at the content (was dealing with the kids at the time or something)
- phone call came from Tennessee, not the normal bank number - fraud departments often have weird phone numbers, so this wouldn't have helped much, but I should have searched the number (the fraud dept numbers are usually listed on their website somewhere)
- they asked for my authentication code before telling me some identifying information about the account (usually they specify the last 4 digits of the card or something); didn't notice since I had run through fraud alerts a few times recently on different accounts
Also, I usually just ignore numbers I don't recognize, which would have prevented the whole thing as well, but this was a new phone and I hadn't yet transferred everything, so I didn't want to miss something important.
I usually practice pretty good security, but I didn't notice until halfway through the call. However, at least I did notice and was able to prevent any actual harm.
I set up voice recognition
This feature is extremely insecure now that there's several AIs that can replicate voices. If a scammer calls you and you say a few words (like if you say "hello" and "sorry, I think you've got the wrong number"), a recording of that can be enough for them to replicate your voice.
This happened at my workplace. An attacker got into someone's Schwab account by calling Schwab support and successfully getting past the voice verification, and attempted to transfer $100k (from a recent stock sale) out of their account. It took a bit of effort but they managed to get all the money back.
Schwab sent out a bulk email to everyone at my company saying they're improving their security as a result, but I'm not sure if they've actually improved it. They're still promoting this insecure feature.
Yup, I almost didn't enable it, but since I was on vacation and didn't want to go set up the app (I try to never set up security features when away from my desk), I let them set it up. They claimed it was AI-resistant, but I honestly don't believe them.
But I don't think enabling it alone would increase risk of anything, it just adds another barrier to impersonating me over a phone. I think they said it wouldn't bypass any other checks, it just increases the likelihood that the call will be dropped before getting to those other checks. But I'm not sure how it works in practice.
Note to self: scream uncontrollably when picking up the phone
This feature is extremely insecure now that there’s several AIs that can replicate voices. If a scammer calls you and you say a few words (like if you say “hello” and “sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong number”), a recording of that can be enough for them to replicate your voice.
It honestly wasn't really that secure to begin with, since the audio would have the daylights crushed out of it through the phone system. Though AI probably makes it easier by just letting you have a computer at the end of it spit out some words.
Someone could probably get away with it by sounding vaguely enough like the person calling.
Or just do the tried and true method of going through the in-person support. Voice recognition, at least in my experience, over the phone, has trouble with accents, so someone calling to get around that isn't uncommon. It never works with me, for example, it just goes "please try again" until it redirects me to an agent.
Your story reminds me of something that my bank started doing. I got a robocall about something to do with my credit card, and the voice said to verify using x and y using my keypad, I think it was day/month/year of birth or something and I immediately noped out of the call. I hit all the wrong buttons until it got me to a person and I ripped them apart, and their supervisor for basically training their userbase to answer security questions given by an automatic voice on the other end of the line with no way to verify who is calling.
You can spoof your caller ID, you can get a text to speech robocall bot with DTMF recognition and just spam call a whole area where the bank operates and gather a bunch of personal information because it sounds just like the bank and there's no way to prove who called.
What a crock of shit. It's a security nightmare.
I did call my bank after at a known valid number, verified them as they verified me, and there was something going on, so the call was legit, and totally unacceptable.
These clowns want us to trust them completely, and give us no reason to do so, but they want us to bend over backwards to validate ourselves. Fuck that.
Yeah, I really hate the state of the banking industry. IMO, all banks should:
- offer TOTP 2FA, and have an option to disable all other fallbacks other than calling in or visiting a branch (Vanguard supports security keys, but it falls back to SMS 2FA, so it's useless); TOTP should be entirely under the user's control and never require a call to configure it
- never call the customer... ever... - send a text, email, and/or a letter asking the customer to call them back, but never initiate w/ a phone call; as long as I can opt-out of them initiating with me, I'm happy
- never take full SSNs over the phone - feel free to ask for a subset (last four, last five, first four, etc), but never the full SSN; you never know who could be listening in, especially since these lines are frequently recorded
So many banks are super insecure, and I'm absolutely willing to jump through a lot of hoops to make my accounts more secure. That's why I'm with my current bank, it's one of the few that can actually be somewhat secured, and I left my last bank because they removed email 2FA (I trust my email much more than I trust the SMS network).
The fact that many banks still don't have at least app-based 2FA should be criminal.
Implementing the open source TOTP system would cost them money! They'll rather keep paying SMS egress instead.
To be fair it's probably way cheaper nowadays.
