Nothing is more difficult than making predictions. Instead of trowing out wild ideas what might be coming, will be making educated guesses based on what has happened during the last 12 months and several years before that.
The past year has seen a rapid increase in the adoption of up-and-coming technologies. Everyday items are getting
smarter and more connected. Companies are saving millions with new technologies and cities are racing to
implement smart solutions. 5G promises to bring wireless high speed broadband to everywhere. On the other hand those solutions add new kinds of vulnerabilities. Competing in today’s digital marketplace requires that organizations are cyber-savvy. 2020 is when cybersecurity gets even weirder, so get ready.
Here are some trends and predictions for cyber security in 2020:
Cyber Attacks: Cyberattacks grow in volume and complexity.Many countries that are going to emerge as major threats in the 2020s. Nation-state backed cyber groups have been responsible for major incidents over the last decade. And now more countries want the same power. Cyberattacks range from targeting your database to steal information that can be sold on the dark web, to hijacking unused CPU cycles on your devices to mine for cryptocurrencies, or trying to infect vulnerable systems so they can be used later as part of a botnet.
IoT security: IoT security is still getting worse until it starts to get better. IoT security is an extremely hot topic right now and will be hot for many years to come. Industrial IoT risk has been discussed a lot. Physics dictates local application deployment, because the control rate of most industrial systems is 10 milliseconds or below. Smart Building Security Awareness Grows. The risks of the IoT in financial services are great. An explosion in IoT devices significantly raises the threat level. Gartner predicted that the world will see nearly 21 billion IoT devices by next year and it would be nice if all of them would be secure, but many of them unfortunately are not secure. Hackers are continually looking for ways to exploit device vulnerabilities. From smart TV’s, IP cameras, and smart elevators, to hospital infusion pumps and industrial PLC controllers, IoT and OT (Operational Technology) devices are inherently vulnerable and easy to hack. Why? Because IoT security is complicated and security should consider and integrated with IoT deployments. Gartner Says Worldwide IoT Security Spending Will Reach $1.9 Billion in 2019, and will raise to $ 3.1 billion in 2021, making it one of the fastest growing segments in cybersecurity industry. IoT landscape is complex, and so are the security solutions. These tackle the different challenges of IoT- device hardening, encryption, discovery, data protection, malware and anomaly detection, policy enforcement and more. You might have to do a little work with your internet of things devices to stay secure. A failure by many IoT device manufacturers to follow cryptographic best practices is leaving a high proportion of the devices vulnerable to attack. One in every 172 active RSA certificates are vulnerable to attack. It is a good idea to build a separate network segments for IoT devices so that they are isolated from the normal office network. FBI recommends that you keep your IoT devices on a separate network.
IoT privacy: Silicon Valley Is Listening to Your Most Intimate Moments. The world’s biggest companies got millions of people to let temps analyze some very sensitive recordings made by your “smart” speakers and smart phones. A quarter of Americans have bought “smart speaker” devices such as the Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod. Consulting firm Juniper Research Ltd. estimates that by 2023 the global annual market for smart speakers will reach $11 billion, and there will be about 7.4 billion voice-controlled devices in the wild. That’s about one for every person on Earth. The question is, then what? Having microphones that listen all the time is concerning. Also some attackers are terrifying homeowners and making them feel violated in their own homes.
Medical systems security: Cyberattacks on Medical Devices Are on the Rise—and Manufacturers Must Respond. Attacks on networked medical devices, and the data they collect and transmit, can be costly. Patient safety is a critical concern, especially with devices such as defibrillators and insulin pumps that could cause patient harm or death if they malfunction. It’s shocking that a few years after WannaCry and NotPetya, the healthcare industry is still not prepared to deal with ransomware attacks. Many hospitals and healthcare networks that have been hit by ransomware over the past few months.
Surveillance cameras: Surveillance cameras are capturing what we do on the streets, at airports, in stores, and in much of our public space. China’s Orwellian video surveillance gets a bad rap but the US isn’t far behind as US has nearly the same ratio of security cameras to citizens as China.And the numbers are growing all over the world. One billion surveillance cameras will be deployed globally by 2021, according to data compiled by IHS Markit. Russia is building one of the world’s largest facial recognition networks and it may even be bigger than China’s 200 million camera system. China’s installed base is expected to rise to over 560 million cameras by 2021, representing the largest share of surveillance devices installed globally, with the US rising to around 85 million cameras. Now US, like China, has about one surveillance camera for every four people (in 2018 China had 350 million cameras and USA 70 million). Surveillance cameras are getting better, smaller and cheaper and can be installed almost anywhere. It would be very easy to sneak another device onto a hotel’s Wi-Fi network, stream that video over the internet to the computer.
Facial recognition: Private companies and governments worldwide are already experimenting with facial recognition technology. Facial recognition software is touted as making us safer. But mass surveillance has downsides of major proportions. Massive errors found in facial recognition tech. Facial recognition systems can produce wildly inaccurate results, especially for non-whites. Russia is building one of the world’s largest facial recognition networks. Individuals, lawmakers, developers – and everyone in between – should be aware of the rise of facial recognition, and the risks it poses to rights to privacy, freedom, democracy and non-discrimination.
Shut off Internet: Worrying worldwide trend employed by various governments: preventing people from communicating on the web and accessing information. Amid widespread demonstrations over different issues many countries have started cutting Internet connections from people. Some countries, namely China, architected their internet infrastructure from the start with government control in mind. Russia is aiming to this direction. Iran, India, Russia. For better or worse, an internet blackout limits the government’s ability to conduct digital surveillance on citizens.
Security First: Implementing Cyber Best Practices Requires a Security-First Approach. Competing in today’s digital marketplace requires that organizations be cyber-savvy. The best defense is to start with a security-driven development and networking strategy that builds a hardened digital presence from the ground up. This not only ensures that your online services and web applications are protected from compromise, but also enables security to automatically evolve and adapt right alongside the development of your digital presence, rather than it having to be constantly rigged and retrofitted to adapt to digital innovation.
Zero Trust Network Access: Many of the most damaging breaches have been the result of users gaining access to unauthorized levels of network resources and devices. Zero Trust is an enforceable, identity-driven access policy that includes seamless and secure two-factor/OTP authentication across the organization. Zero Trust Network Access ensures that all users and devices are identified, profiled, and provided appropriate network access. It also ensures that new devices are automatically assigned to appropriate network segments based on things like device profiles and owners. When combined with Network Access Control (NAC), organizations can also discover, identify, grant appropriate access, and monitor devices, thereby enhancing your access and segmentation strategy.
Anti-virus software: Only Half of Malware Caught by Signature AV. The percentage of malware that successfully bypassed signature-based antivirus scanners at companies’ network gateways has increased significantly, either by scrambling
code known as “packing” using basic encryption techniques or by the automatic creation of code variants. It seems that new approaches like machine learning and behavioral detection are necessary to catch threats. Meanwhile, network attacks have risen, especially against older vulnerabilities.
Ransomware attacks: Ransomware will remain a major threat in the coming year, as the criminal business model continues to flourish. That’s a move that security professionals have long condemned, warning that paying the ransom in a ransomware attack could end up causing more turmoil for victims – as well as inspire other cybercriminals to launch ransomware attacks. Microsoft never encourage a ransomware victim to pay. What to do with this is question. How much does a large-scale ransomware attack cost, as opposed to just hiring an adequate number of skilled IT personnel, and having disaster recovery plans in place? There is no complete security solution that could stop all attacks, but you should have decent protection. It would seem prudent to have adequate staff and offline BACKUPS to deal with this kind of situation, so decent recovery would be possible. Having no backup system is the gamble many companies and public entities seem to be playing. Good backups helps to recover from ransom attacks. There are new tactics coming to use in ransomware. A new Snatch ransomware strain that will reboot computers it infects into Safe Mode to disable any resident security solutions. Another new tactic by ransomware developers is to release a victim’s data if they do not pay the ransom – they will publish data that they steal to a competitor if the ransom is not paid.
