Can you help me hack in? Please click every link on Twitter. Covid-19 Vaccine distributors are claimed to be breached!!!

Hello All

I wish to address in this article the vast majority of the audience, rather then cyber-professionals, since I have lately seen things, that even go beyond the gap between "awareness" and "implementation". It was, actually very dangerous and pretty irresponsible behavior.

There are news at cyber-arena. pay2key hackgroup claimed breaching several Israeli industries, including COVID-19 vaccine distributing companies, such as Habana-labs. Though they claim they have gained access to plans and information regarding its new artificial intelligence chip Gaudi, since Habana is owned by Intel now.

So, what is so special about it? Well, to tell the truth it's all same - gap between "awareness" and "implementation", only here "awareness" also looses to "curiosity". let me briefly explain.

I am receiving Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and other social networks updates of many different people, who go into Twitter page of this hackgroup and click on every link they provide, then joyfully post screenshots somewhere.

Do you really think it's wise for general public, who lacks practical cyber-attack and defense skills to click on links, provided by malicious hackers?

Yes, it's Twitter and they take cyber-security seriously and probably wouldn't allow posting a malicious link on their site, but do you know how deep Twitter scans the internet? Do you know rule-set, they use?

If their systems miss certain redirect, that also might be 100's redirect in a row for the same link, you could be in trouble. You could for a blink of an eye visit a page somewhere deep in web with malicious code on it. Or this code could even be hidden inside address row. Or may be the link will bring you to another page, which will be legit, but there will be another link there, which will, trust me, catch your attention, Clicking on THAT link will be your fatal mistake.

Additionally, hackers can simply collect data about you and your system, while you browsing their domain. They can collect many important pieces of information: the pages you like to visit, the systems installed on your computer, the software libraries, your software uses. Malicious code can even be embedded in an image they let you view or video clip, for that matter. That put's you in danger of hackers gaining access to YOUR machine and through you - may be to others or your workplace. They can then exploit or ransom anyone in this blockchain, YOU HELPED THEM CREATE.

In any of mentioned above cases, you actually step on cyber-mine and it's up to systems like firewall, antivirus or EDR to save you. But will they? Think for a moment: do you honestly think, that breached companies lacked protective systems?

Finally, it's not like Twitter hadn't make mistakes before or any other big and respectable player, like, say Amazon.

Remember PMM principle - PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES. Twitter's employees are PEOPLE.

So what should you do?

Well, there are 2 ways of dealing with it.

1. Don't venture there. At all. Let us - the professionals walk in those mine fields.
2. If you still want to be more informed or you want to get a screenshot and send to a friend - use good protection. I am talking about using virtual machines to browse those domains. You can install one on any computer, that supports virtualization and 99.9% today - do. You can use for example Oracle VirtualBox, it's simple and free. It'll be like having another OS on top of your system, but it'll not be so panful to loose it in case of a breach and you can still get your screenshots. Take a look at this tutorial.

Below image of me taking screenshot of my Kali machine from my windows machine with embedded into Windows 10 snipping tool.

Of course having simply installing virtualization client isn't enough, there is minor configuration to be done. In case of Virtualbox, your network adapter has to be set to NAT, then you have to prevent copy-paste options from guest (virtual machine) to host (your physical machine) and remove any shared folders, that might be (default is none, but hey - PMM)

Naturally, don't even think of using sensitive apps like messengers or mail clients on this virtual machines.

Finally, to make life easy and cozy, you don't want to install new machine every time, so after you are done installing your first one - make a snapshot. Then, after you are done with dangerous activity in the net - simply restore to original state - it will delete compromised instance, named "current state" and replace it with original and clean. Highlight original state and hit restore button. Procedure takes 2 minutes tops (just don't make a snapshot of compromised state, as it offers-you don't really need it).

Now you are ready to go into the mine field. It's not 100% protection, but it's much better, then endangering your physical machine.

Keep cyber-safe guys.