Yeah, I delayed setting up non-SMS 2FA because I didn't want to go through the hassle of installing and setting up Symantec VIP (requires a call to the bank). If they had supported regular TOTP, I would've had it configured when I set up the account years ago, and that would've prevented this issue since I know I'm never supposed to give out those codes. But SMS auth is used by phone agents to verify identity, as well as with automated systems, so it's easy to skim the message.
There are only a handful of banks that offer something other than SMS 2FA (and many don't even do that), and I picked this bank specifically because of that. However, I didn't realize they used Symantec VIP, so I put it off.
Step 3 was your earliest big clue. You'll never give that to a person. You'll only ever be asked to enter it on the website it originated from.
That being said, the other commentors are right too.
Negative. Had to do that to cancel a cell phone plan recently. They sent the text to my other phone while I was on the line with CSR. Though I agree it should have been possible on the website.
Like the other guy said, it's not always true.
For example, even when you're physically in the store, a T-Mobile employee may require you to read back a code that their system texted to you for certain transactions like buying a new phone for someone on your account or something like that.
The problem is that there are two types of codes:
- sent by rep and is used for verification
- sent by system and is only used for login
They have different messages on the text, but since I would receive the first while on the phone, I tend to skim the message and get to the number.
For TOTP, yes, you only give your code when initially registering it to verify with the other end that it's working.
I think you should not feel like an idiot in this case. Just keep in mind that EVERYONE can fall for a scam, even the experts. The people who think they wouldn't are themselves likely victims.
Idk, I think feeling like an idiot is important, because it shows that I should have known better and can do better next time. I only fell for it because I was in a hurry and away from my normal routine (I'd usually jump on my computer and verify pending transactions before giving any codes).
And that's all it really takes, you could be tired from travel (we had just driven the entire previous day) or whatever, and a few minutes later your money is already on its way out of your account. Something similar happened to Rachel Cruz recently (from Ramsey Solutions), and that's someone who would absolutely know better since she likely takes calls from victims of scams as well.
I guess my advice to everyone is, it can always wait a few days, almost nothing in life is so urgent that it has to be done today. If you feel like you're a little out of sorts, hang up and deal with it later. That would've prevented this problem entirely, and would also prevent most other scams as well.
Honestly, good on you so much for sharing. The fact you're not ashamed and willing to share could save someone from the same attack, and as others have pointed out, even the most security minded of us can have lapses in judgement.
I'm really glad you weren't screwed in the end.
Thanks for sharing! Tough to admit being tricked but helps us all stay on our toes.
As someone tech literate that looks hilarious to follow through with.
But if not, that really does seem similar to a normal captcha with fairly simple steps.
Kinda brilliant to disguise malware as a captcha, though. I won’t be surprised.
Usually I warn my 81 year old dad about these scams. Don't think I need to worry about this one, he wouldn't be tech savvy enough to find the windows button
When I saw a women get hacked aftermath. They installed remote access software, however in her downloads you could see the 10 duplicates.
The scum fuck scammer on the phone had to spend at least 45 minutes trying to get them to navigate to their downloads and run the installer.
Our elders are safe from this one lol
Sometimes I feel bad for scammers because I know how long it takes just to freaking reset a password on legitimate support calls at work (and usually that's someone who's put in a vague ticket saying "software isn't working" so I emailed them a "I'm not a psychic" email with a link to schedule a call which requires one to schedule on the next business day just to finally talk on the phone and identify what they couldn't write out in their ticket 2 days ago) but then I remember that they're fucking scammers and often fully aware of what they're doing
Same here, nothing to worry about
That’s so sassy I kinda respect it.
Too bad for those who fall for it.
Instructions were unclear, ransomware dev now owes me 0.15 bitcoin.
That is extremely hilarious
Except for the fact that a lot of less tech savvy people will fall for it.
/s no I wouldn't actually implement it
Yeah, right? Captchas have trained users to do whatever weird thing a webpage tells them to do, so now people will do this without thinking about it.
Yeah I sent the screenshot to my parents right away, I think they would know better but better be safe than sorry.
That’s going to catch some people, especially older ones.
Yet if I was helping my elders over the phone, I'd get all sorts of "What Windows key?", "I can't find that Control key", or "I did that key, the plus key, and then my hand slipped and I minimized everything."
That's probably why they "helpfully" include a little picture of the symbol on the key, so you know what it looks like.
diabolical
We now need a "verify you are a captcha" mechanism to counter this.
Wouldn't it require elevation?