Public sector: Public Sector Security Is Lagging. The state of cybersecurity and resilience in the public sector needs an
urgent boost in many countries. U.S. citizens rely on state governments and local municipalities to provide a host of services everything from access to public records, law enforcement protection, education and welfare to voting and election services. Cybercriminals have been targeting state and local governments with ransomware tools, which infect an organization’s computer networks and lock up critical files.
Consumer confidence: Winning consumer confidence is crucial to the development of new digital services. In a PwC study, consumers are prepared to share personal information if it is of sufficient value to them. On the other hand, consumer confidence also needs to be earned that you keep the information safe.
API security: APIs now account for 40% of the attack surface for all web-enabled apps. It’s a good time to pay attention to API security, since some recent high-profile breaches have involved API vulnerabilities. OWASP, the Open Web Application Security Project known for its top 10 list of web application vulnerabilities, published the release candidate version of its API Security Top 10 list at the end of September 2019. Also it’s almost 2020 and some sysadmins are still leaving Docker admin ports exposed on the internet.
Skills gap: Security teams are already grappling with serious challenges due to the growing cybersecurity skills gap, are being tasked to secure an ever-expanding network footprint. Security teams are often left to secure virtual and cloud environments, the implementation of SaaS services, DevOps projects, the growing adoption of IoT, mobile workers, and an expanding array of personal connected devices after they have already been implemented. They often do not have enough people and enough knowledge on those new technologies to do their work well. The cybersecurity unemployment rate is zero, with over 1 million jobs currently unfilled, a number that is expected to climb to 3.5 million by 2021. 145% Growth is Needed to Meet Global Demand.
Think Like Your Adversary: Cybersecurity leaders need to access the potential vulnerabilities (from the mindset of the adversary) and devise effective defensive countermeasures unique to their company’s needs. Programmers Should Think like Hackers. Security must be taken into account in all programming steps.
Third party security: Most Companies Don’t Properly Manage Third-Party Cyber Risk. It’s been established that good cybersecurity requires not just an internal assessment of an organization’s own security practices, but also a close look at the security of the partners that businesses rely upon in today’s modern, interconnected world. Developing a Third-Party Cyber Risk Management (TPCRM) strategy is becoming more common with every news headline regarding a major breach that stemmed from a company’s relationship with a third-party.
Privacy and surveillance: Fears Grow on Digital Surveillance. Americans are increasingly fearful of monitoring of their online and offline activities, both by governments and private companies. More than 60 percent of US adults believe it is impossible to go about daily life without having personal information collected by companies or the government. Google and Facebook help connect the world and provide crucial services to billions. But their system can also be used for surveillance. Amnesty International says Facebook and Google’s omnipresent surveillance is inherently incompatible with the right to privacy and is a danger to human rights. The claim is that the companies’ surveillance-based business model is inherently incompatible with the right to privacy and poses a threat to a range of other rights including freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of thought, and the right to equality and non-discrimination. Amnesty International has called for a radical transformation of the tech giants’ core business model and said that Google and Facebook should be forced to abandon what it calls their surveillance-based business model because it is “predicated on human rights abuse.”
5G: Forecasting that 2020 will be “the year of 5G” no longer qualifies as a bold prediction. Billions of dollars’ worth of 5G rollouts are scheduled for the coming year, which will bring the emergent technology to countries around the world. The arrival of 5G will fuel an explosion of never-before-seen IoT machines, introducing uncharted vulnerabilities and opening the door for cyber-criminals to compromise our increasingly intertwined cities. Claims that 5G offers “better security” for IoT may not ring true.
5G security: The new 5G mobile networks will be the backbone of future digitalized operations. Therefore, it is also important to ensure the security and immunity of 5G networks.The Council of the European Union has warned member states that the introduction of 5G networks poses increased security risks while also bringing economic and infrastructure benefits. ENISA, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity has published a ThreatLandscape for 5G Networks, assessing the threats related to the fifth generation of mobile telecommunications networks (5G). Organised cybercrime, rogue insiders and nation-state-backed hackers are among the groups that could soon be targeting 5G networks. Claims that 5G offers “better security” for IoT may not ring true – with the technology remaining vulnerable to SIM-jacking attacks within private Industry 4.0-style deployments. 5G SIM-swap attacks could be even worse for industrial IoT than now. Criminals can convince telcos to port a victim’s number to a new SIM card controlled by the criminal. Trust your hardware or operator? Pah, you oughta trust nobody. Do not put all your security and identification to this SIM card.
DNS Over HTTPS (DoH): DoH encrypted DNS queries are already set to arrive in Chrome and Firefox web browsers. Microsoft Will Bring DNS Over HTTPS (DoH) to Windows 10 in an attempt to keep user traffic as private as possible. DoH support in Windows means encrypted DNS queries. Microsoft says that DoH doesn’t require DNS centralization if adoption is broad among operating systems and Internet service providers alike.
Firewall configuration: Now, more than ever, it is important to automate firewall processes to prevent misconfigurations and data breaches. Gartner has warned that “50% of enterprises will unknowingly and mistakenly have exposed some IaaS storage services, network segments, applications or APIs directly to the public internet, up from 25% at YE18.”. This is a human problem, not a firewall problem.
Bot attacks: Bots are being used to take over user accounts, perform DDoS attacks, abuse APIs, scrape unique content and pricing information and more. Organizations are Failing to Deal With Rising Bot Attacks.
Network security: Networks are continually growing in complexity and the cyberattack surface is constantly expanding. The network perimeter of today is elastic, expanding and contracting with the demands of both users and the business. In a rush to adopt digital business practices, many of these new network expansion projects are often being implemented ad hoc by individual lines of business. Routers sit at the edge of the network and see everything and they can be utilized to Making the Network the First Line of Defense. A critical step in building a stronger security posture and more robust data protection strategy is a 24×7 facility whose mission is to monitor, detect, investigate and resolve active threats. Cybercriminals only need to be successful once in finding a way to access the network – but the security team needs to monitor everything on the network and be right all the time to ensure security. Today’s core network is continually adapting to the introduction of new devices, applications, and workflows, along with shifting network configurations to support business requirements, requiring the use of advanced, intent-based segmentation.
Security-Driven Networking: Security-Driven Networking is a new, strategic approach to security that enables the seamless expansion of network environments and services without ever compromising on security. Essentially, it begins by crafting a comprehensive security policy that covers the entire organization. It outlines the protocols, enforcement and inspection technologies, policies, and protections required to be in place before any new network environment or solution is even placed on the drawing board. It requires the selection and full integration of security tools that not only work together to share and correlate intelligence and coordinate a unified response to threats, but that also work seamlessly across the widest variety of environments possible.
Critical infrastructure: Determined threat actors have, for some time, been extending their toolsets beyond Windows, and even beyond PC systems. In recent years, we have seen a number of high-profile attacks on critical infrastructure facilities and these have typically been aligned to wider geo-political objectives. Expect targeted attacks on critical infrastructure facilities to increase. APT33 has shifted targeting to industrial control systems software. We need to be worried about Cyber-Physical Security of the Power Grid. To protect this infrastructure you need to prioritize strategic risks that affect critical infrastructure: Concern yourself with the most important hacks, Understand the critical pieces of your infrastructure and Know your inter-dependencies.
Payment security: Payment security backslides for second straight year in 2019. Verizon’s 2019 Payment Security Report found that full compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) fell to36.7% globally, down from 52.5% in 2018. At the same time EU’s PSD2 (Payments Services Directive) lays down regulatory requirements for companies that provide payment services, including the use of personal data by new fintech companies that are not part of the established banking community. Security of online, including mobile, payments is a key aspect of the legislation. Nevertheless, as banks will be required to open their infrastructure and data to third parties. Although SSLv3 has been considered obsolete and insecure for a long time, a large number of web servers still support its use.
