What are the top cyber trends to watch out for in 2019? Here’s what I have been hearing and reading:
First I present a new information security term: Virtual Security = Manufacturers claim that their products are secure. but in reality they are not.
New APT groups, and more regulations around data privacy, 2019 is set to be another big year in the cybersecurity space. Security is hard and getting harder in 2019. Good operational security is non trivial. Next generation dark markets are making cybercrime easier than ever before.
Gartner expects that the security market is expected to grow 8.7% in 2019 and hit $124 billion. Global spending on security products and services closed in 2018 in excess of $114 billion, marking a 12.4% increase from 2017.
A New Year’s Resolution: Security is Broken…Let’s Fix It. There are three strategies that show real promise for defending against tomorrow’s threats: Deploy Deception, Leverage Threat Intelligence, Think Proactively. Plan Now for Emerging Threats. Defending against these threats will require two things. The first is understanding the economic drivers of the criminal community, and the second is to adopt strategies and solutions that address and disrupt those drivers. Getting in front of the cyber-threat paradigm requires organizations to rethink their security strategies in 2019.
Many organizations have learned, it’s no longer a matter of if you’ll face a cyberattack, but when – and when they will finally find the hack has happened. For example it Marriott disclosed a four-year-long breach involving the personal and financial information of 500 million guests. Anytime we see such a colossal intrusion go undetected for so long, the ultimate cause is usually a failure to adopt the most important principle in cybersecurity defense that applies to both corporations and consumers: Assume you are compromised.
In today’s world, attackers intentionally look normal to evade automated defenses. With the rise of ransomware, fileless and non-malware attacks, it’s harder than ever to protect your endpoints with confidence. To prevent this, threat hunting has emerged as an essential process for organizations to preempt destructive attacks. This process is a proactive approach to cybersecurity that identifies gaps in defenses and stops attacks before they go too deep. The adversary is hunting for your security gaps…why aren’t you?
Is it fair to judge an organization’s information security posture simply by looking at its Internet-facing assets for weaknesses commonly sought after and exploited by attackers, such as outdated software or accidentally exposed data and devices? Attackers scan those systems for vulnerabilities actively in 2019. What’s remarkable is how many organizations don’t make an effort to view their public online assets as the rest of the world sees them — until it’s too late. Measure how good is your security. Data protection tools have been developed to measure the maturity of data protection issues in organization.
CEOs should ask the following questions about potential cybersecurity threats:
How could cybersecurity threats affect the different functions of my business, including areas such as supply chain, public relations, finance, and human resources?
What type of critical information could be lost (e.g., trade secrets, customer data, research, personally identifiable information)?
How can my business create long-term resiliency to minimize our cybersecurity risks?
What kind of cyber threat information sharing does my business participate in? With whom does my business exchange this information?
What type of information sharing practices could my business adopt that would help foster community among the different cybersecurity groups where my business is a member?
What can CEOs do to mitigate cybersecurity threats?
How Well Are You Protecting Your Brand from Digital Risk? Having a website is just the baseline for existing in digital world. Companies of all sizes are actively using social media to engage with customers and build loyalty for their brand. The Internet is an essential tool to grow your business, but it also poses digital risks to your brand reputation and integrity. Bad actors can spoof social media profiles of your company or brands. Cyber criminals will register and use web domains extremely similar to your actual domain names. Malicious apps that impersonate brands may use spyware to steal information from users. You might need to develop a brand protection program in 2019. Digital risk from brand exposure can lead to reputation damage, loss of intellectual property and customer trust and, ultimately, loss in revenue. This is what the brand managers need to think about in 2019. Successful hacking campaigns used to be all about keeping under the radar. But, for some, making a big splash is now now more important than lurking in the shadows.
Today, cybersecurity is moving beyond the financial impact to concerns over public safety, national security, and even cyberwarfare. The tech industry is becoming more worried about a cyberwar arms race. Microsoft boss thinks that cyber war cannot be won. High impact cyber attacks often affect the electricity network, water supply, financial markets, hospitals, and military families. Preparations for various cyber attacks in different sectors vary greatly. Energy and finance are the most advanced. We should all keep in mind two things: The proliferation of cyberweapons is already happening and arms control of cyberweapons hasn’t caught up. “Cyber is so wide that states alone cannot be sufficient in providing security” It seems also that authoritarian forces are trying to claw back control and even re-purposing the web in ways that undermine democracy.
It would be good for the company to be able to manage risks, prepare for major disruptions, and plan and practice recovery. Risk management requires the company to detect the attack itself. A large coordinated attack could attack our elections, our press, our telecommunications, our banks, and our military. According to a new report on digital freedom, authoritarian forces are clawing back control and even re-purposing the web in ways that undermine democracy. Tim Cook says that tech firms should prepare for ‘inevitable’ regulation.
