有很多惡意軟體 (像是 malware) 會透過合法的 ad network 散布，然後竊取資料，甚至是透過麥克風監聽環境音：
I write to urge the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to protect federal networks from foreign spies and criminals who misuse online advertising for hacking and surveillance, by setting clear new rules for agencies in its forthcoming “zero trust” cybersecurity policy.
I have pushed successive administrations to respond more appropriately to surveillance threats, including from foreign governments and criminals exploiting online advertisingto hack federal systems. This includes seemingly innocuous online advertisements, which can be used to deliver ‘malware to phones and computers—often without requiring users to click anything. This ‘malware can steal, modify or wipe sensitive government data, or record conversations by remotely enabling a computers built-in microphone.
Route 53 Resolver 是 AWS 官方提供的 DNS Resolver，沒有特殊的設定的話通常會在 x.x.x.2 (/24 或是更大的網段)，先前一直沒有辦法解決 data leak 的問題，也就是透過 DNS 把敏感資料從 private network 裡丟出去。
以前的作法是透過 security group 擋掉對 Route 53 Resolver 的流量 (或是透過 VPC 的 Firewall 擋)，然後自己架設兩台 DNS resolver 過濾，現在 Route 53 Resolver 支援 DNS Firewall，提供 allowlist 與 blocklist 這兩個功能使用，總算是把這件事情解的比較乾淨了：
Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall lets you create “blocklists” for domains you don’t want your VPC resources to communicate with via DNS. You can also take a stricter, “walled-garden” approach by creating “allowlists” that permit outbound DNS queries only to domains you specify. You can also create alerts for when outbound DNS queries match certain firewall rules, allowing you to test your rules before deploying for production traffic.
另外這次的 DNS Firwall 提供了兩組由 AWS 維護的清單讓人使用，包括了 malware 與 botnet：
Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall offers two managed domain lists—malware domains and botnet command and control domains—enabling you to get started quickly with managed protections against common threats.
Disqus was acquired by an advertising company called Zeta Global in 2017. Obviously, advertising companies do everything to increase their revenue (Ex: the Big G).
I analyzed the network requests log. Disqus makes HTTP requests to 11 different third-party domains through the browser. All of these websites are trackers/pixels (Even some were detected as malware by my security guard).
而且就算是付費會員也一樣，還是會追蹤：
When you provide a free product, money should come from somewhere. Disqus uses advertising for that. Now, I subscribed to a paid plan trial of Disqus to see if things change or not. No! Even in the paid plans, the same pixels are loaded on the client-side. Looks like there's no way to opt-out from tracking.
Hackers at the Central Intelligence Agency, with the help of colleagues from the British spy agency MI5, developed malware to secretly spy on targets through their Samsung Smart TVs, according to new documents published by WikiLeaks.
這個後門在 Fake-Off 模式中仍然可以繼續運作：
The malware was designed to keep the smart TVs on even when they were turned off. This was dubbed "Fake-Off mode," according to the documents.
甚至可以控制 LED 燈，讓被監控人無法得知現在 Smart TV 其實還在運作中：
The CIA hackers even developed a way to "suppress" the TVs LED indicators to improve the "Fake-Off" mode.
Review after 1 month in operation
The Pi-Hole has been running for 1 month now on my home network. I have had to whitelist 1 or 2 URLs which was blocking a reset of an Alexa which had an issue, and a video conferencing system had all sorts of tracking and metrics built in which were causing some havoc until I whitelisted them. Otherwise, the Pi has been chugging along at 8% memory utilization, and the network is considerably faster when surfing the web.
Droidefense (originally named atom: analysis through observation machine)* is the codename for android apps/malware analysis/reversing tool. It was built focused on security issues and tricks that malware researcher have on they every day work. For those situations on where the malware has anti-analysis routines, Droidefense attemps to bypass them in order to get to the code and 'bad boy' routine. Sometimes those techniques can be virtual machine detection, emulator detection, self certificate checking, pipes detection. tracer pid check, and so on.
Droidefense uses an innovative idea in where the code is not decompiled rather than viewed. This allow us to get the global view of the execution workflow of the code with a 100% accuracy on gathered information. With this situation, Droidefense generates a fancy html report with the results for an easy understanding.