Election security: Nowadays, no elections can be held any longer without debate on influencing voters through online services. There are on-going accusations of Russian interference in US elections and fears about a possible reboot of this in the run-up to the 2020 elections. U.S. military cyber experts are plotting strategy in a fight against potential Russian and other cyberattacks ahead of the 2020 American and Montenegrin elections. As the 2020 Presidential election looms closer in the United
States, a key focus will be on securing election infrastructure to prevent tampering. Most of the largest US voting districts are still vulnerable to email spoofing. Also disinformation campaigns for political purposes are deeply rooted in cybercriminal endeavors. It’s quite possible that we will see changes to legislation and policy, as governments look to define more clearly what is and what isn’t allowed. Hacking is considered to be the biggest tech threats to 2020 elections in USA. Legislators are working on new laws, but it is not going to be enough in an era when technology is turning out entirely new attack surfaces.
False Flags: The use of false flags has become an important element in the playbook of several APT groups. This can be used to try to deflect attention away from those responsible for the attack or what is really happening.
Common attack tools: Cyber actors continually use commodity malware, scripts, publicly available security tools or administrator software during their attacks and for lateral movement, making attribution increasingly difficult.
Vulnerability disclosure: Most “white hat” cyber engineers seem to be driven by a sense of social responsibility best expressed as, “If you find something, say something.” Across the industry, the ethos is to share information quickly, whether the problem is a newly discovered exploit or an evolving cyber threat. The goal is to impel the affected vendor—hardware or software—to take quick action and produce a fix. There are good and bad ways to make vulnerabilities known. A premature “full disclosure” of a previously unknown issue can unleash the forces of evil, and the “black hats” often move faster than vendors or enterprise IT teams. The preferred path is a “responsible” or “coordinated” disclosure that happens behind the scenes. Public announcements occur after a specified period of time—typically 90 or 120 days. But things don’t work this way always.
Ransomware: Cybercriminals have become more targeted in their use of ransomware. It is inevitable that the cybercriminals will also attempt to diversify their attacks to include other types of devices besides PCs or servers. There is a Ransomware ‘Crisis’ in US Schools and in many cities in USA.
Supply chain: Use of supply chains will continue to be one of the most difficult delivery methods to address. It is likely that attackers will continue to expand this method through manipulated software containers, for example, and abuse of packages and libraries. Medium-sized companies are being targeted even more heavily by cyber criminals. They are often the weakest link in supply chains that include large corporations. There is the growth of counterfeit electronics.
Mobile: The main storage for our digital lives has moved from the PC to mobiles over last 10 years. Several countries have started demanding their own software (maybe in some cases also malware) to be installed to all smart phones. Putin signs law making Russian apps mandatory on smartphones, computers.
Android: Today 80% of Android apps are encrypting traffic by default. To ensure apps are safe, apps targeting Android 9 (API level 28) or higher automatically have a policy set by default that prevents unencrypted traffic for every domain. The heterogeneity of the Android versions will continue to be a problem in the coming year.
DDoS attacks: DNS amplification attacks continue to dominate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, while mobile devices make up a larger share of traffic. The number of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks rose 86% in the third quarter compared to a year ago. DNS amplification attacks accounted for 45% of the attacks, while HTTP
floods and TCP SYN attacks accounted for 14%. Mobile Devices Account for 41% of DDoS Attack Traffic.
Business security: Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) increasingly recognize that a reactive security posture is no longer sufficient for protecting their networks. Breaches will happen. Companies should treat cyberattacks “as a matter of when” and not “whether.” Inside threads are still a big issue as Employees are one of your biggest assets, but human beings are the weakest link in the security chain. Data leaks help attackers to craft more convincing social engineering attacks. Plan proper incident management because Quick, reliable, multichannel communication is a vital part of any incident management solution. Cybercriminals often choose very small companies as their targets because small businesses rarely spend significant money on security systems. Medium-sized companies are being targeted even more heavily by cyber criminals. They are often the weakest link in supply chains that include large corporations.
Cyber insurance: Cyber Has Emerged as a Risk That is Not Specifically Covered by Other Insurance Policies. Since business is now urged to take a risk management approach to cyber security, it is natural and inevitable that cyber insurance should be considered as part of the mix. Cyber insurance is set to grow.
New encryption: The problem with encrypted data is that you must decrypt it in order to work with it. There is a powerful solution to this scenario: homomorphic encryption. Homomorphic encryption makes it possible to analyze or manipulate encrypted data without revealing the data to anyone. Just like many other populr forms of encryption, homomorphic encryption uses a public key to encrypt the data. There are three main types of homomorphic encryption: partially homomorphic encryption (keeps sensitive data secure by only allowing select mathematical functions to be performed on encrypted data); somewhat homomorphic encryption (supports limited operations that can be performed only a set number of times); fully homomorphic encryption (this is the gold standard of homomorphic encryption that keeps information secure and accessible). Cryptographers have known of the concept of homomorphic encryption since 1978 but Gentry established the first homomorphic encryption scheme in 2009.The biggest barrier to widescale adoption of homomorphic encryption is that it is still very slow. Duality, a security startup co-founded by the creator of homomorphic encryption, raises $16M.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): The buzzword for 2019 that we have all heard a thousand times was Artificial Intelligence, AI. The term AI is often interchanged with machine learning. There is a lot of research to examine AI applications on cyber security. As cyberattacks grow in volume and complexity, hopefully artificial intelligence (AI) is helping under-resourced security operations analysts stay ahead of threats. Cybersecurity tools currently use this data aggregation and pattern analysis in the field of heuristic modeling: THE TRUE FUNCTION OF AI WILL BE TO DETERMINE WITH A LONG ARC OF TIME AND DATA, WHAT “NORMAL” LOOKS LIKE FOR A USER. AI can act as an advisor to analysts, helping them quickly identify and connect the dots between threats. Finnish cyber security company F-Secure is making research on AI agents and on that Mikko Hyppönen says that AI should not used to try to imitate humans and that artificial intelligence-based attacks are expected in the near future. Another Finnish cyber security company Nixu says that Artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize cyber security. According to Orlando Scott-Cowley from Amazon Web Services machine learning is the new normal in cyber security. Advanced Machine Learning layers are to be integrated into the latest Windows cybersecurity products. Leaders in artificial intelligence warn that progress is slowing, big challenges remain, and simply throwing more computers at a problem isn’t sustainable.
2020 problems: Has your business prepared for the ‘2020 problem’? Software updates for Windows 7 will end on January 14, 2020. As of Jan. 14, 2020, Windows 7 and Server 2008 technical support and software updates will no longer be available from Windows Update. There will no longer be updates for Office 2010. Some business users can buy extended security update support with extra money for some time. Python will stop supporting Python version 2 on January 1, 2020. Beginning on January 1, 2020, un-patched Splunk platform instances will be unable to recognize timestamps from events where the date contains a two-digit year. December 2019 Patch Tuesday was the last time Microsoft ever offered security updates for devices running Windows 10 Mobile.
Crypto wars continue: A decades-old debate: Government officials have long argued that encryption makes criminal investigations too hard. Governments all over the world say that Encrypted communication is a huge issue for law enforcement and the balance between the privacy of citizens and effective policing of criminal activity is top of mind for governments, technology companies, citizens and privacy organisations all over the world. The international police organization Interpol plans to condemn the spread of strong encryption. Top law enforcement officials in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, the larger group will cite difficulties in catching child sexual predators as grounds for companies opening up user communications to authorities wielding court warrants. Congress warns tech companies: Take action on encryption, or we will. US lawmakers are poised to “impose our will” if tech companies don’t weaken encryption so police can access data.
Do not weaken encryption: Companies, they say, should build in special access that law enforcement could use with a court’s permission. Technologists say creating these back doors would weaken digital security for everyone. Unfortunately, every privacy protection mechanism is subject to abuse by the morally challenged. That’s just a truth that must be accepted and overcome. Invading the privacy of the masses in order to catch criminals is unacceptable. Remember three things: One, that strong encryption is necessary for personal and national security. Two, that weakening encryption does more harm than good. And three, law enforcement has other avenues for criminal investigation than eavesdropping on communications and stored devices. If back-doors are added to encryption, they will be abused. If You Think Encryption Back Doors Won’t Be Abused, You May Be a Member of Congress. Bad encryption can have business consequences. Apple and Facebook told the committee that back doors would introduce massive privacy and security threats and would drive users to devices from overseas. In Australia 40% of firms say they have lost sales say they have lost sales or other commercial opportunities as a result of the encryption law being in place.
