Hand with black nail polish holding a magnifying glass – Pexel
Stumbled on this job during a recent job search. This had never been on my radar as a possible field of interest, but after interviewing and learning about the position I was intrigued.
A vulnerability researcher basically investigate, identify, and study vulnerabilities and exploits in software and/or systems. Sometimes this can be independently, but often it is part of an enterprise or in conjunction with continuous monitoring services.
So, I’m a little bit of a tech hoarder. I’ve got several raspberry pis, nucs, Mac minis, and a chrome box. I also have a switch to put pfsense on. I’ve kinda got the hardware part down (tho I am looking for 1 more machine with 16gb or ram to complete my vision).
This being said I have a few things I want out of my lab environment:
Malware Analysis machine
Security Onion Analyst machine
Cyber Threat Intelligence Machine
Possible Forensic Analysis Station
Also want to have a pihole
I also know I want to mess around with Docker and Python although these don’t need their own environments the other three kinda do. This is especially true for malware Analysis machine which needs to be isolated as much as possible to prevent infection of other systems.
Draft Lab Documentation
The above is the draft documentation I cooked up to kinda of mimic inventory management. I also think if I’m going to have stationary ip addresses that this should be documented as well. I started having this info written out, but have also entered it into note-taking software. This is my attempt to be meticulous and intentional in this endeavor.
This week I learned about Bazar Call /Bazarloader Malware. I had never heard of this malware campaign. Even when it was explained to me I didn’t think that it would have a high success rate, but doing more research it is really successful.
The whole cycle starts with an email one that often talks about the end of a free subscription or being charged for a renewal or the like. This email might not have any links or attachments, but will have a number for the recipient to call.
<sidebar: I’d always thought these types of emails had 1 purpose and that was to scam recipients by getting them to call and then getting them to divulge credit card information or other personal information…my viewpoint was limited .>
When the recipient calls to cancel or dispute the precieved charges they are directed by the ‘call center’ to a website and this website downloads bazarloader malware which can be a carrier for other malicious code like Trojans or Ransomware.
So, I learned something new this week. I’m always amped when I learn something and I usually want to learn more about it. So, I’m doing more deep diving on Bazarloader and to see if there are other similar campaigns.
This whole thing also reinforced thinking outside the box when it comes to attacks. Often times, the simplest objective isn’t the true objective. Why hook a little phish when a marlin is out there like encrypting and ransoming an entire enterprise?
Also long story short, whether it’s a credit card scam or something more malicious, like this: don’t call random numbers in emails.
Build A Security Ninja 