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/
https://isc.sans.edu/diary/rss/25580
https://www.securityweek.com/case-cyber-insurance
https://www.securityweek.com/tips-help-mssps-choose-threat-intelligence-partner
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-we-never-encourage-a-ransomware-victim-to-pay/
https://www.darkreading.com/iot/weak-crypto-practice-undermining-iot-device-security/d/d-id/1336636
https://pacit-tech.co.uk/blog/the-2020-problem/
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:
TURVAKAMU-SOVELLUS LASTEN TURVAKSI
https://nettiturvakoti.fi/turvakamu/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Untold Story of the Man That Made Mainstream Encryption Possible
Meet Whit Diffie, the man who invented public key cryptography and brought encryption to the masses
https://onezero.medium.com/the-untold-story-of-the-man-that-made-mainstream-encryption-possible-231c749d5005
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Yes, I’m paranoid — but am I paranoid enough?”
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/876669-yes-i-m-paranoid-but-am-i-paranoid-enough
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Says It Doesn’t ‘Sell’ Your Data. Here’s How the Company Shares, Monetizes, and Exploits It.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and
Tomi Engdahl says:
Between Covid and EARN IT, this may be a breakthrough year for mass surveillance.
The pandemic’s coming health surveillance state
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-brings-a-future-of-health-surveillance-82c7788b-ba30-4f4b-a5fb-a863273b3b88.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic
COVID-19 became a pandemic because too many of the countries struck by the virus failed to detect and suppress outbreaks as fast as possible. But the coronavirus could usher in an era of intense health surveillance.
Why it matters: From location-detecting smartphones to facial recognition cameras, we have the potential to track the spread of disease in near real-time. But the public health benefits will need to be weighed against the loss of privacy.
“In the era of big data and internet, the flow of each person can be clearly seen,” epidemiologist Li Lanjuan told China’s state broadcaster in February. “With such new technologies, we should make full use of them to find the source of infection and contain the source of infection.”
In the U.S. and other Western countries, such efforts would likely face major ethical, legal and regulatory barriers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teletype format punch strips were used by US military cryptography until late last year. Warships getting a periodic physical canister dropoff since the cold war.
EXCLUSIVE – Last Punched Tape Crypto Key Rolls off the NSA’s Machines
https://www.cbronline.com/news/nsa-punched-tape-keys
Tomi Engdahl says:
Identifying vulnerabilities and protecting you from phishing
https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/threat-analysis-group/identifying-vulnerabilities-and-protecting-you-phishing/
Tomi Engdahl says:
This could get Orwellian really fast’: COVID-19 could end privacy as we know it
https://www.fastcompany.com/90482264/this-could-get-orwellian-really-fast-covid-19-could-end-privacy-as-we-know-it?fbclid=IwAR1ORt-yxfMxCaoFK7Vxnv_YeZo3zfyyM8xGAyyHSdAWbBiRt6Do0hklVW0
As countries scramble to respond to the pandemic, many have turned to surveillance in the name of public health. But when does tracking people’s movements go too far?
Tomi Engdahl says:
COVID-19 Digital Rights Tracker
This live tracker documents new measures introduced in response to COVID-19 that pose a risk to digital rights around the world.
https://www.top10vpn.com/news/surveillance/covid-19-digital-rights-tracker/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Halting COVID-19: The Benefits and Risks of Digital Contact Tracing
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/ethics/halting-covid19-benefits-risks-digital-contact-tracing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackers are hijacking routers to push malware-laden Covid-19 apps
https://www.pcgamer.com/hackers-are-hijacking-routers-to-push-malware-laden-covid-19-apps/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Backdoor Is a Backdoor Is a Backdoor
https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2020/03/a-backdoor-is-a-backdoor-is-a-backdoor/
Beware of false promises and threats to encryption security online.
It’s easy to understand why United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray would ask companies to provide a means for law enforcement to access private data and communications.