2FA: The second authentication factor might be a minor inconvenience, but it provides a major security boost. With past years riddled with security breaches, it is high time we evaluated the way we secure our online presence. Two factors are much better than one, but can still be hacked. Attacks that phish 2FA to access email accounts cost $100-$400; such attacks can be prevented with physical security keys. Also some physical security keys can be hacked as they turn to be less secure that what they were told to be in the advertisements.
Myth of sophisticated hacker in news: It’s the latest lexical stretch for an adjective that’s widely used in reports of cybersecurity incidents — and widely loathed by researchers as a result. If everything is sophisticated, nothing is sophisticated.
New security models: Google moved from perimeter-based to cloud-native security. Google’s architecture is the inspiration and template for what’s widely known as “cloud-native” today—using microservices and containers to enable workloads to be split into smaller, more manageable units for maintenance and discovery. Google’s cloud-native architecture was developed prioritizing security as part of every evolution.
Hacktivists: Hacktivists seek to obtain private information about large companies in order to embarrass or expose the company’s controversial business practices. Many companies are a treasure trove for personal information, whether they realize it or not. Experian is predicting that the emerging cannabis industry will experience an increase in data breaches and cybersecurity threats in 2020.
RCS messaging: RCS, expanded as Rich Communications Services, is a protocol that aims to replace SMS.RCS messaging has rolled out to Android users in the US. The update brings a lot of new features like chat, send hi-res videos and photos and create group chat. One criticism of RCS is that it doesn’t provide end-to-end encryption. RCS could be also better in many other security aspects. Researchers have discovered that the RCS protocol exposes most users to several cyber attacks. These risks are said to be mitigated by implementing the protocol with the security perspective in mind. The standard itself allows for poor security implementation, but GSMA advises its members to deploy rcs with the most secure settings possible.
Data breaches: Billions of Sensitive Files Exposed Online all the time. During the first six months of 2019, more than 4 billion records were exposed by data breaches. That’s a shocking statistic that’s made even more so when you realize that passwords were included in droves. On December 4, a security researcher discovered a treasure trove of more than a billion plain-text passwords in an unsecured online database. Many businesses wrongly assume they are too small to be on the radar of the threat actors. The truth is that it is all about the data, and small businesses often have less well-guarded data stores. All organizations are exposed to security breaches: from large multinationals to SMEs and public administrations. A common thread is unsecured cloud-based databases that left the sensitive information wide open for anyone to access online.
Phishing: Phishing remains 1 of the most pervasive online threats. Phishing emails are still managing to catch everyone out. Phishing e-mails which are used to steal credentials usually depend on user clicking a link which leads to a phishing website that looks like login page for some valid service. Google Chrome now offers better protection against it as safe Browsing displays warning messages to users ahead of visiting dangerous websites and before downloading harmful applications. New advanced ways to phish are taken to use.With dynamite phishing, the cyber criminals read the email communication from a system already infected with an information stealer. The infected user’s correspondents then receive malicious emails that quote the last “real” email between the two parties and look like a legitimate response from the infected user. Attacks that phish 2FA to access email accounts cost $100-$400; such attacks can be prevented with physical security keys.
Windows: Microsoft Doesn’t Back Up the Windows Registry Anymore. It’s still possible to perform Windows Registry backups, but the option is disabled by default. It’s time to disconnect RDP from the internet as brute-force attacks and BlueKeep exploits usurp convenience of direct RDP connection. Microsoft is ready to push a full-screen warning to Windows 7 users
who are still running the OS after January 14.
Linux: Support for 32 bit i386 architecture will be dropped by many Linux distributions. It turns out that there are essentially no upstream development resources dedicated to x86_32 Linux. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was badly broken.
Drones: Turkey is getting military drones armed with machine guns. Drone hacking happens. There is now Dronesploit – Metasploit for drones. Metasploit-style CLI framework tailored for tinkering with everybody’s favourite unmanned flying objects.
World market war: China tells government offices to remove all foreign computer equipment. China has ordered the replacement of all foreign PC hardware and operating systems in state offices over the next three years. This will mean that China to ditch all Windows PCs by 2022.China has already some of their own Linux distros like Kylin and Deepin. Many western countries are more or less banning Huawei teleocm equipment.
Cloud security: Traditional security tools and methodologies are ill-suited to protect cloud native’s developer-driven and infrastructure-agnostic multicloud patterns. The vision as laid out by these renown analysts is straightforward. The legacy “data center as the center of the universe” network and network security architecture are obsolete and has become an inhibitor to the needs of digital business. They describe the underpinning shift to cloud infrastructure, a digital transformation that has been underway for ten years. They also point out that the corporate network cannot protect end users who consume cloud applications from any location and any device without the contorting, expensive, backhaul of traffic through the corporate data center. Gartner coins a new term for the future of security and networks, SASE (pronounced sassy), Secure Access Service Edge, which is not anything really new. SASE promises to create a ubiquitous, resilient, and agile secure network service—globally. Most of the stolen data incidents in the cloud are related to simple human errors rather than concerted attacks. Expect that through 2020, 95% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault. A common thread is unsecured cloud-based databases that left the sensitive information wide open for anyone to access online. Also it’s almost 2020 and some sysadmins are still leaving Docker admin ports exposed on the internet.
Autocracy as a service: Now Any Government Can Buy China’s Tools for Censoring the Internet. “Autocracy as a service” lets countries buy or rent the technology and expertise they need, as they need it. China offers a full-stack of options up and down the layers of the internet, including policies and laws, communications service providers with full internet.
Geopolitics: US-China Tech Divide Could Cause Havoc. It is possible that world’s next major conflict can start in cyberspace. USA has ordered to ban certain hardware from China (Huawei and ZTE). China orders ban on US computers and software. Chinese government to replace foreign hardware and software within three years. Who needs who more?
International cyber politics: Lack of international standards for proper behavior in cyberspace prevents the United States and allies from policing adversaries as they wish to. US can’t ‘enforce standards that don’t exist’. We have international norms in the maritime; we don’t have those in cyber. It makes it difficult to enforce standard that don’t exist, and to therefore hold nations accountable for nefarious behavior. NATO did confirm in 2017 that it could invoke Article 5 of its charter should one or more member nations find themselves under a serious cyberattack that threatens critical military and civilian infrastructure.