We need to build cyber resilience to our networked systems. Getting to cyber resilience means federal agencies must think differently about how they build and implement their systems. “Cybersecurity, infrastructure security, is not a competitive advantage,” Bradford Willke, a top official in DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. If a good product or company fails because of a breach that could have been thwarted by sharing threat information, “there’s something that we’ve all lost.”
Did you remember to test the security? Every developer team should know how to code securely and how to test security. This kind of basic hygiene with information security creates the basis for genuinely intact applications. The basic thing for the tester in terms of data security is user identification and access, securing stability, encryption, firewalls, intruder detection, anonymization of information. All these things can be tested with different techniques, tools and methods. It is a good idea to ask a security professional if you do not know how to do this.
You will see many big data beaches also in 2019. Cybersecurity headlines in recent years have been dominated by companies losing money by being hacked and leaking the data of millions of customers. 2018 was again a banner year for breaches, check for example list of Biggest cyber security breaches 2018. In 2018 the mantra became “another day, another data breach.” 2018 has been the year par excellence for data protection, when data leaks, exfiltrations, and abuses have made headlines all over the world. Some companies have worked on improving their security, but overall there has not been so much activity going on that it would considerably change the situation for better in 2019. And against this backdrop of increased awareness about the challenges that working with sensitive data can entail, there is one regulation that has come to the fore: the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which has been mandatory since May 25 this year.
How much are the first fines for GDPR infringement? It remains to be seen in 2019 as sanctions on big 2018 leaks start to appear. Infringement of GDPR regulation can incur fines of up to 4% of a company’s annual global turnover, or up to €20 million. The economic sanctions that we have seen so far in 2018 have clearly relatively conservative compared to the highest possible penalties, but with the recent spate of high profile data leaks – Marriott, British Airways, Quora – it won’t be long before harsher fines start to appear. Remember that by having appropriate protection for the personal data that your company manages, you can avoid sanctions.
IoT malware and email hacks are on the rise again. Blackmail demand claims will continue unfortunately also in 2019 and will become more innovative. In 2018 we first saw blackmail extortion with claims to have nailed you watching porn and the sender infected your computer by hacking your account or placing malware. All sorts of variants exist. There was also Spammed Bomb Threat Hoax that demands Bitcoin.Then there has been a New Extortion Email Threatens to Send a Hitman Unless You Pay $4,000 in bitcoin. As long as ransoms are paid and relatively easy attacks, such as phishing campaigns, are successful, bad actors will continue to use these techniques.
The number of attacks using IoT hardware is increasing in 2019. IoT is still insecure. As the number of IoT devices, such as smart home network monitoring systems, increase, the threat is constantly increasing. According to Nokia report IoT botnet operations accounted for 78 percent of malware detection events in the communications service provider (CSP) networks in 2018.
Many IoT protocols are still implemented without proper security. The CoAP protocol is the next big thing for DDoS attacks. Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), is about to become one of the most abused protocols in terms of DDoS attack. That is because most of today’s CoAP implementations forgo using hardened security modes for a “NoSec” security mode that keeps the protocol light, but also vulnerable to DDoS abuse.
Mirai botnet has been active since 2016. And several followers to it are still active. Mirai malware has strong records of infecting poorly managing IoT devices and performing DDOS attacks on various platforms. And you will not get rid of the new variations of it in 2019. Latest example is With Mirai Comes Miori: IoT Botnet Delivered via ThinkPHP Remote Code Execution Exploit. Similarly Miori taking advantage of Internet connected device and compromise it by exploiting various vulnerabilities and also it constantly evolving to target the smart devices. Miori is just one of the many Mirai offshoots. There is another very similar variant called Shinoa.
Regulating cyber security features on networked devices seems to be on rise. Germany proposes router security guidelines. It would like to regulate what kind of routers are sold and installed across the country. California became the first state with an Internet of Things cybersecurity law: Starting on January 1st, 2020, any manufacturer of a device that connects “directly or indirectly” to the internet must equip it with “reasonable” security features, designed to prevent unauthorized access, modification, or information disclosure. If it can be accessed outside a local area network with a password, it needs to either come with a unique password for each device, or force users to set their own password the first time they connect. That means less generic default credentials for a hacker to guess. In Finland security label created by FICORA’s Cybersecurity Center promises that will make it easy for consumers to identify a sufficiently secure devices in 2019.
Ransomware attack will continue in 2019. Hospital cybersecurity seems to be a pressing problem in 2019. The healthcare industry’s accelerating adoption of sophisticated networks, connected devices and digital records has revolutionized clinical operations and patient care but has also left modern hospitals acutely vulnerable to cyber attack. Recent high-profile hacks have brought these mounting threats sharply into focus. One in four (27%) employees of healthcare organizations in North America admit to being aware of a ransomware attack targeting their employer over year 2018. There is a number of technological, cultural and regulatory issues that complicate healthcare cybersecurity.