“We’re all for strong encryption and… we are not advocating for ‘backdoors,’” he said at recent cyber security conference. “We’ve been asking for providers to make sure that they, themselves, maintain some kind of access to the encrypted data we need, so that they can still provide it in response to a court order.”
We all want to thwart criminals from using the Internet for harm. But here’s the catch: despite Wray’s claims, there is no way to comply with his request without breaking the security we all rely on to keep people, communications, and data safe online.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to force users to use secure passwords on Ubuntu/Debian Linux
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/securing-passwords-libpam-cracklib-on-debian-ubuntu-linux/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yes, I’m paranoid — but am I paranoid enough?
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/876669-yes-i-m-paranoid-but-am-i-paranoid-enough
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Mathematics of (Hacking) Passwords
http://scientificamerican.com/article/the-mathematics-of-hacking-passwords
The science and art of password setting and cracking continues to evolve, as does the war between password users and abusers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Used properly, bug bounty platforms connect security researchers with organizations wanting extra scrutiny. In exchange for reporting a security flaw, the researcher receives payment (a bounty) as a thank you for doing the right thing. However, CSO’s investigation shows that the bug bounty platforms have turned bug reporting and disclosure on its head, what multiple expert sources, including HackerOne’s former chief policy officer, Katie Moussouris, call a “perversion.””
Bug Bounty Programs Are Being Used to Buy Silence
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/bug_bounty_prog.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/side-channel-attacks-hack-chat-with-samy-kamkar/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/breaking-into-a-secure-facility-stm32-flash/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thousands Of Internet-Connected Satellites Above Us, What Could Possibly Go Wrong!
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/19/thousands-of-internet-connected-satellites-above-us-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/02/project-rubicon-the-nsa-secretly-sold-flawed-encryption-for-decades/
Tomi Engdahl says:
J.M. Porup / CSO:
Critics say bug bounty programs buy researcher silence, may violate labor law, and are less effective when they are closed and have NDAs placed on them
Bug bounty platforms buy researcher silence, violate labor laws, critics say
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3535888/bug-bounty-platforms-buy-researcher-silence-violate-labor-laws-critics-say.html
The promise of crowdsourced cybersecurity, fueled by “millions of hackers,” turns out to be a pipe dream, despite high-octane marketing from the bug bounty platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bug Bounty Programs Are Being Used to Buy Silence
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/bug_bounty_prog.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
One of the older tech scams but still works to this day lol
https://www.facebook.com/groups/majordomo/permalink/10159126625299522/
It’s unbelievable what people can hustle just using wifi!
https://www.facebook.com/304669772881283/posts/3040162565998643/
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:
Advice for a Cybersecurity Leader – Think Like Your Adversary
https://pentestmag.com/advice-for-a-cybersecurity-leader-think-like-your-adversary/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can IP Geolocation Improve Your Defense in Depth (DiD) Strategy?
https://pentestmag.com/can-ip-geolocation-improve-your-defense-in-depth-did-strategy/
Keeping up with today’s fast-evolving threat environment requires viewing cybersecurity through many lenses. Cybercriminals regularly change their tools, tactics, and procedures (TTPs), and so, organizations need to adapt and improve their security measures. Adding new lines of defenses, in particular, can substantially bolster one’s cybersecurity profile, especially in case vulnerabilities and threats are already present in a network.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Do we become an easier target by working from home using our personal devices?
https://pentestmag.com/81434-2/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A bug bounty alone won’t save your startup — here’s why
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/02/startups-bug-bounty-not-enough/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zoom security: Getting the settings right
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/04/10/zoom-security-getting-settings-right/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Think Fast: Time Between Disclosure, Patch Release and Vulnerability
Exploitation Intelligence for Vulnerability Management, Part Two
https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2020/04/time-between-disclosure-patch-release-and-vulnerability-exploitation.html
Attackers are in a constant race to exploit newly discovered
vulnerabilities before defenders have a chance to respond. FireEye
Mandiant Threat Intelligence research into vulnerabilities exploited
in 2018 and 2019 suggests that the majority of exploitation in the
wild occurs before patch issuance or within a few days of a patch
becoming available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why You Need to Put Your Security to the Test
https://www.securityweek.com/why-you-need-put-your-security-test
We’re all familiar with the expression ‘Trust but verify.’ Unfortunately, when it relates to protecting their networks, most organizations rely on trust but don’t verify that their security solutions are working as they should. A recent survey (PDF) of security operations effectiveness found that just 37 percent of security professionals have hard evidence to verify their security products are configured and operating correctly. And this lack of testing and validation leads directly to organizations experiencing a damaging security breach.