Sources:
https://pentestmag.com/iot-security-its-complicated/
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https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/09/dronesploit_framework/
https://www.securityweek.com/blunt-effect-two-edged-sword-vulnerability-disclosures
https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.0/ReleaseNotes/FixDatetimexml2020
https://threatpost.com/email-voted-a-weak-link-for-election-security-with-dmarc-lagging/150909/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/04/council_of_eu_5g_risks/
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/05/major-voting-districts-vulnerable-email-security/
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/12/241053-hack-for-hire/fulltext
http://read.uberflip.com/i/1180978-siliconexpert-growth-of-counterfeit-electronics-3/0?acctid=6759
https://www.zdnet.com/article/2020-is-when-cybersecurity-gets-even-weirder-so-get-ready/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/09/china_orders_ban_on_us_computers_and_software/
https://www.securityweek.com/case-cyber-insurance
https://www.eetimes.eu/ai-will-empower-industry-4-0-when-it-arrives/
https://www.pandasecurity.com/mediacenter/security/2019-the-ransomware-tsunami/
https://blog.paloaltonetworks.com/2019/12/cloud-native-security-platform-age/
https://github.com/dhondta/dronesploit/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/1-in-every-172-active-rsa-certificates-are-vulnerable-to-exploit/
https://nationalcybersecurity.com/hacking-the-biggest-tech-threats-to-2020-elections/
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2019/12/17/bluekeep-time-disconnect-rdp-internet/
https://www.eff.org/wp/behind-the-one-way-mirror
https://www.gdatasoftware.com/blog/2019/12/35671-early-detection-and-repulsion-of-dangerous-attacks
https://www.is.fi/digitoday/tietoturva/art-2000006342803.html
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/30/duality-cybersecurity-16-million/
https://www.wired.com/story/sobering-message-future-ai-party/
https://security.googleblog.com/2019/12/an-update-on-android-tls-adoption.html?m=1
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-all-android-users-in-the-us-just-got-rcs-next-gen-sms/
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/12/scaring_people_.html
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2019-June/001261.html
https://lwn.net/ml/oss-security/CALCETrW1z0gCLFJz-1Jwj_wcT3+axXkP_wOCxY8JkbSLzV80GA@mail.gmail.com/
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-australia-46463029
https://cyware.com/news/rcs-technology-most-users-are-vulnerable-to-hacking-b53f9a6f
https://hub.packtpub.com/core-python-team-confirms-sunsetting-python-2-on-january-1-2020/
https://www.cnet.com/news/congress-warns-tech-companies-take-action-on-encryption-or-we-will/
https://cyware.com/news/rcs-technology-most-users-are-vulnerable-to-hacking-b53f9a6f
https://edri.org/facial-recognition-and-fundamental-rights-101/
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/10/insider-threats-startups-protect/
https://uk.pcmag.com/windows-10/121518/microsoft-doesnt-back-up-the-windows-registry-anymore
https://threatpost.com/ransomware-attack-new-jersey-largest-hospital-system/151148/
https://chiefexecutive.net/bridge-cybersecurity-skills-gap/
https://systemagic.co.uk/has-your-business-prepared-for-the-2020-problem/
https://news.yahoo.com/massive-errors-found-facial-recognition-tech-us-study-215334634.html
https://www.securityweek.com/most-companies-dont-properly-manage-third-party-cyber-risk
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2019/11/21/hyoty-panee-jakamaan-tietonsa-luottamus-ratkaisee/
https://pentestmag.com/advice-for-a-cybersecurity-leader-think-like-your-adversary/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/google-facebook-surveillance-privacy/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol30/1404/2019/en/
https://www.securityweek.com/compromised-connection-5g-will-unite-cities-and-also-put-them-risk
https://www.securityweek.com/amnesty-international-calls-facebook-google-rights-abusers
https://www.securityweek.com/microsoft-will-bring-dns-over-https-doh-windows
https://www.securityweek.com/cybersecurity-workforce-gap-145-growth-needed-meet-global-demand
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/11/19/successful-soc/
https://www.securityweek.com/making-network-first-line-defense
https://techbeacon.com/security/how-prioritize-strategic-risks-affect-critical-infrastructure
https://www.securityweek.com/transitioning-security-driven-networking-strategy
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/16/5g_iot_report/
https://www.securityweek.com/us-montenegro-plot-cyber-warfare-ahead-2020-elections
https://www.securityweek.com/fears-grow-digital-surveillance-us-survey
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/attack-on-online-retail/31786/
https://www.securityweek.com/implementing-cyber-best-practices-requires-security-first-approach
https://securelist.com/advanced-threat-predictions-for-2020/95055/
https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/smart-building-security-awareness-grows/d/d-id/1336597
https://www.cisomag.com/the-future-of-ai-in-cybersecurity/
https://www.ibm.com/security/artificial-intelligence
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2019/12/13/2fa-double-down-your-security/
https://cannatechtoday.com/experian-predicts-an-increase-in-global-cannabis-industry-data-breaches/
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2019/11/21/f-secure-tutkimaan-tekoalyagentteja/
https://www.securityweek.com/ongoing-research-project-examines-application-ai-cybersecurity
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/10151-mikko-hypponen-tekoalyn-ei-pida-matkia-ihmista
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/10124-nixu-selvitti-tekoaly-mullistaa-kyberturvan
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/10120-kyberturvassa-koneoppiminen-on-uusi-normaali
https://www.is.fi/digitoday/tietoturva/art-2000006316233.html
https://www.cyberscoop.com/apt33-microsoft-iran-ics/
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/exploits-and-vulnerabilities/2019/11/exploit-kits-fall-2019-review/
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/news/enisa-news/enisa-draws-threat-landscape-of-5g-networks/
https://systemagic.co.uk/has-your-business-prepared-for-the-2020-problem/
https://smartgrid.ieee.org/newsletters/november-2019/the-cyber-physical-security-of-the-power-grid
https://www.wired.com/story/un-secretary-general-antonio-guterres-internet-risks/
https://codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/russia-facial-recognition-networks/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/9/21002515/surveillance-cameras-globally-us-china-amount-citizens
https://www.wired.com/story/iran-internet-shutoff/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/fbi-recommends-that-you-keep-your-iot-devices-on-a-separate-network/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-interpol-encryption-exclusive-idUSKBN1XR0S7
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/to-the-point/does-facial-recognition-software-threaten-our-freedom
1,468 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Improved malware protection for users in the Advanced Protection
Program
https://security.googleblog.com/2020/09/improved-malware-protection-for-users.html
Googles Advanced Protection Program helps secure people at higher risk
of targeted online attacks, like journalists, political organizations,
and activists, with a set of constantly evolving safeguards that
reflect todays threat landscape.
Tomi Engdahl says:
U.S. House Passes IoT Cybersecurity Bill
https://www.securityweek.com/us-house-passes-iot-cybersecurity-bill
The U.S. House of Representatives this week passed the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act, a bill whose goal is to improve the security of IoT devices.
First introduced in 2017 and reintroduced in 2019, the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act will now have to pass the Senate before it can be signed into law by the president.
The bipartisan legislation is backed by Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), and Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo). There are also several major cybersecurity and tech companies that support the bill, including BSA, Mozilla, Rapid7, Cloudflare, CTIA and Tenable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ransomware attack at German hospital leads to death of patient
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-attack-at-german-hospital-leads-to-death-of-patient/
A person in a life-threatening condition passed away after being
forced to go to a more distant hospital due to a ransomware attack.
Tomi Engdahl says:
GitHub’s Move Away From Passwords: A Sign Of Things To Come?
https://hackaday.com/2020/09/15/githubs-move-away-from-passwords-a-sign-of-things-to-come/
Later this month, people who use GitHub may find themselves suddenly getting an error message while trying to authenticate against the GitHub API or perform actions on a GitHub repository with a username and password. The reason for this is the removal of this authentication option by GitHub, with a few ‘brown-out’ periods involving the rejection of passwords to give people warning of this fact.
This change was originally announced by GitHub in November of 2019, had a deprecation timeline assigned in February of 2020 and another blog update in July repeating the information. As noted there, only GitHub Enterprise Server remains unaffected for now. For everyone else, as of November 13th, 2020, in order to use GitHub services, the use of an OAuth token, personal token or SSH key is required.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Killer ramsomware is now officially a thing. Of course it would be in 2020.
Ransomware has become deadly!
It does not kill just company profits, it has started also to kill people.
Ransomware attack at German hospital leads to death of patient
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-attack-at-german-hospital-leads-to-death-of-patient/
A person in a life-threatening condition passed away after being
forced to go to a more distant hospital due to a ransomware attack.
German Hospital Hacked, Patient Taken to Another City Dies
https://www.securityweek.com/german-hospital-hacked-patient-taken-another-city-dies
German authorities said Thursday that what appears to have been a misdirected hacker attack caused the failure of IT systems at a major hospital in Duesseldorf, and a woman who needed urgent admission died after she had to be taken to another city for treatment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Military Confirms It Sought Information on Using ‘Heat Ray’ Against D.C. Protesters
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913748800/military-police-leaders-weighed-deploying-heat-ray-against-d-c-protesters
A spokesperson for Joint Forces Headquarters Command in Washington, D.C., confirmed to NPR that hours before federal police officers cleared a crowded park near the White House with smoke and tear gas on June 1, a military police staff officer asked if the D.C. National Guard had a kind of “heat ray” weapon that might be deployed against demonstrators in the nation’s capital.
The command “inquired informally about capabilities across the full-spectrum of non-lethal systems, to include the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) and Active Denial System (ADS),” Phillips told NPR in a written statement. “JFHQ-NCR does not possess these systems, did not request such systems, and no further action was taken as a result of the officer’s E-Mail query.”