Yet another example of why running as root/admin is a Bad Idea©
No, why would it? It will run code in the context of the current user which is absolutely enough to start a new process that will run in the background, download more code from a attacker server and allow remote access. The attacker will only have as much permissions as the user executing the code but that is enough to steal their files, run a keyloggers, steal their sessions for other websites etc.
They can try to escalate to the admin user, but when targeting private victims, all the data that is worth stealing is available to the user and does not require admin privs.
That should be easy on windows, but user permissions might also be enough for whatever it does.
Yes. The prompt asking you if you wanted to do it or not would come up next. Unless they figured out some sneaky way to do something to avoid using admin.
Deploy a user-level payload that is auto started on login. The computer is now part of the botnet and can already be used for useful ops. Deploy a privilege escalation payload later if needed.
Once you run something on windows, elevation is just a thing of using the right toolbox.
I tried it and it's not working for me, my terminal is super+T and paste is Ctrl+Shift+V
I cant believe they made captcha that only works on windows
You (probably) wouldn't see this page unless you were on Windows
I think more and more browsers are spoofing their UA to pretend that you're using windows, for fingerprinting resistance
its not working, my krunner bind is windows+d
Why not Alt+F2?
I have fn lock on for volume and brightness, so that becomes Alt+FN+F2
ah, think this is like one of those survey scams.
I wish more people knew what Run... did, but the Ctrl + v should be a little more obvious. We need to teach more computer literacy if you don't immediately know that means you're copying text to something.
Especially on a shady site, mind you. But then again, this could be on a phishing email, so that's not always the case I guess. (I got one from "STARBUCKS" that Gmail didn't catch, their spam filter has been shit lately, blocking my work emails but letting through a lot of sus stuff).
Yeah, all this behaviour leads to is more annoyances for the people who do know what they're doing. People should really learn how the devices they use every day work, which includes stuff like the command prompt. Not necessarily how to use it, but at least what it is and what it can do.
Could have been sneakier perhaps if it said Shift+Insert instead of Ctrl+V.
Just reported by Mohamed Aruham on Twitter
The oldest tweets I could find that actually started reporting this are from ~16 days ago.
https://x.com/Piotrdotcom/status/1829126494574067992
They reference a page here that was posted on Aug 29th.
General rule of thumb for me to interact with a website and read or watch whatever I want .... if you require me to do more than two things to show me the content I came to see, I'm closing the tab or windows and moving on.
If it's really important and security related, I'll take my time and carefully examine everything I do.
Otherwise I'm not clicking more than twice and definitely not using my keyboard to see your dumb website or TikTok video.
This isn't targeting you.
These scumbags are going after the elderly and computer illiterate.
I don't think I've ever gone through anything with less than 2 captchas in years
Ok, that is kind of clever.
Though I suppose even the dumbest user will chicken out once the terminal pops out.
With that shortcut only a tiny run window will appear and not the scary terminal
Depends on how dedicated they are. It's not implausible that some might just shuffle it away as "computer verification stuff", and faithfully paste and execute the code, since it's the computer doing a computery thing, that it says it is doing, and asks you to do, all must be well.
Failed to execute child process: "calc.exe" (No such file or directory).. hehe
Thats why on Linux you need to run the sudo command and type the root password (or user password) to install something. I get this isn't Linux but its a serious security vulnerability that someone could run a super user level command by clicking yes on a confirmation box that pops up so often that nobody thinks twice.
The goal is not always to "take control" of the whole system. A cryptolocker that makes all your files unreadable will happily run in user space.
Also, you're forgetting that windows also have UAC, and that people will happily type the admin password of their device when asked to, because they've been conditioned to not care by badly made stuff. And, while win+r is unlikely to work in most Linux DE I know about, triggering a visual prompt that ask for your password is also a thing.
There is not much difference between common Linux distro and windows as far as seizing user files with malware is concerned, aside from the fact that no website will care to try telling you "press alt+space" instead of "win+r".
You don't need root access to steal all of the data that your user account has access to.
If Linux was more popular, you would definitely see a Linux variant of this doing the exact same thing.
The only issue I see with targeting Linux is the sheer variety of Desktop setups. Finding one keyboard shortcut and payload that will work on even just the majority of distros would be a challenge.
(Citation needed)
But something like this can still erase everything stored in your home folder or launch further exploits to gain root or something.
The behavior is configurable just like it is on linux, UAC can be set to require a password every time.
But I think its not set this way by default because many users don't remember their passwords, lol. You think I'm kidding, you should meet my family...
Also, scripts can do plenty without elevation, on linux or Windows.
It should be default, its a good security practice and not every app needs super user permissions.