Half of the survey’s respondents stated they had discovered that one or more security solutions were not working as they expected only after the organization had been breached. With these vulnerable points in their network defenses, it is not surprising that 75 percent of respondents stated their organization had experienced a breach (such as an unauthorized intrusion, malware infection, or hack) in the past year. 47 percent had been breached three or more times in the last three years.
It’s critical that organizations implement an in-depth testing strategy to close these security gaps and cut the risk of being breached, rather than simply trusting and hoping their security products are performing as expected. But what should that strategy consist of?
The three Ps of testing
When developing an effective security testing strategy, there are three ‘P’s to consider:
• Products, covering the security tools that are deployed across the organization’s networks and their configurations.
• Processes, which covers how those security products or services are installed and maintained, including how patches and upgrades are managed.
• People, which focuses primarily on the ability of IT and security teams to respond to and remediate cyber incidents, but also includes the organization’s employees.
According to the vulnerability analysis resource CVE Details, 2019 saw over 12,000 new vulnerabilities emerge, with over 1100 of these rated as severe. That’s an average of over 90 per month – so keeping products updated, and regular testing cycles will help to close holes developing in the company’s security fabric.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Backup or Disaster Recovery for Protection Against Ransomware?
https://www.securityweek.com/backup-or-disaster-recovery-protection-against-ransomware
Is Backup Alone Enough, or is Full Disaster Recovery Required to Mitigate the Threat of Ransomware?
To pay, or not to pay? Is it better to suffer the pain and outage of ransomware – or pay up, and by doing so, end it?
Like all such questions, there is no easy or simple answer. Can the affected organization afford a loss of operation? Does it have SLAs that will cause legal problems if they are broken? Does it have the support of a larger organization – government or insurance – that can either force its hand or support the cost of disruption? Is it in thrall to shareholders?
The best solution to difficult questions is to avoid the question. For ransomware, that either means prevention or simple, low-cost recovery. Since it is currently impossible to guarantee prevention, the onus is on low-cost recovery to avoid the choice between downtime and paying up.
Here the choice is between data backup and disaster recovery. The question now becomes, is backup alone enough, or is full disaster recovery required to mitigate the effect of ransomware? By ‘disaster recovery’, we mean the full gamut of backing up data, recovering that data, and business restitution without loss of business continuity.
Backup
Organizations have always used backups to mitigate unforeseen problems, such as hardware crashes that cause a loss of current data. A good backup system will allow rapid if not immediate recovery minimizing the loss of data to an annoyance rather than a disaster.
It gets more problematic if the cause affects the whole sit
To solve this, best practice has always recommended the 3-2-1 approach. There are three copies of data: operating; copied and stored onsite; and copied and stored safely, elsewhere, offsite. The onsite copy is made daily or continuously. The offsite copy is made regularly – perhaps once per week or at least once per month.
This worked well in the early days of computing; but three contemporary developments threaten its current value. The first is the sheer volume and sophistication of threats against data from criminals and nation states; the second is digitalization and business transformation; and the third, related to the second, is the complexity and spread of corporate computing infrastructures. Computers are no longer used to store data and later aggregate it into spreadsheets for businessmen to analyze – it is analyzed online in real-time, often by artificial intelligence, from dispersed locations with immediate responses.
Recovering data from backup can now be a complex operation that will spread to days and could more likely take weeks or even months to fully recover. If the recovery must come from offsite storage, it could be days if not weeks old and may no longer be relevant to the current state of the business.