The military developed the ADS some 20 years ago as a way to disperse crowds. There have been questions about whether it worked, or should be deployed in the first place. It uses millimeter wave technology essentially to heat the skin of people targeted by its invisible ray.
The email went on to say that the ADS can direct a beam toward a group and that “provides a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin. The effect is overwhelming, causing an immediate repel response by the targeted individual.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chinese Open Source Data Collection, Big Data, And Private Enterprise Work For State Intelligence and Security: The Case of Shenzhen Zhenhua
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3691999
Tomi Engdahl says:
MITRE releases emulation plan for FIN6 hacking group, more to follow
https://www.zdnet.com/article/mitre-releases-emulation-plan-for-fin6-hacking-group-more-to-follow/
New MITRE project to provide free emulation plans that mimic major threat actors in order to train and help defenders
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.9news.com.au/technology/password-hacking-how-secure-is-my-password-hacker/22b1b831-a6bb-4fa4-a21a-0d9f5b59d033
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vuonna 1989 Lapinlahden linnut lauloi ensimmäisen kerran ”Se ei käy”. Ehkä nyt koronan aikaisessa maailmassa vihdoin ymmärretään, että jos verkko ja tietoturva ovat erilliset elementit, niin se nyt vain ei kerta kaikkiaan käy.
https://blog.mcare.pro/se-ei-kay
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is domain name abuse something companies should worry about?
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/business-2/2020/09/is-domain-name-abuse-something-companies-should-worry-about/
Even though some organizations and companies may not realize it, their
domain name is an important asset. Their web presence can even make or
break companies. Therefor, domain name abuse is something that can
ruin your reputation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A real-life Maze ransomware attack If at first you dont succeed
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/09/18/a-real-life-maze-ransomware-attack-if-at-first-you-dont-succeed/
Youve probably heard terms like spray-and-pray and fire-and-forget
applied to cybercriminality, especially if your involvement in
cybersecurity goes back to the early days of spamming and scamming.
Those phrases recognise that sending unsolicited email is annoyingly
cheap and easy for cybercrooks, who generally dont bother running
servers of their own they often just rent email bandwidth from other
crooks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Plugging in a strange USB drive What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/09/17/plugging-in-strange-usb-drive/
External data storage devices have been around almost as long as
computers have existed. Magnetic tape and floppy disks, which were
once the dominant media, are now mostly fond memories, while optical
discs are mostly used in gaming consoles. For the past 20 years, the
dominant player on the external storage scene has been the USB flash
drive. No wonder: over the years, their storage capacity has
increased, and their prices have dropped.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Indictments Unlikely to Deter China’s APT41 Activity
https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/indictments-unlikely-to-deter-chinas-apt41-activity-/d/d-id/1338952
So far, at least, the threat group has not let public scrutiny slow it
down, security researchers say. Security researchers hold little hope
that indictments unsealed this week against five members of the
China-based APT41 threat group will deter it from acting with the same
impunity it has for the past several years. The US Department of
Justice on Wednesday unsealed two indictments one from August 2019
and the other from August 2020 charging five members of APT41 with
computer intrusions, including ransomware attacks and cryptojacking
schemes at over 100 companies in the US and abroad.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Testaa verkkopalvelusi tietoturva vertailussa 6 avoimen koodin
tietoturvaskanneria
https://www.tivi.fi/uutiset/testaa-verkkopalvelusi-tietoturva-vertailussa-6-avoimen-koodin-tietoturvaskanneria/55533dd6-bfff-40c8-b993-8d1ba275e47f
Krakkereiden käyttämät avoimen lähdekoodin tietoturvaskannerit on hyvä
tuntea. Parhaista on apua myös tietoturvan varmistamisessa. Viime
vuosina ei ole voinut olla lukematta uutisia miljoonien
käyttäjätunnusten ja salasanojen tietovuodoista. Joukossa on ollut
monien suomalaisten käyttämiä palveluja kuten Adobe, MyFitnessPal ja
MyHeritage. Tapaukset ovat herättäneet tarpeita etsiä ja korjata
verkkosovellusten tietoturva-aukot ennen verkkorikollisia. Vikojen
etsintään tarvitaan hyviä menetelmiä.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 ways cybercriminals can try to extort you
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/09/18/five-cybercriminals-extortion-schemes/
When it comes to coercing people into parting with their money,
cybercriminals seem to have an endless bag of tricks to choose from.
There are some tricks, that they favor more than others, one of which
is extortion. According to the FBIs latest Internet Crime Report, US
victims of extortion lost some US$107.5 million to these crimes last
year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nainen kuoli ambulanssiin, kun kyberhyökkäys jumitti saksalaisen
sairaalan tietojärjestelmän syyttäjä avasi harvinaisen
henkirikostutkimuksen
https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11553530
Jos tutkimukset johtavat syytteeseen, on kyseessä Reutersin mukaan
ensimmäinen kerta, kun ihmisen kuolema on suoraan yhdistetty
kyberhyökkäykseen. Rikosnimikkeenä olisi kuolemantuottamus. Saksassa
syyttäjä avasi perjantaina harvinaisen henkirikostutkimuksen, jossa
naisen epäillään kuolleen sairaalaan tehdyn kyberhyökkäyksen
seurauksena, kertoo uutistoimisto Reuters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Cybersecurity Threat No One Talks About Is A Simple Code
https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2020/09/20/the-cybersecurity-threat-no-one-talks-about-is-a-simple-code/
QR codes are going through a renaissance today. All businesses are
focusing on how they can protect employees, customers and suppliers
during the pandemic by adopting touchless transactions and services to
provide a safer, more streamlined buying experience. Fraudsters are
quick to capitalize on the opportunity QR codes soaring popularity
present too. Combining social engineering with QR codes that can be
created in a second, fraudsters are using them to open victims bank
accounts and drain it within seconds, install malware, penetrate
entire corporate networks and more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Enterprise Threat Visibility Versus Real-World Operational Constraints
https://www.securityweek.com/enterprise-threat-visibility-versus-real-world-operational-constraints
The phrase “assume breach” has been transformational to enterprise security investment and defensive strategy for a few years but may now be close to retirement.
When the vast majority of information security expenditure was focused on impermeable perimeter defenses and reactive response to evidence-based compromise, it served as a valuable rallying cry for organizations to tool their enterprise for insider-threat detection, adopt zero-trust network segmentation, and pursue widespread deployment of multifactor authentication systems and conditional access controls.
Sizable investments in enterprisewide visibility should have reversed the much older adage “a defender needs to be right all the time, while the attacker needs to be right only once” into something like “an attacker needs to be invisible all the time, while the defender needs them to slip up only once.” Unfortunately, security operations and threat-hunting teams have found that instead of automatically spotting needles in a haystack, they must now manage haystacks of needles—if they’re properly equipped. For under-resourced security teams (which appears the majority), advances in enterprisewide visibility have in the best case added hundreds of daily alerts to their never-completed to-do lists.
https://www.securityweek.com/security-operations-what-your-signal-noise-ratio
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Crucial Component of Detection and Response: Intelligence Pivoting
https://www.securityweek.com/crucial-component-detection-and-response-intelligence-pivoting
Intelligence Pivoting Allows You to Build a Broader Picture and is Pivotal to Detection and Response
Pivot. It’s a word we’re hearing more frequently since the pandemic and I find it interesting for its dual meaning. One on the one hand it means “turn.” Schools are pivoting to online learning. Businesses are pivoting to a remote workforce. Retailers are pivoting to contactless commerce. But it also means “crucial.” Measures like these are pivotal to keeping Covid-19 infection rates down. While it may be a trendy term, in cybersecurity, intelligence pivoting is pivotal to detection and response.
Tomi Engdahl says:
As Trump Holds Back, Tech Firms Step in on Election Security
https://www.securityweek.com/trump-holds-back-tech-firms-step-election-security
Adam Schiff was in the audience at the 2018 Aspen Security Forum when a Microsoft executive mentioned an attempted hacking of three politicians up for reelection. It was the first that Schiff, then the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, had ever heard of it.
