Images of child sexual abuse and stolen credit card numbers are being openly traded on encrypted apps, a BBC investigation has found. Security experts told Radio 4’s File on 4 programme that the encrypted apps were taking over from the dark web as a venue for crime.The secure messaging apps, including Telegram and Discord, have become popular following successful police operations against criminal markets operating on what is known as the dark web – a network that can only be accessed by special browsers. https://twitter.com/EdgeCyber/status/1097800290542280705 Expert Comments below: Boris Cipot, Senior Security Engineer at Synopsys: “Encryption apps started out with good intentions – it was to…
ISBuzz Team
Hackers are leveraging a a two-year-old flaw in a third-party plug-in to infect scores of companies with GandCrab ransomware through their managed service provider (MSP) according to Chris Bisnett at Huntress Labs. https://twitter.com/SecProInt/status/1096937305695236096 Justin Jett, Director of Audit and Compliance at Plixer: “One of the most dangerous risks to businesses are the technologies controlled or owned by third parties. Organizations must be vigilant by monitoring network traffic to and from businesses devices and assets. Malicious actors can only gain value from compromised devices if they have communication with that device. This means they have some external device used to communicate…
According to CNN, the Democratic National Committee’s head of cybersecurity, Bob Lord, is warning presidential primary candidates that the best time for hackers to target their campaigns is right now — in the early days of the cycle. The DNC advises campaigns to create a security plan and follow the “Device and Account Security Checklist” which includes instructions on encrypting a computer hard drive. Colin Bastable, CEO at Lucy Security: “The problem for political campaigns is that teams have a high churn rate and rely on third party fund-raisers, analysts and consultants, which only increases their overall security risk. Teams…
Among key findings from this week’s Ponemon Institute report “Gaps in Resources, Risk and Visibility Weaken Cybersecurity Posture” are: 68% of respondents feel that staffing is not adequate for a strong cybersecurity posture; 60% are challenged by insufficient visibility across IT asset types and esp. unmanaged assets, and 61% report inadequate context on the business impact if a vulnerable asset got breached. Experts Comments below: George Wrenn, CEO at CyberSaint Security: “In today’s highly complex cybersecurity risk landscape, giving all business stakeholders useful infosec program information to inform decision making at the highest levels is the means to building resiliency…
This week The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) marks the 5th anniversary of the release by NIST of its popular cybersecurity framework, the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. The document has been downloaded more than half a million times, and although its use is voluntary for the private sector, it became mandatory for all U.S. federal agencies through a 2017 Presidential executive order. https://twitter.com/NISTcyber/status/1095466530035458048 Experts Comments below: George Wrenn, CEO at CyberSaint Security: “For those organizations attempting to fall under “safe harbor”, adopting the NIST Cybersecurity Framework is key to your success. It’s now been five years…
Last week, Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called on Christopher Krebs, a director in the Dep. of Homeland Security (DHS), to perform a VPN threat assessment and determine potential risks to the US gov. Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN, the tech upon which many leading VPNs are built, says that this is a valid request on the part of these senators, as there’s much misinformation surrounding VPN technology. Francis Dinha, CEO at OpenVPN: “Any VPN that’s free should be considered dangerous — because no VPN is ever free. If you’re not paying, you’re the product, and they’re…
This week seems to be super busy with data breaches and security vulnerabilities galore, looping you in on the latest vulnerability exposed today. News is breaking that hackers are exploiting a critical vulnerability in WordPress plugin Simple Social Buttons, allowing privilege escalation so that non-admins can take over administrator accounts or even whole websites. The plugin has more than 40,000 active installations, according to WordPress Plugin repository. https://twitter.com/SCmagazineUK/status/1096118178990735360 Expert Comments below: Bryan Becker, Application Security Researcher at WhiteHat Security: “The WordPress platform is used by some of the world’s largest companies and approximately 30 percent of the world’s websites. WordPress’s…
The Equifax data breach in which millions of Americans had their personal details stolen may have been carried out by a foreign government in a bid to recruit U.S. spies, experts believe. Off the back of this, please see comments from Terry Ray, senior vice president and Imperva fellow who talks about how this is a sign of the growing trend of global cyberwarfare. https://twitter.com/infonyourmark/status/1095136786181996550 Terry Ray, Senior Vice President at Imperva: “The way I see it, the fact that the stolen Equifax data hasn’t appeared in 18 months is no “great mystery” at all – it’s just a likely…
Broken news that HashCat, an open source password recovery tool, can now crack an eight-character Windows NTLM password hash in under 2.5 hours. This comes not long after the news that 620 million hacked accounts went on sale on the dark web. In a Twitter post on Wednesday, those behind the software project said a hand-tuned build of the version 6.0.0 HashCat beta, utilising eight Nvidia GTX 2080Ti GPUs in an offline attack, exceeded the NTLM cracking speed benchmark of 100GH/s (gigahashes per second). https://twitter.com/BigBroVegan/status/1096369403128614913 Expert Comments below: Naaman Hart, Cloud Services Security Architect at Digital Guardian: “Longer passwords take…
https://twitter.com/RedySeguridad/status/1096370046115360768 Following the news that a collection of 127 million accounts has been found for sale on the Dark Web, Corin Imai, Sr. Senior Security Advisor at DomainTools commented below. Corin Imai, Sr. Senior Security Advisor at DomainTools: “The trend of harvesting emails and passwords from multiple data breaches and grouping them into collections to sell on the dark web is sadly on the rise. It is encouraging, though, that YouNow – listed by criminals as one of the breached firms – has investigated the claim and has found its accounts to be secure. This means that not all the…