Backup against ransomware
‘Backup your data’ is the most common advice given to minimize the threat of ransomware. Its value, however, is questionable. Ransomware does not merely destroy data; it often leaves computers inoperable. “Backups play an important role during ransomware attacks by allowing you to restore your data,” comments Sam Woodcock, iland’s senior director of cloud strategy and enablement. “But what happens if your primary site no longer exists? You have nothing to recover back to.”
The ransomware may have also destroyed the backup copy. Without the third offsite backup – and many companies do not have one – there may be no backup.
“Several days later it was learned that, though the electronic medical record backup files had not been touched, the core components of the backup files from all other systems had been purposefully and permanently corrupted by the hackers.”
In March 2019, Norwegian aluminum giant Norsk Hydro became a victim of LockerGoga ransomware. Norsk also refused to pay the ransom. It was later estimated that the ransomware cost the firm around $40 million through disruption to operations, and that the total cost might eventually be up to $70 million.
Disaster recovery
Disaster recovery (DR) is often given the full title of ‘business continuity and disaster recovery’. Its purpose is to ensure no loss of business functionality following or during a disaster, whether that is natural (such as fire or flood), or man-made (such as ransomware).
Backup remains the basis for DR. However, explains John South, senior director of NTT’s global threat intelligence center, “DR is a more comprehensive program to protect the company should a disaster occur. Whereas the backup strategy is important to recover important data, DR takes into consideration all the factors that would be important in bringing the business back to life. Where will the employees work? What equipment will they use? What business processes are the most critical to bring back into service first as the recovery process begins?”
The business continuity aspect adds an additional complication – how do you keep the business running with current data while the recovery takes place.
A ransomware attack is different to most physical disasters. Here the office building and the physical existence of computers will remain intact. The priority is not to move to an alternative site, but to return the existing site and computer infrastructure to full operation with minimal or no disruption.
“The safest way to eliminate ransomware on an impacted system,” says NTT’s South, “is either to replace the impacted computers with computers that have never been on your network, or to forensically clean each impacted disk (overwriting every sector on the disk with 0s and 1s) and then reload the operating system, applications and data (from your backups).”
But this is not a quick or cheap solution. Cyber insurance can help with the cost, but doesn’t help to maintain business continuity. The traditional approach has been to operate some form of separate mirror infrastructure. If one site goes down, operations can switch and continue from the mirror – but this is expensive and beyond the budget of most organizations.
Now, however, the emergence of inexpensive cloud storage and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) options make this a viable route for continuity and disaster recovery. “Investing in multi-cloud strategies for attack prevention along with disaster recovery backup plans and cyber recovery,”
Disaster recovery against ransomware
The key to disaster recovery is maintaining business continuity. There is no single way to achieve this – the ability to maintain continuity is more important than the precise methodology employed. But if it works, it can work very well. The need is to recover systems and data to their condition immediately prior to the ransomware.
CIO Craig Hurwitz had deployed a backup and back-dating DR capability from Reduxio. The logs showed exactly when the infection occurred. Hurwitz requested that Reduxio back date his systems to just two minutes prior to the infection. This was achieved in just 35 minutes, with Barnstable PD operational without ransomware and without paying a ransom.
How to choose
This isn’t about which backup or which disaster recovery solution to select, but how to choose between the two routes. As with most decision points, it comes down to a horses for courses consideration, and the right horse for a specific course can be highlighted by risk analysis.
The first point to note is that the cost isn’t simply a comparison between backup and DR.
“Backups are typically required for operational or regulatory/compliance reasons, making them a given cost of operating as a business,” explains Joseph George, VP of product management and global recovery services at Sungard AS. “The question is, ‘what is the cost difference between recovering from backups (i.e. delta costs of adding recovery capabilities and leveraging backups you are already performing) versus recovering from replicated data or a DRaaS solution’.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
It seems that many people don’t do their job as an administrator to ensure data is secure by utilizing secure security policies. By defaut things on Amazon are at least password protected. Amazing numbers of companies end up having their data exposed freely readable by anyone without password. To get the data to this open access state, the admin needs to do those changes to get rid of protections potentially by accident or because of stupid config change requested by a clueless boss.