DNS system is still full of “ugly hacks” that keep it running. Malicious actors have found innovative ways to take down the DNS and the landscape growing more problematical. Hopefully it will get robust in 2019. Vendors of DNS software, as well as large public DNS providers, are going to remove certain workarounds on February 1st, 2019, otherwise known as DNS Flag Day. Don’t Let DNS Flag Day Become Your DNS Doomsday. The result of this “line in the sand” means that all domains hosted on these poorly coded DNS servers will fail to resolve correctly across all the recursive resolvers built by and run by the consortium. So your SPF, DKIM, DMARC, most TXT and PTR records will fail. This will be a very bad day for anyone who doesn’t take time to address this issue BEFORE February 1st, 2019.
TLS 1.3 was published as of August 2018. It has been over eight years since the last major encryption protocol update. With the HTTP/2 protocol update in late 2015, and now TLS 1.3 in 2018, encrypted connections are now more secure and faster than ever. With OpenSSL 1.1.1 library many applications can gain many of the benefits of TLSv1.3 simply by dropping in the new OpenSSL version. Since TLSv1.3 works very differently to TLSv1.2 though there are a few caveats that may impact a minority of applications. Add this to list of existing TLS ecosystem woes. Malicious sites will increasingly use SSL certificates to look legitimate.
Remember to update your PHP version early in 2019. PHP 5.6 support and security updates have ended. PHP 5. is still widely used in many web services. FICORA’s Cybersecurity Center recommends giving up the use of old PHP versions, especially for services that are publicly available on the Internet. Currently the latest version is 7.3. Each version is actively developed for two years, after which security updates are offered for one year. Currently the latest PHP version is 7.3. Each version is actively developed for two years, after which security updates are offered for one year. Because the new PHP7 is not fully compatible with the old PHP5, so many sites need also updates to the site PHP code. If you can’t for some reason update PHP version, special attention should be paid to the security of the server and its environment.
Cloud security is still a problem for many organizations in 2019. The 2018 Cloud Security Spotlight Report noted that 84% of respondents claim traditional security solutions either don’t work at all or have limited functionality in the cloud. Misconfiguration of the cloud platform took the top spot in this year’s survey as the single biggest threat to cloud security (62%). Lack of staff resources and expertise to manage cloud security seems to be the largest barrier to cloud adoption for many companies. Many clouds are nowadays relatively secure, but Are You Using Them Securely? It’s time to stop obsessing over unsubstantiated cloud security worries and start focusing more on new approaches to cloud control. It is time to better manage your cloud deployments in 2019.
The Cybersecurity Industry Doesn’t Have Artificial Intelligence Right Yet. AI in security will be talked on in 2019. 2018 was The Year Machine Intelligence Arrived in Cybersecurity. “Intelligence” is a word heavily freighted in cybersecurity technology because it covers a wide variety of techniques and product: Expert systems, machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence are all represented in the whole, with each being used and promoted by different vendors and service organizations. Antivirus protection is one of the tasks to which companies are applying intelligence. The vast majority of intelligence being used in security is “machine learning” rather than “artificial intelligence.” The application of artificial intelligence (AI) via the implementation of machine learning (ML) is the fastest growing area of cybersecurity, but it seems Artificial Intelligence in Cybersecurity is Not Delivering on its Promise at least yet. What has been largely missing from this assertion is independent verification that the theoretical benefits promoted by ML vendors translate to actual benefits in use. Also cyber-criminals start to use AI to make better attacks.
Machine learning can reduce the usefulness of CAPTCHA. Machine learning model breaks CAPTCHA systems on 33 highly visited websites very quickly.
Destructive malware has been employed by adversaries for years. Destructive targeted attacks have a critical impact on businesses, causing the loss of data or crippling business operations. NotPetya and Wannacry affected several companies around the world. OlympicDestroyer affected the Olympic Games organization.
Old destructive attacks can persist for a long time. Wannacry is not dead when 2019 starts. Eighteen months after the initial outbreak of the WannaCry Ransomware infection, the malware continues to rear its head on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of infected computers. The kill switch has been activates so the ransomware component would not activate, but the infection continues to run silently in the background, while routinely connecting to the kill switch domain to check if it was still live.
Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities that were found in 2017 and became public the beginning of 2018 will continue. I have been following this saga since I reported it first in Finland at Uusiteknologia.fi on-line magazine. Spectre-like variations continued to be discovered, just as academics predicted at the start of 2018. Intel and other processor manufacturers have worked on fixed, but there has been numerous new vulnerability variation reported over the year on the same theme, latest published in late 2018. Is Spectre making a comeback? I expect you will not get rid of new variations on this vulnerability theme in 2019. There are still many side channel flaws to be found on modern processors.
