Malwarebytes releases State of Malware report
Growth in attacks designed to obfuscate access and purpose should put organizations on alert as cybercriminals gain control over endpoints to do just about anything they want.
The most dangerous cyberattack is the one you don’t know about.
That’s exactly what cybercriminals are focusing on, according to Malwarebytes’ 2019 State of Malware report. If an attack can either run completely in stealth, or simply hide their true intention, in many ways, they’ve already won.
According to the report, two very specific types of attacks are on the rise from 2017 to 2018:
Trojans saw a 132% increase
Backdoors saw a 173% increase
Trojans and backdoors
Malwarebytes defines each of these separately. Trojans are programs "that claim to perform one function but actually do another", with Backdoors defined as "a type ... Read More
Scammers using hijacked GoDaddy domains to launch large-scale spam campaigns
GoDaddy took steps in January, 2019 to address the authentication flaw exploited by the attackers, according to Brian Krebs. Krebs first reported on the authentication weakness on January 22nd, when he outlined two massive spam campaigns during 2018 that were very successful at getting into people’s inboxes. Their success was due to the fact that the emails were sent through trusted but dormant domains, many of which were registered and owned by Fortune 500 companies.
Anti-spam researcher Ron Guilmette discovered that nearly all of these domains had used GoDaddy’s DNS service at some point. The scammers had realized that they could add domains to their GoDaddy accounts without proving that they owned the domains. GoDaddy quickly addressed the ... Read More
Social engineering on Wikipedia
Social engineering scammers are selectively editing Wikipedia pages. These lend credibility to tech support scams, according to Rob VandenBrink at the SANS Internet Storm Center. The Wikipedia page for the SpyEye banking Trojan was changed in mid-December to include a typo-ridden paragraph which claims that only three tech companies can remove the malware, and that “Best buy, Geek squad, Office Depo will not be able to fix it at all.” <sic>
VandenBrink says that the scammer made these edits to convince victims that “only we can help you fix this (fake of course) infection you have on your computer.” The edit history of the Wikipedia user who made the changes shows that the account made similar edits to the “Macro virus” Wikipedia page, ... Read More
You can’t have privacy without security
California clearly agrees and may test the applicability of Larry Page's advice with new legislation signed by California Governor Brown in September, 2018.
Internet of Things legislation takes effect 1/1/2020
With the ink barely dry on the infamous California Consumer Privacy Act (the CCPA)—a first-of-its-kind data privacy bill in the United States—Brown signed a new Internet of Things cybersecurity bill into law, SB 327. Perhaps not so coincidentally, both laws will take effect on January 1, 2020, marking a substantial compliance deadline for technology companies big and small.
SB 327 will require that a manufacturer of a “connected device” equip the device with a defined minimum amount of security. “Connected device” is defined quite broadly and as written encompasses “any device, or other physical ... Read More
Triton got into a petrochemical plant
In the summer of 2017, a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia experienced a worrisome security incident that cybersecurity experts consider to be the first-ever cyber attack carried out with “a blatant, flat-out intent to hurt people.” The attack involved a highly sophisticated new malware strain called Triton, which was capable of remotely disabling safety systems inside the plant with potentially catastrophic consequences. It all started when someone launched a spear phishing attack and someone else clicked a link they should not have clicked.
Luckily, a flaw in the Triton code triggered a safety system that responded by shutting down the plant. If it hadn’t been for that flaw, the hackers could have released toxic hydrogen sulfide gas or caused explosions. As ... Read More
Phishing and File Sharing
Internet thieves have long used file sharing sites and services to host their malicious files. When they do this, they typically use the underlying service to generate download links that anyone can click without logging in to the hosting service.
Over the past month we started noticing apparently legitimate Dropbox emails pushing links to files with names suspiciously similar to those routinely used by the bad guys. When we clicked the links to check, however, we were greeted with a demand to log in to the service. That's typically been a sign that the files involved were legit.
Still, something wasn't right here. Given the file names presented, we reckoned there was little chance those files were innocuous. So, we decided to log in to ... Read More
Ransomware knocked most systems offline
Officials in Jackson County, Georgia, paid $400,000 to cyber-criminals this week to get rid of a ransomware infection and regain access to their IT systems. The County hired cyber-security consultant to negotiate ransom fee with hacker group. Jackson County officials have not yet confirmed how hackers breached their network.
The infection forced most of the local government's IT systems offline, with the exception of its website and 911 emergency system.
"Everything we have is down," Sheriff Janis Mangum told StateScoop in an interview. "We are doing our bookings the way we used to do it before computers. We're operating by paper in terms of reports and arrest bookings. We've continued to function. It's just more difficult."
Jackson County officials notified the FBI and hired a cyber-security consultant. ... Read More
Office Depot $300 scam - yes, it really happened
I'm sure you've heard something about the Office Depot $300 fraud. For a thorough explanation, see https://cybersafetynet.net/office-depot-faked-malware-scans-to-sell-unneeded-300-tech-services/. Basically, Office Depot's malware scan reported malware on computers that did not have malware. Office Depot then sold an unnecessary $300 service. Today I am writing about how that would look in other industries.
We have a high level of trust in those who provide professional services. We go to them when we sense a problem and need their training, judgement and professionalism to turn the problem into a solution. Let's see how this would play out in another industry.
Electrical
Your kitchen has a refrigerator, microwave oven and coffee maker. You discover that you can run two at the same time, but ... Read More
Is this the best Facebook phishing scam ever?
Scams seeking to harvest online credentials have long tried to replicate known logon pages. But this newly found instance is just about perfect.
In every scam that uses social engineering, the key is to be believable. If it looks right, feels right, has the timing right, etc., the victim is more likely to fall for it. This latest scam seeks to take advantage of a user’s desire to leverage single sign-on (SSO) via well-known websites. In this case, Facebook. Rather than creating (and remembering) countless passwords for an equivalently large number of websites, users will take advantage of identifying themselves via Facebook.
Under normal circumstances, a Facebook API is called which prompts the user to authenticate. But researchers at security vendor Myki have ... Read More
A phishing attack will strike you. It is not a question of IF, but a question of WHEN
With the massive rise in phishing attacks, 2019 is the year for organizations to realize the concept of becoming a victim is an issue of when and no longer if.
According to Malwarebyte’s 2019 State of Malware report, there is pretty much no industry that is unaffected by malware. And phishing attacks remain an effective means of tricking users. In Healthcare alone, nearly one-half of orgs citing a 1-10% click rate when interacting with mock-phishing emails to test user response, and another one-quarter of organizations seeing click rates of 11-30%.
These numbers clearly indicate that organizations simply aren’t prepared for phishing attacks.
What you can do
What’s needed is an anti-phishing plan in place that helps to ... Read More