Security researchers are constantly discovering open, unprotected S3 buckets containing sensitive data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We Mapped How the Coronavirus Is Driving New Surveillance Programs Around the World
At least 30 countries are ramping up surveillance to combat the coronavirus
https://onezero.medium.com/the-pandemic-is-a-trojan-horse-for-surveillance-programs-around-the-world-887fa6f12ec9
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google productises its own not-a-VPN secure remote access tool
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/21/google_productises_its_own_not_vpn_beyondcorp/
Zero-trust access to web applications with very fine-grained access
controls
Google has productised a remote-access tool it uses internally, because it thinks the world might be quite keen on this sort of thing right now.
The tool is called “BeyondCorp” and the search’n’ad giant deployed it in 2011 to provide access to its own web apps.
The company describes it as being able to pull off tricks such as: “My contract HR recruiters working from home on their own laptops can access our web-based document management system (and nothing else), but only if they are using the latest version of the OS, and are using phishing-resistant authentication like security keys.”
Google decided to launch the tool now because it thinks organisations scrambling to deliver apps to suddenly remote workers will appreciate an approach it promises is faster than rolling out a VPN, according to Sunil Patti, general manager and veep of Google’s cloud security business.
For now BeyondCorp can only enforce access controls for web apps, but can do so on-prem, or in clouds including Google’s own.
Pricing has not been revealed
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/keep-your-teams-working-safely-with-beyondcorp-remote-access
Tomi Engdahl says:
Security Researchers Turn Cooling Fans, Graphics Processing Units Into Data Exfiltration Vectors
https://www.hackster.io/news/security-researchers-turn-cooling-fans-graphics-processing-units-into-data-exfiltration-vectors-9dc88282b916
One approach turns fans into seismic data-broadcasters; the other turns to power management for a modern twist on TEMPEST.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election
Tomi Engdahl says:
TECHNO-TYRANNY: HOW THE US NATIONAL SECURITY STATE IS USING CORONAVIRUS TO FULFILL AN ORWELLIAN VISION
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/top-news/techno-tyranny-how-us-national-security-state-using-coronavirus-fulfill-orwellian-vision/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Do we become an easier target by working from home using our personal devices?
https://pentestmag.com/81434-2/
There are two different aspects – our own security as a user and the risk we pose for our organization. The end user impact is dependent on the security awareness of the person. If we know and follow the basic cybersecurity principles, including passwords and strong authentication, incident response, awareness of phishing scams (emails, attached files, fake websites), awareness of secure data processing and storage, as well as password securing and encryption of confidential information, then the risk is relatively low.
On the other hand, if the person is an employee in a company who is required to work remotely, then he might be a potential risk for the company.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Next Front for Computer Security: Machine Learning
https://innovate.ieee.org/innovation-spotlight/machine-learning-security/
As the machine learning field grows, security needs to be built into the design, not just patched on after issues develop. So says Gary McGraw, the man whom many consider the father of software security.
According to McGraw, at the beginning of the computer revolution, computer security was often an afterthought – after all, holes in the system could be patched and firewalls could protect the broken thing from hackers. But, ultimately, McGraw and others were able to convince computer manufacturers that it makes a lot more sense to build security in.
You’ve written that in the field of computer security, “a distinct absence of science is a problem.” What do you mean by this, and why do you think there is a lack of science?
First, let me stress that there are people doing science in computer security now, especially in the IEEE community. However, in commercial security, I believe there’s a distinct lack of science. There are many ideas and theories that aren’t backed by data, and a plethora of people who are convinced their way is the right way without real evidence. Faith-based security is folly.
Your recent research has focused on machine learning threats, and you’ve written that until recently not much attention has been focused on this issue. Why do you think organizations haven’t focused on machine learning security until now?