USB security is still fundamentally broken in 2019. USB drives are a security threat to process control systems because USB drives can cause serious disruption to process facilities through unsecure or malicious files. USB-borne malware continues to present a major threat to industrial control systems (ICS) nearly a decade after the Stuxnet attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure first highlighted the danger.
The air gap is low-tech but still has value as a barrier against cyber attacks. But air gaps, once a valuable barrier against cyberattacks, are disappearing from industrial control systems. As smart shipping and other network-connected industrial control systems (ICS) grow, the air gap loses value as a barrier against cyber attacks. The use of air gaps has eroded or disappeared altogether, thanks to increasingly intertwined OT (operational technology) and IT (information technology). Also air gaps can’t protect against “an ill-informed person’s actions,” as was the case with the notorious 2010 Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
There are still major problems cyber security in industrial system. Major problems in industrial cyber security are inadequate software updates, the following non-upgraded systems, and common usage ids for updating. While the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) can be useful for rating vulnerabilities, the scores assigned to flaws affecting industrial control systems (ICS) may be misleading.
Perimeter-less security is hot in 2019. You can’t build anymore well defined perimeters around all of your systems. Welcome to a World of Zero Trust. Zero Trust Privilege approach is based on six fundamental elements: Verify Who, Contextualize the Privileged Access Request, Establish a Secure Admin Environment, Grant Least Privilege, Audit Everything, Apply Adaptive Security Controls.
Can You Mitigate Against Mission Impossible? Most probably you can’t. Focus on the Countless Manageable Vulnerabilities That You Can Control and Protect Against Them. Cybersecurity risks need help from contracts and insurance beyond technologies, policies, and people. Pretending cybersecurity risks aren’t there isn’t on any list of best practices.
Credential abuse is at the core of many hacks in 2019. Usually the easiest way for a cyber-attacker to gain access to sensitive data is by compromising an end user’s identity. Equipped with the right credentials, cyber adversaries and malicious insiders can wreak havoc on an organization’s network, exfiltrate sensitive data, or even siphon off funds — all while concealing their malicious activities from threat detection solutions.
Good database security planning is essential for protecting a company’s most important assets because if attackers can shut companies out of their own data can quickly cripple an organization. Leaked data can also become costly with costs of data leak itself, regulatory costs (including GDPR fines) and bad reputation that can affect revenue for a long time.
Just on the end of 2018 there was reports on SQLite vulnerabilities. Magellan is a number of vulnerabilities that exist in SQLite that were able to successfully implement remote code execution in Chromium browsers (already fidex). This vulnerability can have a wide range of influence in 2019 because SQLite is widely used in all modern mainstream operating systems and software. There is potential that Critical SQLite Flaw Leaves Millions of Apps Vulnerable to Hackers. I expect to see reports against attacks against many different systems and system users failing to secure their systems.
DevSecOps is having a positive impact on security, but the state of security still has a long way to go as over 13 percent of applications contain at least one critical vulnerability. According to Veracode’s State of Software Security (SOSS) report, 87.5 percent of Java applications, 92 percent of C++ applications, and 85.7 percent of .NET application contain at least one vulnerability. Even with a stronger focus on security in 2019, most software will still riddled with security vulnerabilities.
Misconfigured server infrastructure is often considered one of the most significant causes of data breaches within the IT industry. This human error phenomenon is usually unintentional, but it can have catastrophic consequences regarding the exposure of sensitive personal information as well as potentially damaging the reputation of your business.Misconfiguration of the cloud platform took the top spot in this year’s survey as the single biggest threat to cloud security.
4 mobile security threats that companies must fight in 2019: Cryptojacking, Data breaches, Insecure networks and Social engineering attacks. Also Mobile Spear phishing campaigns will form the cornerstone for targeted attacks on organizations. The Wi-Fi attack vector isn’t going away any time soon, despite 5G hype. I don’t expect the assault on mobile to slow down as according to Gartner’s Market Guide to Mobile Threat Defense, 42 million mobile malware attacks take place each year.
Google says that Android 9 Brings Significant Security Advancements. Google has focused on aspects such as platform hardening, anti-exploitation, hardware-backed security. There are also new protections for the Application Sandbox.
Ultrasonic Tracking are Beacons on the Rise. It is an inaudible sound with encoded data that can be used on a listening device with suitable application to receive information that could be just about anything. There are numerous scenarios in which ultrasonic tracking beacons can be surreptitiously used and misused.
PUAs are being weaponized. PUA is the acronym for “Potentially Unwanted Application.” This is a general category used by all vendors to tag particular applications that can be misused by malicious people. Recently, an active campaign was spotted in the well-known Emotet Banking Trojan, which makes use of Freeware system tools but with an obscure purpose.
