A new study conducted by British researchers has unveiled a potentially concerning form of cyber threat where hackers can extract personal data just by listening to someone type. more
If there's one simple - high impact - thing you could do to quickly check whether your network has been taken over by a criminal entity, or uncover whether some nefarious character is rummaging through your organizations most sensitive intellectual property out of business hours, what would it be? In a nutshell, I'd look to my DNS logs. It's staggering to me how few security teams have gotten wise to regularly interrogating the logs from their recursive DNS servers. more
Last week, millions of infected devices directed Internet traffic to DNS service provider Dyn, resulting in a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that took down major websites including Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, and more. In a recent blog post, security expert Bruce Schneier argued that "someone has been probing the defences of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet". This attack seems to be part of that trend. This disruption begs the question: Can we trust the Internet? more
The Internet infrastructure has been having a bad month. Not as bad as, say, the world's aviation infrastructure, but bad enough. First, Chinese Internet censorship leaked out to a few massively unlucky users of the I root server. Then China Telecom failed to filter someone who leaked thousands of hijacked routes to other people's networks through them, probably by accident. And then, inexplicably, Forbes went where no one had gone before... more
Garth Bruen writes: A report in LegitScript takes a look at Russian rogue Internet pharmacy hacking US government website. "As rogue Internet pharmacy networks become more sophisticated, even US government websites are at risk. Today, we're taking a look at how a rogue Internet pharmacy linked to a criminal network operating out of Russia and Eastern Europe has hacked into a US government website. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US foreign aid agency, utilizes a ".gov" top-level domain, which is assigned to the control of the US government. Domain names ending in .gov are typically administered by the General Services Administration." more
Talking technical is easy. Distilling technical detail, complex threats and operation nuances down to something that can be consumed by people whose responsibility for dealing with cybercrime lays three levels below them in their organizational hierarchy is somewhat more difficult. Since so many readers here have strong technical backgrounds and often face the task of educating upwards within their own organizations, I figured I'd share 4 slides from my recent presentation that may be helpful in communicating how the world has changed. more
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer apologized today at the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing regarding massive data breaches at the internet company, blaming Russian agents. more
A new study has been released by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th President that looks into cybersecurity manpower challenges in the United States. The report titled, "A Human Capital Crisis in Cybersecurity," is produced by CSIS - a bipartisan public and foreign policy think tank in Washington. more
The Joint Commission, a healthcare accreditation agency, has advised hospitals and health systems to brace for at least a month of downtime following a cyberattack, according to The Wall Street Journal. This recommendation is part of new guidelines released by the agency for handling IT security events. more
A cooperative international report was released last week outlining Internet and mobile best practices aimed at curtailing malware, phishing, spyware, bots and other Internet threats. It also provides extensive review of current and emerging threats. "Best Practices to Address Online and Mobile Threats" is a comprehensive assessment of Internet security as it stands today... more
Since last fall, several waves of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have targeted major players in the U.S. banking industry. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and PNC were among the first to sustain intermittent damage. Eventually, the top 50 institutions found themselves in the crosshairs... In the months to come, security experts would praise the banks' collective response, from heightened DDoS protection to candid customer communications.. these larger institutions have learned some painful lessons that smaller firms might heed as they seek to minimize risks. more
Spam and virus trends in Q3'10 confirm that spammers are still hard at work distributing malicious content in new and creative ways, according to the latest reports. The latest spam and virus trends report is produced by Postini, Google's email security and archiving service that, according to the company, processes more than 3 billion email messages per day and more than 50,000 businesses. more
U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly worried that hackers could wreak havoc on the financial system. Read the story here in National Journal. Not that we need it, but here's yet another reason to worry about havoc in financial markets: U.S. intelligence officials increasingly fear that computer hackers could wreck banks and large financial institutions, or send stock markets into one more panicked frenzy, by covertly manipulating data and spreading false information. more
Nguyen Minh Duc, senior security director at Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (Bkis), says that the source of recent cyberattack against US and South Korean government websites was not North Korea -- as widely reported -- but UK. Based on Bkis analysis, a report today by Nguyen Minh Duc says that a master server located in UK was found to control the 8 Command and Control servers responsible for the series of cyberattacks last week.
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A number of outlets have reported that the U.S. Post Service was hacked, apparently by the Chinese government. The big question, of course, is why. It probably isn't for ordinary criminal reasons: The intrusion was carried out by "a sophisticated actor that appears not to be interested in identity theft or credit card fraud," USPS spokesman David Partenheimer said. ... But no customer credit card information from post offices or online purchases at usps.com was breached, they said. more
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