Machine learning is pretty new in terms of the hype cycle. There’s been some progress made with security, but I was interested to learn how ML really works. I dug into the literature with three other guys to see what’s happened in the last 25 years and discovered that the answer to “what’s new” is really simple: our machines are way, way faster, and our data sets are much bigger.
We’re seeing progress with machine learning, but it’s not breakthroughs in terms of cognitive science. We’re just learning how we can make machines do more interesting things. We’re so psyched about all of the things we can make them do, yet nobody’s really thinking about the security risks of how we’re doing what we’re doing. If we really want to secure machine learning, we have to identify and then manage all of the risks.
Beyond that, my view is that the machine learning work we’re doing is something that’s going to become commercially viable
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://pentestmag.com/social-engineering-risks-how-to-patch-the-humans-in-your-organization/
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI Based Defensive Systems Impact on Cybercriminal Strategy
https://pentestmag.com/ai-based-defensive-systems-impact-on-cybercriminal-strategy/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President
How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exploiting VLAN Double Tagging
https://www.notsosecure.com/exploiting-vlan-double-tagging/
Tomi Engdahl says:
2019 – Endpoint Protection Platforms Magic Quadrant
https://pentestmag.com/2019-endpoint-protection-platforms-magic-quadrant/
#pentest #magazine #pentestmag #pentestblog #PTblog #endpoint #protection #platforms #cybersecurity #infosecurity #infosec
Tomi Engdahl says:
Artificial intelligence will be used to power cyber attacks, warn
security experts
https://www.zdnet.com/article/artificial-intelligence-will-be-used-to-power-cyber-attacks-warn-security-experts/
Intelligence agencies need to use artificial intelligence to help deal
with threats from criminals and hostile states who will try to use AI
to strengthen their own attacks. Read also:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52415775 and
https://rusi.org/publication/occasional-papers/artificial-intelligence-and-uk-national-security-policy-considerations
Tomi Engdahl says:
Deepfakes and AI: Fighting Cybersecurity Fire with Fire
https://threatpost.com/deepfakes-ai-fighting-cybersecurity-fire/154978/
To successfully mitigate evolving attacks, security teams must use the exact same AI tools that create those attacks in the first place.
Today, the most successful and damaging cyberattacks are executed by highly professional criminal networks rather than “lone-wolf” hackers. These criminal organizations have also become highly adept at leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools, making it extremely hard for IT security organizations to keep up — much less stay ahead of these threats.
Cybercriminals are using AI and ML to exploit vulnerabilities such as user behavior or security gaps to gain access to valuable business systems and data. A perfect example of these types of threats are deepfakes – they are realistic, hard to detect and surprisingly easy-to-create facsimiles of real people. Deepfakes have been rightly denounced for the personal harm they inflict through celebrity pornographic videos, the spread of fake news, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and financial fraud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eight Common OT / Industrial Firewall Mistakes
https://threatpost.com/waterfall-eight-common-ot-industrial-firewall-mistakes/155061/
Firewalls are easy to misconfigure. While the security consequences of such errors may be acceptable for some firewalls, the accumulated risks of misconfigured firewalls in a defense-in-depth OT network architecture are generally unacceptable.
Most industrial sites deploy firewalls as the first line of defense for their Operations Technology (OT) / industrial networks. However, configuring and managing these firewalls is a complex undertaking. Configuration and other mistakes are easy to make.
This article explores eight common mistakes that firewall administrators make and describes how these mistakes can compromise firewall functionality and network security. The lesson here though is not “stop making mistakes.”
#1 – Leaving the IP “any to any” access rule in place
#2 Using the wrong order of rules
#3 Failing to disable unused administrative interfaces
#4 Leaving the firewall default password unchanged
#5 Failing to patch the firewall
#6 Failing to plan for additional infrastructure costs
#7 Mismanaging rule sets over time
#8 Believing a firewall is “outbound only”
The unidirectional alternative
Thoroughly secured industrial networks increasingly deploy unidirectional gateway technology at IT/OT interfaces, instead of firewalls.