Microsoft has officially announced ‘Windows Sandbox’ for running applications in isolation. Microsoft’s coming ‘Windows Sandbox’ feature is a lightweight virtual machine that allow users to run potentially suspicious software in isolation. Windows 10 19H1 Build 18305 adds support for a new sandbox feature for isolating potentially suspicious apps, plus several other new security fixes.
It seems that Security Teams Need to Maintain Packet-level Visibility Into All Traffic Flowing Across Their Networks. The most destructive disaster is the one you do not see coming. While there is no evacuating cyberspace to avoid a storm of hackers, prior warning gives security teams a chance to stop cybercriminals before they can wreak havoc and make off with sensitive customer data or company secrets. There is an all too common adage that it is not a question of if a company will be hacked, but when they will find the hack. The realities of the cyberspace make it too difficult to reliably keep hackers out of corporate networks. That is not to say security teams should give up, but rather that they need to shift their goals.
Is 5G Technology a Blessing or a Curse for Security? Depends Who You Ask. It is best to Prepare for the Coming 5G Security Threats. But do we understand the 5G security threats to come? Most probably not, because it seems that the general understanding of 5G is pretty shallow for very many organizations. Many countries are not comfortable with the Chinese building its 5G network.
Somewhat quietly over the past couple of years there has been a flurry of breakthroughs in biometric technology (especially face and fingerprint recognition). New Boom in Facial Recognition Tech Prompts Privacy Alarms. Tech advances are accelerating the use of facial recognition as a reliable and ubiquitous mass surveillance tool, privacy advocates warn. Now facial recognition appears to be on the verge of blossoming commercially. There is potential risk that Surveillance Inhibits Freedom of Expression.
Old outdated encryption technologies refuse to die. MD5 and SHA-1 are still used in 2018 and their use does not seen to end in 2019. The current state of cryptanalysis against MD5 and SHA-1 allows for collisions, but not for pre-images. Still, it’s really bad form to accept these algorithms for any purpose.
Law is trying to weaken encryption in some countries. A newly enacted law rushed through Australia’s parliament will compel technology companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google to disable encryption protections so police can better pursue terrorists and other criminals. “I think it’s detrimental to Australian and world security,” said Bruce Schneier, a tech security expert affiliated with Harvard University and IBM. It could be a be a boon to the criminal underworld by undermining the technical integrity of the internet, hurting digital security and user privacy. We need good encryption in 2019 to keep Internet safe.
The payment card industry is thinking about security standards such as EMV 3D Secure and emerging technologies such as contactless payments.
The use of bug bounty programs to find security vulnerabilities in software and services is increasing.In January, the EU starts running Bug Bounties on Free and Open Source Software where European Commission to start offering bug bounties on 14 Free Software projects like Notepad++ and VLC that the EU institutions rely on. Going into 2019, the cybersecurity community will continue to learn about the world of threat hunting and how organizations can implement an effective threat hunting program.
You might need a password manager in 2019 more than you needed it now. If you thought passwords will soon be dead, think again. They’re here to stay — for now. Passwords are cumbersome and hard to remember and sometimes are easily hackable. Nobody likes passwords but they’re a fact of life. How do you make them better? You need a password manager. Some examples for proposed alternatives to passwords include biometric identification, disposable passwords, certificate-based systems and FIDO2 USB sticks.
You might also need two-factor authentication can save you from hackers. If you find passwords annoying, you might not like two-factor authentication much. But security experts say it’s one of the best ways to protect your online accounts and it usually (when implemented well) only adds a few extra seconds to your day.
Two factor authentication has been considered as best practice for some time, but even that alone might not be enough in 2019. Assuming you have your strong passwords in place and your two-factor authentication set up, you think your accounts are now safe? Think again. There’s much more to be done.
Two factor authentication can be hacked. Phishing Attempts That Bypass 2FA are here to stay. As we try to up our security game, the bad guys up their tactics too. Amnesty.org shared an interesting write up about phishing attacks that are bypassing 2FA. If you’re an at risk user, that extra two-factor security code sent to your phone may not be enough to protect your email account as Hackers Bypass Gmail 2FA at Scale. Although 2FA is generally a good idea, hackers can still phish certain forms of 2FA, such as those that send a code or token over text message. Some users likely need to switch to a more robust methods.
Keep in mind that your phone number can be a key for a hacker to many of your services. You might think your Social Security or bank account numbers are the most sensitive digits in your life. Nowadays, hackers can do far more damage with little effort using just your cell phone number. Whether you’re an AT&T, Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile customer, every cell phone number can be a target for hackers. And it takes remarkably little effort to wreak havoc to your online life.