Schiff said he thought it was “odd” that Congress hadn’t been briefed. He got in touch with high-ranking officials in the intelligence agencies, and they didn’t know about it, either. It turned out that Russian hackers had unsuccessfully tried to infiltrate the Senate computer network of then-Sen. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and other unidentified candidates.
Two years later, Schiff says that breakdown is still emblematic of the disjointed effort among government agencies, Congress and private companies as they try to identify and address foreign election interference. But this year, with President Donald Trump adamant that Russia is not interfering and his administration often trying to block what Congress learns about election threats, it’s those private companies that often are being called upon to fill the breach.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ireland’s data watchdog slammed for letting adtech carry on ‘biggest breach of all time’
https://tcrn.ch/3iQpAVv
A dossier of evidence detailing how the online ad targeting industry profiles Internet users’ intimate characteristics without their knowledge or consent has been published today by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), piling more pressure on the country’s data watchdog to take enforcement action over what complainants contend is the “biggest data breach of all time”.
The publication follows a now two-year-old complaint lodged with Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) claiming unlawful exploitation of personal data via the programmatic advertising Real-Time Bidding (RTB) process — including dominant RTB systems devised by Google and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).
Tomi Engdahl says:
JAMK kartoitti kyberharjoitusympäristöjä: Euroopassa
tietoverkkohyökkäyksiä vastaan harjoitellaan aktiivisesti
https://www.epressi.com/tiedotteet/tietoturva/jamk-kartoitti-kyberharjoitusymparistoja-euroopassa-tietoverkkohyokkayksia-vastaan-harjoitellaan-aktiivisesti.html
Jyväskylän ammattikorkeakoulussa (JAMK) on selvitetty eurooppalaisia
kyberturvallisuusympäristöjä ja niiden ominaisuuksia. Laaja selvitys
on Euroopassa ensimmäinen laatuaan. Raportoituja eurooppalaisia
kyberturvallisuusharjoitusympäristöjä (cyber range) löytyi
selvityksessä kolmekymmentäyhdeksän. Suomalaisia harjoitusympäristöjä
raportointiin maakohtaisesti eniten, yhteensä seitsemän.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ransomware crisis is getting worse. We need to make these four big
changes
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-ransomware-crisis-is-getting-worse-we-need-to-make-these-four-big-changes/
The cruel march of ransomware has apparently reached a grim new
milestone. In Germany, authorities are investigating the death of a
patient during a ransomware attack on a hospital; according to
reports, the woman, who needed urgent medical care, died after being
re-routed to a hospital further away, as a nearer hospital was in the
midst of dealing with a ransomware attack. Elsewhere ransomware
continues to create painful, if less tragic, disruptions. The UK’s
cybersecurity agency has just warned that ransomware groups are
launching ‘reprehensible’ attacks against universities as the new
academic year starts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Threat Landscape Trends: Endpoint Security, Part 1
https://blogs.cisco.com/security/threat-landscape-trends-endpoint-security
In the ongoing battle to defend your organization, deciding where to
dedicate resources is vital. To do so efficiently, you need to have a
solid understanding of your local network topology, cloud
implementations, software and hardware assets, and the security
policies in place. On top of that, you need to have an understanding
of whats traveling through and residing in your environment, and how
to respond when something is found that shouldnt be there.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA:n työkalu epäilytti tietoturvaosaajia CUJOn suomalaistiimi
huomasi ottaa sen avukseen
https://www.tivi.fi/uutiset/nsan-tyokalu-epailytti-tietoturvaosaajia-cujon-suomalaistiimi-huomasi-ottaa-sen-avukseen/da6f0aee-3d97-4b3d-9ccd-bea94506236c
Go-kielestä on tullut nopeasti haittaohjelmanikkarien uusi suosikki.
CUJO AI:n Suomessa toimiva laboratorio on huomannut tämän
iot-laitteiden kohdalla. Tietoturvayhtiö CUJO AI:n
tietoturvalaboratoriosta vastaavan johtajan Kimmo Kasslinin mukaan
go:n suosio johtuu pääosin iot-laitteiden bottiverkkojen
yleistymisestä.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA Issues Cybersecurity Guidance for Remote Workers, System Admins
https://www.securityweek.com/nsa-issues-cybersecurity-guidance-remote-workers-system-admins
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/11183-windowsin-etayhteys-on-suosittu-murtautumispiste
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook vows to restrict users if U.S. election descends into chaos: FT
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-elections-facebook-idUSKCN26D18G
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc will take aggressive measures to “restrict the circulation of content” on its platform if November’s presidential election descends into chaos or violent civic unrest, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday citing a company executive.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stealing Keys From The Sound Of The Lock
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/22/stealing-keys-from-the-sound-of-the-lock/
If you are smart, you wouldn’t hand your house key over to a stranger for a few minutes, right? But every time you use your key to unlock your door, you are probably broadcasting everything an attacker needs to make their own copy. Turns out it’s all in the sound of the key going into the lock.
Researchers in Singapore reported that analyzing metallic clicks as the key slides past the pins gives them the data they need to 3D print a working key. The journal published research is behind a paywall, but there is a copy on co-author [Soundarya Ramesh’s] website which outlines the algorithm used to decode the clicks of key teeth on lock pins into usable data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pop Open Your Neighbor’s Front Door With 12 Volts
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/01/pop-open-your-neighbors-front-door-with-12-volts/
Many in the community are skeptical about the security of commercial smart home devices, and for good reason. It’s not like you have to look far to find examples of poorly implemented systems, or products that are abandoned by their manufacturers and left without critical security updates. But the design flaw in this video doorbell really drives home how little thought some companies give to their customer’s security.
In the video, [Savvas] even shows he used a little gadget attached to a QuickCharge USB battery bank to get a portable 12 VDC source suitable for tripping these locks. Which, interestingly enough, is based on a trick he read about in the Hackaday comments. Something to consider while penning your next comment on these storied pages.
https://novamostra.com/2020/06/23/breaking-into-a-house-using-a-power-bank/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Separation Between WiFi And Bluetooth Broken By The Spectra Co-Existence Attack
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/07/separation-between-wifi-and-bluetooth-broken-by-the-spectra-co-existence-attack/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Learn Software Reverse Engineering: Ghidra Class Videos From HackadayU Now Available!
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/30/learn-software-reverse-engineering-ghidra-class-videos-from-hackadayu-now-available/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Polymorphic String Encryption Gives Code Hackers Bad Conniptions
https://hackaday.com/2020/07/27/polymorphic-string-encryption-gives-code-hackers-bad-conniptions/
When it comes to cyber security, there’s nothing worse than storing important secret data in plaintext. With even the greenest malicious actors more than capable of loading up a hex editor or decompiler, code can quickly be compromised when proper precautions aren’t taken in the earliest stages of development. To help avoid this, encryption can be used to hide sensitive data from prying eyes. While a simple xor used to be a quick and dirty way to do this, for something really sophisticated, polymorphic encryption is a much better way to go.
An extension for Visual Studio Code, it’s capable of encrypting strings and data files in over 10 languages. Using polymorphic encryption techniques, the algorithm used is unique every time, along with the encryption keys themselves. This makes it far more difficult for those reverse engineering a program to decrypt important strings or data.
How to encrypt strings & files in your source code?
https://dev.to/pelock/how-to-encrypt-strings-files-in-your-source-code-25e
Tomi Engdahl says:
Web shell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_shell
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://learn.cisecurity.org/benchmarks
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/10993-suomessa-kehitettiin-maailmanluokan-laitepohjainen-salausratkaisu
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook: Fake Pages From China Tried to Disrupt US Politics
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/politics/facebook-fake-pages-from-china-tried-to-disrupt-us-politics/2368079/?_osource=SocialFlowFB_BAYBrand
U.S. intelligence officials warned last month about ongoing or potential efforts by China, Russia and Iran to interfere in November’s election
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to fight delayed phishing
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/delayed-phishing-countermeasures/37153/
Phishing links in e-mails to company employees often become active
after initial scanning. But they still can and must be caught.