Unidirectional gateway hardware is physically able to send information in only one direction – from the OT network out to the enterprise. No cyber attack, however sophisticated, can change the behavior of the hardware, nor can any cyber attack information reach through the hardware to impair the protected OT network in any way.
To simplify safe IT/OT integration, unidirectional gateway software replicates servers from industrial to enterprise networks. For example, let’s say enterprise users and applications acquire their OT data from a SQL-based historian database. In this case, the unidirectional gateways query the database on the OT side, convert the received data into unidirectional formats, send the data to the enterprise side, and there insert the data into an identical SQL/historian database. Enterprise users and applications then have access to their data normally and bi-directionally from the enterprise replica database. If needed, the replica database server can have exactly the same IP address as the industrial historian database has – this because the unidirectional gateway is not a firewall or a router, and so cannot be confused by the same IP addresses in use on both sides of the device.
With unidirectional gateway hardware protecting an industrial network, no software attack from an enterprise network, or from the Internet beyond the network, can reach the protected OT network, no matter how many passwords are stolen or systems we might not be able to patch.
Firewalls are easy to misconfigure. While the security consequences of such errors may be acceptable for some firewalls, the accumulated risks of misconfigured firewalls in a defense-in-depth OT network architecture are generally unacceptable. The solution is only partly to “be more diligent” about managing our firewalls. No human process is perfect
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why a Data-Security Expert Fears U.S. Voting Will Be Hacked
Harri Hursti has spent 15 years trying to draw attention to the weaknesses in America’s election systems
Why a Data-Security Expert Fears U.S. Voting Will Be Hacked
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-data-security-expert-fears-u-s-voting-will-be-hacked-11587747159
Harri Hursti has spent 15 years trying to draw attention to the weaknesses in America’s election systems
In 2005, a concerned Florida election supervisor asked the Finnish data-security expert Harri Hursti to hack into one of the state’s commonly used voting machines to test its vulnerability. The verdict wasn’t reassuring. By modifying just a few lines of code on the machine’s memory card, Mr. Hursti says, he could change the results of a mock election. That same model, he adds, will be among those used in the 2020 elections. (A spokesperson for the machine’s vendor, Dominion Voting, says that these weaknesses were fixed in 2012, but Mr. Hursti says that he has tested the new version and found the updates insufficient.)
Mr. Hursti has spent the past 15 years trying to draw attention to the weaknesses in America’s voting systems. Last month, he was featured in an HBO documentary called “Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections,” about far-reaching security breaches in multiple U.S. elections that he says have gone unfixed. He warns that both the American political establishment and the public are far too complacent. “Once you understand how everything works, you understand how fragile everything is and how easy it is to lose this all,” Mr. Hursti says in the film.
In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security notified 21 states that they had been targeted by Russian hackers in the previous year’s voting. (Russia denies the allegations.)
Mr. Hursti focuses more on the hardware side of the voting process than information operations from hostile powers.
“I could not believe how irresponsible the use of technology is in voting and still is,” he says.
In 2017, he helped found the Voting Village at the annual Defcon hacking conference in Las Vegas, a separate area where attendees can try to breach different types of election machines. A year later, Voting Village hackers reported vulnerabilities in many of the machines.
Mr. Hursti has long been concerned about his own computers being infiltrated. “I’m not worried about being attacked,” he says. “I’m worried about being framed for something I didn’t do.” Sophisticated hackers, he says, can enter personal computers, download such things as child porn and cover their tracks.
Mr. Hursti thinks that the only way to ensure fair election results is to vote on hand-marked paper ballots. “You can always conduct an audit or recount because the voter’s intent is recorded on permanent reading,” he says.
After working in computer programming for most of his life, he is amused to hear critics calling him opposed to technology because of his calls for an old-school paper voting system. “I’m against the irresponsible use of technology,” he says, but “I’m the last person I would ever think people would be calling a Luddite.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Approach Could Protect Control Systems From Hackers
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/new-approach-protects-power-plants-other-major-control-systems-from-hacking