810 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.wired.com/story/iran-hackers-us-phishing-tensions/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/06/20/confirmed-nasa-has-been-hacked/amp/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://pentestmag.com/configuration-error-likely-culprit-in-massive-google-outage/
Tomi Engdahl says:
SSH gets protection against side channel attacks
https://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20190621081455
Damien Miller (djm@) has just committed a new feature for SSH that should help protect against all the various memory side channel attacks that have surfaced recently.
Add protection for private keys at rest in RAM against speculation and memory sidechannel attacks like Spectre, Meltdown, Rowhammer and Rambleed. This change encrypts private keys when they are not in use with a symmetic key that is derived from a relatively large “prekey” consisting of random data (currently 16KB).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Try Salting Passwords if You Don’t Trust Password Managers
https://www.macobserver.com/tips/quick-tip/trust-password-managers-trick/
Salting Passwords
Some people don’t trust password managers (which is totally fine). Maybe you don’t like them if they aren’t open source, or you’re uncomfortable with the fact that a password manager is putting “all your eggs in one basket.”
You can use any password manager you want by manually salting your passwords. A “salt” is any random data you add to an input to make it more unique, and thus more secure.
So when you use your password manager to generate a new password for a website, copy and paste it into the website form. Then, add a word at the end or beginning to salt it. This can be any word you want, like “bacon.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Thoughts on Digital Minimalism
https://blog.paessler.com/5-thoughts-on-digital-minimalism
concept of digital minimalism and developed 5 thoughts that I would like to present.
1. Know the Platforms You Are Registered On
2. Reduce Your Technical Equipment
3. Maintain a Logical Folder Structure
4. Control the Media You Consume
5. Understand That Digital Minimalism Exists in Different Forms
Tomi Engdahl says:
Malicious Attacks On Open Source Are Going to Get Worse: Developers Need to Take Notice
https://blog.sonatype.com/malicious-attacks-on-open-source-are-going-to-get-worse
Tomi Engdahl says:
These are the biggest risks facing our world in 2019
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/these-are-the-biggest-risks-facing-our-world-in-2019/
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 reasons chaos engineering is indispensable to the CISO
https://opensource.com/article/19/5/reasons-chaos-engineering-ciso
Chaos engineering is a better approach than traditional business continuity planning and disaster recovery to test the resilience of today’s complex enterprise security programs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Solving Your Open Source Risk with Veracode
https://info.veracode.com/whitepaper-solving-your-open-source-risk-with-veracode–paid-media.html?utm_source=fuel-online&utm_medium=paid-social-facebook&utm_content=open-source-risk
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-codebook-5bc92019-0a0b-4176-87fe-f96529840ac5.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Security vs Privacy’ OR ’Security & Privacy’
https://pentestmag.com/security-vs-privacy-or-security-privacy/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Hackers Infiltrate Open Source Projects
https://www.darkreading.com/application-security/how-hackers-infiltrate-open-source-projects-/d/d-id/1335072
The dependency trees of modern software-development make smaller open-source projects vulnerable to hackers sabotaging code.
Tomi Engdahl says:
U.S. May Outlaw Messaging Encryption Used By WhatsApp, iMessage And Others, Report
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/06/29/u-s-may-outlaw-uncrackable-end-to-end-encrypted-messaging-report-claims/
End-to-end encrypted messaging is a major issue for law enforcement—as the world shifts from easy to crack (for governments) cellular SMS messaging to various flavors of IP messaging, such as WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal and Wickr, governments are exploring their options.
Politico reported that “senior Trump administration officials met on Wednesday [June 26] to discuss whether to seek legislation prohibiting tech companies from using forms of encryption that law enforcement can’t break,” it was of real significance, “a provocative step that would reopen a long-running feud between federal authorities and Silicon Valley.”
Trump officials weigh encryption crackdown
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/27/trump-officials-weigh-encryption-crackdown-1385306
Tomi Engdahl says:
CHINA STOLE NSA CYBERWEAPONS AND USED THEM AGAINST US ALLIES
https://futurism.com/the-byte/china-cyberweapons-nsa-us-allies
Security firm Symantec is reporting that hackers, likely working for the Chinese government, commandeered tools used against China by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) — and then used the cyberweapons to attack American allies.
“This is the first time we’ve seen a case — that people have long referenced in theory — of a group recovering unknown vulnerabilities and exploits used against them, and then using these exploits to attack others,”
Buckeye: Espionage Outfit Used Equation Group Tools Prior to Shadow Brokers Leak
https://www.symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/buckeye-windows-zero-day-exploit
Windows zero day was exploited by Buckeye alongside Equation Group tools during 2016 attacks. Exploit and tools continued to be used after Buckeye’s apparent disappearance in 2017.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will DDOS Attack Break the Servers…
https://pentestmag.com/will-ddos-attack-break-the-servers/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Germany responds to Trump: Huawei has no back door, but Cisco has 10
http://www.canadanewsagency.com/information/5567.html
Today, the Daily Mirror in Berlin, Germany, published an important article titled “Europeans should not blindly follow Trump”. At a special moment, they criticized the Trump administration for its misconduct.