Phishing has long been a major attack vector on corporate networks.
Its no surprise, then, that everyone and everything, from e-mail
providers to mail gateways and even browsers, use antiphishing filters
and malicious address scanners. Therefore, cybercriminals are
constantly inventing new, and refining old, circumvention methods. One
such method is delayed phishing.
What is delayed phishing?
Delayed phishing is an attempt to lure a victim to a malicious or fake site using a technique known as Post-Delivery Weaponized URL. As the name suggests, the technique essentially replaces online content with a malicious version after the delivery of an e-mail linking to it. In other words, the potential victim receives an e-mail with a link that points either nowhere or to a legitimate resource that may already be compromised but that at that point has no malicious content. As a result, the message sails through any filters. The protection algorithms find the URL in the text, scan the linked site, see nothing dangerous there, and allow the message through.
At some point after delivery (always after the message is delivered, and ideally before it is read), the cybercriminals change the site to which the message links or activate malicious content on a previously harmless page. The ruse could be anything — from an imitated banking site to a browser exploit that attempts to drop malware on the victim’s computer. But in about 80% of cases, it’s a phishing site.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How identification, authentication, and authorization differ
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/identification-authentication-authorization-difference/37143/
We use raccoons to explain how identification, authorization, and
authentication differ, and why 2FA is necessary. t happens to every
one of us every day. We are constantly identified, authenticated, and
authorized by various systems. And yet, many people confuse the
meanings of these words, often using the terms identification or
authorization when, in fact, they are talking about authentication.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New and improved Security Update Guide!
https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2020/09/21/new-and-improved-security-update-guide/
Were excited to announce a significant update to the Security Update
Guide, our one-stop site for information about all security updates
provided by Microsoft. This new version will provide a more intuitive
user experience to help protect our customers regardless of what
Microsoft products or services they use in their environment. Weve
listened to your feedback and incorporated many of your suggestions
and new feature ideas. For example, it is now much easier to get a
simple list of all CVEs being released on an Update Tuesday or between
your own custom date range (see Vulnerabilities tab).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Carlos Arnal: The economic impact of a DNS attack is too great to
ignore the vulnerabilities that would enable it
https://www.pandasecurity.com/mediacenter/adaptive-defense/economic-impact-dns-attack/
One of the main problems with DNS attacks is the increasing cost of
the damage they cause, as well as their rapid evolution and the
diverse range of attack types. Data exfiltration over DNS is a major
concern in corporate environments. In order to protect themselves,
organizations are prioritizing the security of network endpoints and
improving DNS traffic monitoring. We discussed this with Carlos
Arnal, Product Marketing Manager Endpoint Security at Panda.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Uncover Return on Investment From Using a SOAR Platform
https://securityintelligence.com/posts/uncover-return-on-investment-from-using-soar-platform/
When a cybersecurity attack happens, people may be tempted to react
impulsively. Instead, security leaders should take a proactive
approach. Carefully considering the long-term effects of actions on
resources and security posture becomes easier with the right tools.
Using a Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR)
platform from day one can help your organization be better positioned
to respond to cyberattacks today and in the future. At the same time,
it can mean a significant return on investment (ROI) for the security
budget.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6% of all Google Cloud Buckets are vulnerable to unauthorized access
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/google-cloud-buckets-unauthorized-access-report/
131 of 2,064 scanned Google Cloud buckets were vulnerable to
unauthorized access by users who could list, download, and/or upload
files. Amazons S3 buckets are the most popular means for apps,
websites, and online services to store data in the cloud. So when data
breaches and exposures occur, vulnerable S3 buckets are often cited as
the target. But Amazon Web Services is far from the only provider of
cloud file storage. Google Cloud buckets, for instance, are also quite
common, and they are just as vulnerable (due to misconfiguration) as
their more popular counterparts, according to the latest research by
Comparitechs cybersecurity research team.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Healthcare lags behind in critical vulnerability management, banks
hold their ground
https://www.zdnet.com/article/healthcare-lags-behind-in-vulnerability-management-banks-are-holding-their-ground/
Vulnerability management is a key component of modern strategies to
combat cyberattackers, but which industries perform well in this
area?. The general public faces phishing attempts, spam, malvertising,
and more in their daily lives. However, in the business realm,
successfully targeting major companies — including banks, industrial
giants, and medical facilities — can be far more lucrative for
cybercriminals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Russia wants to ban the use of secure protocols such as TLS 1.3, DoH,
DoT, ESNI
https://www.zdnet.com/article/russia-wants-to-ban-the-use-of-secure-protocols-such-as-tls-1-3-doh-dot-esni/
The Russian government is working on updating its technology laws so
it can ban the use of modern internet protocols that can hinder its
surveillance and censorship capabilities. According to a copy of the
proposed law amendments and an explanatory note, the ban targets
internet protocols and technologies such as TLS 1.3, DoH, DoT, and
ESNI.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nearly 70% of IT & Security Pros Hone Their Cyber Skills Outside of
Work
https://www.darkreading.com/operations/nearly-70–of-it-and-security-pros-hone-their-cyber-skills-outside-of-work/d/d-id/1338980
New research shows how security skills are lacking across multiple IT
disciplines as well – including network engineers, sys admins, and
cloud developers. early three out of four organizations are struggling
with a gap in security skills, and 68% of IT and security
professionals say they work on advancing their cyber skills on their
own time, outside of work.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NCSC-FI – Manual for cyber exercise Organisers
https://www.kyberturvallisuuskeskus.fi/sites/default/files/media/file/Instructions%20for%20organising%20cyber%20exercises.pdf
The Finnish National Cyber Security Centre together with the Finnish
National Emergency Supply Agency present their “Manual for cyber
exercise Organisers”, now available for download in English.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using the MITRE ATT&CK Navigator for Intelligence Gathering Pre-purple Teaming
https://pentestmag.com/using-the-mitre-attck-navigator…/
#pentest #magazine #pentestmag #pentestblog #PTblog #MITRE #framework #navigator #intelligence #gathering #purpleteaming #cybersecurity #infosecurity #infosec
Tomi Engdahl says:
FBI, CISA Warn of Disinformation Campaigns Targeting 2020 Election Results
https://www.securityweek.com/fbi-cisa-warn-disinformation-campaigns-targeting-2020-election-results
Threat actors are expected to launch disinformation campaigns targeting the results of the 2020 elections in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in an alert this week.
Spreading disinformation on the results of the elections represents a threat to the credibility of the electoral process, meant to undermine confidence in the democratic institutions in the United States, the alert reads.
Foreign Actors and Cybercriminals Likely to Spread Disinformation Regarding 2020 Election Results
https://www.ic3.gov/media/2020/200922.aspx
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are issuing this announcement to raise awareness of the potential threat posed by attempts to spread disinformation regarding the results of the 2020 elections. Foreign actors and cybercriminals could create new websites, change existing websites, and create or share corresponding social media content to spread false information in an attempt to discredit the electoral process and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions.
State and local officials typically require several days to weeks to certify elections’ final results in order to ensure every legally cast vote is accurately counted. The increased use of mail-in ballots due to COVID-19 protocols could leave officials with incomplete results on election night. Foreign actors and cybercriminals could exploit the time required to certify and announce elections’ results by disseminating disinformation that includes reports of voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud, and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections’ illegitimacy.
The FBI and CISA urge the American public to critically evaluate the sources of the information they consume and to seek out reliable and verified information from trusted sources, such as state and local election officials. The public should also be aware that if foreign actors or cyber criminals were able to successfully change an election-related website, the underlying data and internal systems would remain uncompromised.
Recommendations
Seek out information from trustworthy sources, such as state and local election officials; verify who produced the content; and consider their intent.
Verify through multiple reliable sources any reports about problems in voting or election results, and consider searching for other reliable sources before sharing such information via social media or other avenues.
For information about final election results, rely on state and local government election officials.
Report potential election crimes—such as disinformation about the manner, time, or place of voting—to the FBI.
If appropriate, make use of in-platform tools offered by social media companies for reporting suspicious posts that appear to be spreading false or inconsistent information about election-related problems or results.