Imagine a scenario where some malevolent being has gained access to Earth’s secrets and data by controlling all our 50 billion network connected devices. This might be an extreme analogy but it’s a good way to highlight the way in which our increasingly connected world has left us closer yet more vulnerable than ever. It’s useful to think of your business as a castle with strong perimeter walls, no windows and a single impenetrable gate. Your business’ sensitive information, personnel and data are, in theory, all protected from the dangers of the outside world. In this context, connecting to the…
ISBuzz Team
Last week Amarillo, Texas, also experienced an outage with its 911 system. In this instance, the huge volume of this traffic was accidental, although certainly not difficult for anyone with malicious intent to replicate in a DDoS attack; overloading the inbound call-taking capabilities of a center and staff, effectively taking them out of service. Stephen Gates, Chief Research Intelligence Analyst at NSFOCUS commented below. Stephen Gates, Chief Research Intelligence Analyst at NSFOCUS: “The combination of smartphone, specially designed malware, and E911 services are the ingredients needed to craft the textbook TDoS (Telephony Denial of Service) attack. As a matter of fact, one…
FireEye identified vulnerability CVE-2017-0199 that allows a malicious actor to download and execute a Visual Basic script containing PowerShell commands when a user opens a Microsoft Office RTF document containing an embedded exploit. As you may know, they worked with Microsoft and published the technical details of this vulnerability as soon as a patch was made available. In this follow-up post, some of the observed campaigns leveraging the CVE-2017-0199 zero-day in the days, weeks and months leading up to the patch being released are discussed. FireEye assesses with moderate confidence that CVE-2017-0199 was leveraged by financially motivated and nation-state actors prior…
In recent years, automated drones have been responsible for major time and money savings as well as improved business processes, effectively revolutionizing the way many companies conduct their daily operations. Within a wide range of organizations in industries, however, there is probably no one more grateful for automated drones than those in charge of safety and security. After all, it’s not merely time and money these people are tasked with saving. The advantages of automation Drones have been gaining attention for their industrial applications for several years now, but it’s the automated versions of drones that represent the biggest benefits…
In its recent Cybersecurity Market Review (Q1 2017), Momentum Partners stated that, “Managed Detection & Response (MDR) is the next generation of Managed Security Services well-positioned to address the enormous market opportunity in the mid-market and enterprise.” Additionally, Gartner estimates that by 2020, 15% of midsize and enterprise organizations will be using MDR, up from just 1% today. Mark McArdle, CTO at cyber security company eSentire commented below. Mark McArdle, CTO at eSentire: “Managed detection and response (MDR) is based on the premise that prevention alone will not stop bad things from happening, especially since the bad guys have the first mover advantage. With MDR,…
Don’t be a victim to phishing email scams. At the end of February 2017, close to 3,000 citizens of the state of Idaho may be the victims of identity theft thanks to the convincing efforts of a scammer. The scammer sent emails to the employees of a sugar company that posed as an official email coming from a C-level executive requesting W-2 forms. Since employees want to be obedient, phishing emails are often sent back to the sender with critical information. If statistics is your thing, here are a few 2016 statistics regarding phishing emails: Email attachments are the most…
According to a blog post from IT security company Palo Alto Networks, a new variant of the IoT/Linux botnet Tsunami, which it calls Amnesia, targets an unpatched remote code execution vulnerability that was publicly disclosed over a year ago in DVR devices manufactured by TVT Digital and branded by over 70 vendors worldwide. This vulnerability affects approximately 227,000 devices around the world with Taiwan, the US, Israel, Turkey, and India being the most exposed. Sean Newman, Director at Corero Network Security commented below. Sean Newman, Director at Corero Network Security: “Reports of another botnet variant exploiting the Internet of Things for nefarious activities, such as…
Forcepoint Security Labs has identified a new form of ransomware called “CradleCore” – a crimeware kit that is currently being offered to cybercriminals looking to own custom ransomware. “Cradle Ransomware” as it is also being known is peculiar in the sense that it is being sold as source code. Typically, ransomware is monetised by developers using the RaaS business model. Only if that doesn’t work will the developers then consider selling the source code. In this case it is being sold as a one off source code which suggests that CradleCore may be a first or side project of someone with…
The Imperva Defence Centre research team have taken a deep dive into a specific phishing attack and the person behind it, discovering a new meaning to the term, ‘Nigerian prince’ (those notorious advance-fee scams of the 90s). Their research lead to an attacker who went by the email address: [email protected]. Investigation of Lvrxdnona’s server provided some interesting insights and exposed several hacking and phishing resources. In addition to phishing landing pages for Excel Online, OneDrive and Google Docs, the researchers also found several do-it-yourself (DIY) deployments kits for these campaigns The researchers were curious to know who lvrxdnona is, so dug…
Following the news that investors have lost £42billion due to cyber breaches in the past year. Raj Samani, Chief Scientist at McAfee commented below. Raj Samani, Chief Scientist at McAfee: “This latest research revealing the detrimental impact cybercrime can have on an organisation’s market value should serve as a warning to corporations across the globe. Data breaches damage far more than a company’s reputation, often hitting the bottom line hard. “Corporations cannot afford to dismiss cyber security as a problem which just belongs to the IT department. The financial future of a corporation – and often that of its customers – can hinge…