This article reveals a very important fact that no backdoors were found in Huawei’s products, and 10 vulnerabilities were discovered on Cisco products in the United States.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Many internet outages are caused by problems with the trust-based Border Gateway Protocol, which was conceived in 1989 and remains largely unchanged since 1994 — IN A WEEKS-LONG stretch in 2014, hackers stole thousands of dollars a day in cryptocurrency from owners.
https://www.wired.com/story/bgp-route-leak-internet-outage/
Tomi Engdahl says:
What 36,000 OSS Projects and 12,000 Commercial Dev Teams Taught Us About Secure Coding Practices
https://blog.sonatype.com/2019ssc
As we’ve been saying for years “Innovation is critical, speed is king, and open source is at center stage.” Today’s research further underscores these accelerating trends throughout the software supply chain. It also shows that taming the supply chain is possible. By making better supplier choices, component selection, and using automation, dev teams are seeing impressive rewards. In fact, for those development teams actively managing their software supply chains, the use of known vulnerable component releases were reduced by 55%.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hong Kong Protests ‘Show The Dangers of a Cashless Society’
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/07/06/2019223/hong-kong-protests-show-the-dangers-of-a-cashless-society
. In Hong Kong, most people use a contactless smart card called an “Octopus card” to pay for everything from transit, to parking, and even retail purchases. It’s pretty handy: Just wave your tentacular card over the sensor and make your way to the platform. But no one used their Octopus card to get around Hong Kong during the protests. The risk was that a government could view the central database of Octopus transactions to unmask these democratic ne’er-do-wells. Traveling downtown during the height of the protests? You could get put on a list, even if you just happened to be in the area.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613748/satellites-threaten-privacy/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.prodefence.org/usb-forensics-reconstruction-of-digital-evidence-from-usb-drive-2/
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.securitytube.net/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://gbhackers.com/pcapxray-network-forensics-tool/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://kn100.me/exploiting-upnp-literally-childsplay/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why I Ran a Lock-Picking Session In My Office
https://pentestmag.com/why-i-ran-a-lock-picking-session-in-my-office/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://pentestmag.com/leveraging-traditional-humint-methodologies-in-cyberspace/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Quickly Run a Basic Security Audit Against Docker & Secure the Docker Daemon
https://pentestmag.com/how-to-quickly-run-a-basic-security-audit-against-docker-secure-the-docker-daemon/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study reveals how screwed we’d be during a GPS outage
https://bgr.com/2019/06/15/gps-tracking-outage-study/
In short, according to the study performed by North Carolina-based RTI International, we could be looking at a $1 billion daily hit to the economy during such an outage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Increasing Enterprise Visibility: Integrated Defense with Mitre ATT&CK
https://pentestmag.com/increasing-enterprise-visibility-integrated-defense-with-mitre-attck/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://fossbytes.com/best-kali-linux-tools-hacking/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are Microtransactions Safe in iGaming?
https://pentestmag.com/are-microtransactions-safe-in-igaming/
Gaming is a very profitable business. Last year, the industry earned approximately $135 billion in general, and is expected to hit over $180 billion by 2021. At a global scale, this means that it makes $18 for each person every year. It turns out that gambling companies earn even more than the budget revenue of Indonesia ($130 billion), and these are only official figures. Moreover, if we mention cryptocurrency, about half of Bitcoin payments occur in the gambling industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://pentestmag.com/life-beyond-malware/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/surveillance-and-the-selfdriving-car
Tomi Engdahl says:
13 Reasons Why WordPress Hacks are Successful
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/13-reasons-wordpress-hacks-successful/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer Security and the Illusion of Control.
https://medium.com/@guerilla7/computer-security-and-the-illusion-of-control-578939034d2f
Get started
Computer Security and the Illusion of Control.
Ron Flores Del Rosario
Ron Flores Del Rosario
Jun 25 · 5 min read
Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash
Disclaimer: This is my personal research, ideas and rants are of my own.
This story is for a general audience. So, let’s get some basic understanding of what computer security is according to Wikipedia:
Computer security, cybersecurity[1] or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems from theft or damage to their hardware, software or electronic data, as well as from disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.
The field is growing in importance due to increasing reliance on computer systems, the Internet[2] and wireless networks such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and due to the growth of “smart” devices, including smartphones, televisions and the various tiny devices that constitute the Internet of things. Due to its complexity, both in terms of politics and technology, it is also one of the major challenges of the contemporary world.[3]
In short, the modern world we live in relies on computer systems to operate properly. In our hospitals, in our children’s school, in our streets, up in the air with airplanes and satellites, its everywhere.
Perhaps this importance is captured succinctly by this statement:
Due to its complexity, both in terms of politics and technology, it is also one of the major challenges of the contemporary world.
Based on my experience in computer security, a complex technology is harder to secure mostly because of the following:
Technology is relatively new or proprietary.
Tightly coupled system, a lot of dependencies with one another or other technology.
Harder to threat model because it has too many moving pieces that provides a potential attack surface.
In closing, beyond the technological barriers and limitations, the political and/or human factor makes computer security a endless chase. We can design resilient systems and vulnerability-free software but when humans start using the technology, along with the other factors I identified here, it adds an element of randomness or chaos in the mix.
Control is an illusion in this field.
Tomi Engdahl says:
OPERATION SOFT CELL: A WORLDWIDE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROVIDERS
https://www.cybereason.com/blog/operation-soft-cell-a-worldwide-campaign-against-telecommunications-providers
Tomi Engdahl says:
How secure is AES against brute force attacks?
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1279619
Tomi Engdahl says:
There’s A Reason Why You Keep Getting Ads For Things You’ve Talked About But Haven’t Actually Searched Up Online
https://www.narcity.com/news/theres-a-reason-why-you-keep-getting-ads-for-things-youve-talked-about-but-havent-actually-searched-up-online
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/github-releases-new-tools-to-report-vulnerabilities
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/sei_blog/2017/04/best-practices-for-ntp-services.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://pentestmag.com/article-fun-ettercap/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://pentestmag.com/the-art-of-ciso-master-of-warfare/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tales From the Deep Web: Hiring In the Hacker Underground
https://hackernoon.com/tales-from-the-deep-web-hiring-in-the-hacker-underground-46d0cace4fc5
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Tiny $10 Device Can Perform NFC Payment Replay Attacks
https://blog.hackster.io/this-tiny-10-device-can-perform-nfc-payment-replay-attacks-5486d6ecc405
Near-field communication (NFC) payments are the contactless way that you can purchase goods by tapping your credit card or compatible smartphone to a reader. They’re a convenient way to make payments, and are therefore fairly popular. And, for the most part, they’re pretty secure as well, as revolving encrypted authorization tokens are used. But there is still a vulnerability with a credit card’s magnetic stripe data (MSD) that opens up the possibility for replay attacks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Systems-design Design Center > How To Article
Designing hardware for data privacy
https://www.edn.com/design/systems-design/4462039/Designing-hardware-for-data-privacy
As Internet-connected devices become more prevalent, they are fueling an increasing risk to privacy. Fortunately, there are now many off-the-shelf chips and services available to help designs resist intrusion and prevent unauthorized access to private data. The key lies in identifying the specific threats that need mitigation.
Broadly stated, privacy entails keeping designated information inaccessible without authorization from the information’s owner. Privacy involves security; information cannot be kept private without also keeping it secure. But they are not the same thing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Keeping personal data personal with database sanitization
https://www.anders.fi/en/blog/keeping-personal-data-personal-with-database-sanitization/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=sanitization&utm_content=frank
We made a sanitization tool for your database dumps so that you can worry less about dumping data and more about fixing things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA Starts Contributing Low-Level Code to UEFI BIOS Alternative
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nsa-contributes-low-level-stm-coreboot,39704.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Microgaming Software Developers Protect Users from Hacks
https://pentestmag.com/how-microgaming-software-developers-protect-users-from-hacks/
Let’s see what technologies the company uses in order to guarantee the quality of their service and maintain the trust of players.
SSL Security. This is one of the most commonly used encryption technologies. SSL creates a protected channel to transfer personal information such as bank details.
Anti-DDoS. Distributed Denial of Service attacks can completely bring down a gambling platform. Microgaming utilizes various anti-DDoS techniques to minimize the chance of this happening.
AES-Encryption. The Advanced Encryption Standard is another well-known security measure used for sending sensitive information online. AES uses different keys (128-bit, 192-bit, 256-bit) and a block cipher to encrypt information.
Database Consistency Scanner. Online gambling platforms are linked to huge databases with email addresses, names, contact numbers. Moreover, game developers can store live information about games. Microgaming uses scanners to regularly check their databases for anomalies and signs of integrity failure.
Data Loss Prevention. Data loss can damage online casinos and their games. Without a consistent data feed, platforms may not be able to provide live gambling odds or accurate prices on slot games. Microgaming employs data loss prevention techniques – this ensures that in case of data loss, their games and platforms can perform functions to recover it.
Internal Testing. Microgaming regularly audits their own products. They are known to test their games on a monthly basis, checking their integrity and security features. Moreover, the company has a dedicated Fraud and Collusion department – this team monitors Microgaming gameplay activity to check for inconsistencies and any malicious attempts.
All technology that serves as a basis for casino games, should be constantly improved.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://surfshark.com/blog/cloud-usage-security-and-risks