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Before yesterdaySecurity

SpectX: Log Parser for DFIR, (Tue, Apr 21st)

I hope this finds you all safe, healthy, and sheltered to the best of your ability.
  • April 21st 2020 at 02:29
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Crabby Code - ASW #104

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Rebecca Black, Senior Staff Application Security Engineer at Avalara, to talk about Building an AppSec Ecosystem! This week in the Application Security News, JSON Web Token Validation Bypass in Auth0 Authentication API, Mining for malicious Ruby gems, A Brief History of a Rootable Docker Image, Privacy In The Time Of COVID, and Threat modeling explained: A process for anticipating cyber attacks!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ASWEpisode104

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 20th 2020 at 22:30
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KPOT AutoIt Script: Analysis, (Mon, Apr 20th)

In diary entry "KPOT Deployed via AutoIt Script" I obtained 3 files:
  • April 20th 2020 at 06:56
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KPOT Analysis: Obtaining the Decrypted KPOT EXE, (Sun, Apr 19th)

In diary entry "KPOT Deployed via AutoIt Script" I obtained 3 files:
  • April 19th 2020 at 08:03
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Maldoc Falsely Represented as DOCX Invoice Redirecting to Fake Apple Store, (Sat, Apr 18th)

This is a phishing document received today pretending to be an invoice (Word Document) from Apple Support but initial analysis shows it is a PDF document.
  • April 18th 2020 at 18:38
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Secure Your Nipples - PSW #647

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Wade Woolwine, Principal Threat Intelligence Researcher at Rapid7 to talk about Threat Intel Program Strategies! In our second segment, we welcome Magno Gomes, Director of Sales Engineering at Core Security (a HelpSystems Company), to discuss Penetration Testing to Validate Vulnerability Scanners! In the Security News, How to teach your iPhone to recognize you while wearing a mask, Hackers Targeting Critical Healthcare Facilities With Ransomware During Coronavirus Pandemic, VMware plugs critical flaw in vCenter Server, Russian state hackers behind San Francisco airport hack, and Macs Are More Secure, and Other Jokes You Can Tell Yourself!

 

To learn more about Core Security, visit: https://securityweekly.com/coresecurity

To learn more about Rapid7 or to request a demo, visit: https://securityweekly.com/rapid7

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/PSWEpisode647

Visit https://securityweekly.com/acm to sign up for a demo or buy our AI Hunter!

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  • April 17th 2020 at 21:00
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Hospital Hacks, Masking Face ID, & Attacking 5G - Wrap Up - SWN #26

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week in the Security Weekly News Wrap Up Show, Doug White covers the hot topics and and stories across all our shows on the Security Weekly Network! How to teach your iPhone to recognize FACE ID while wearing a mask, Energetic bear behind SFO Airport site hacks, Hackers are targeting critical healthcare facilities with ransomware during the pandemic, Cyber insurance providers using "act of war" exclusion in reference to "cyberwar" in notPetya Claims, and more!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode26

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 17th 2020 at 16:39
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This Week in Security News: 5 Reasons to Move Your Endpoint Security to the Cloud Now and ICEBUCKET Group Mimics Smart TVs to Steal Ad Money

By Jon Clay (Global Threat Communications)

Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about 5 reasons your organization should consider moving to a cloud managed solution. Also, read about a massive online fraud operation that has been mimicking smart TVs to fool online advertisers and gain unearned profits from online ads.

 

Read on:

Letter from the CEO: A Time of Kindness and Compassion

As a global company with headquarters in Japan, Trend Micro has been exposed to COVID-19 from the very early days when it first erupted in Asia. During these difficult times, Trend Micro has also witnessed the amazing power of positivity and kindness around the world. In this blog, read more about the importance of compassion during these unprecedented times from Trend Micro’s CEO, Eva Chen.

What Do Serverless Compute Platforms Mean for Security?

Developers deploying containers to restricted platforms or “serverless” containers to the likes of AWS Fargate, for example, should think about security differently – by looking upward, looking left and also looking all-around your cloud domain for opportunities to properly security your cloud native applications. 

April Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Battles 4 Bugs Under Active Exploit

Microsoft released its April 2020 Patch Tuesday security updates, its first big patch update released since the work-from-home era began, with a whopping 113 vulnerabilities. Microsoft has seen a 44% increase in the number of CVEs patched between January to April 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019, according to Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative – a likely result of an increasing number of researchers looking for bugs and an expanding portfolio of supported products.

5 Reasons to Move Your Endpoint Security to the Cloud Now

As the world adopts work from home initiatives, we’ve seen many organizations accelerate their plans to move from on-premises endpoint security and detection and response (EDR/XDR) solutions to SaaS versions. In this blog, learn about 5 reasons you should consider moving to a cloud managed solution.

Why Running a Privileged Container is Not a Good Idea

Containers are not, by any means, new. They have been consistently and increasingly adopted in the past few years, with security being a popular related topic. It is well-established that giving administrative powers to server users is not a good security practice. In the world of containers, we have the same paradigm. In this article, Trend Micro’s Fernando Cardoso explains why running a privileged container is a bad idea.

Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere

Over the past three decades, Trend Micro has observed the industry trends that have the biggest impact on its customers. One of the big things we’ve noticed is that threats move largely in tandem with changes to IT infrastructure. As digital transformation continues to remain a priority, it also comes with an expanded corporate attack surface, driving security leaders to demand enhanced visibility, detection and response across the entire enterprise — not just the endpoint.

Shift Well-Architecture Left. By Extension, Security Will Follow

Using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the norm in the cloud. From CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform, Serverless Framework and ARM, the options are nearly endless. IaC allows architects and DevOps engineers to version the application infrastructure as much as the developers are already versioning the code. So, any bad change, no matter if on the application code or infrastructure, can be easily inspected or, even better, rolled back.

Work from Home Presents a Data Security Challenge for Banks

The mass relocation of financial services employees from the office to their couch, dining table or spare room to stop the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus is a significant data security concern, according to several industry experts. In this article, learn how managers can support security efforts from Trend Micro’s Bill Malik.

Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H

For as long as cloud providers have been in business, discussing the Shared Responsibility Model has been priority when it comes to customer operation teams. It defines the different aspects of control, and with that control, comes the need to secure, manage, and maintain. In this blog, Trend Micro highlights some of the requirements and discusses the organization’s layout for responsibility.

Coronavirus Update App Leads to Project Spy Android and iOS Spyware

Trend Micro discovered a potential cyberespionage campaign, dubbed Project Spy, that infects Android and iOS devices with spyware. Project Spy uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a lure, posing as an app called ‘Coronavirus Updates’. Trend Micro also found similarities in two older samples disguised as a Google service and, subsequently, as a music app. Trend Micro noted a small number of downloads of the app in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Romania, Grenada and Russia.

Exposing Modular Adware: How DealPly, IsErIk, and ManageX Persist in Systems

Trend Micro has observed suspicious activities caused by adware, with common behaviors that include access to random domains with alternating consonant and vowel names, scheduled tasks, and in-memory execution via WScript that has proven to be an effective method to hide its operations. In this blog, Trend Micro walks through its analysis of three adware events linked to and named as Dealply, IsErIk and ManageX. 

ICEBUCKET Group Mimicked Smart TVs to Steal Ad Money

Cybersecurity firm and bot detection platform White Ops has discovered a massive online fraud operation that for the past few months has been mimicking smart TVs to fool online advertisers and gain unearned profits from online ads. White Ops has named this operation ICEBUCKET and has described it as “the largest case of SSAI spoofing” known to date.

Fake Messaging App Installers Promoted on Fraudulent Download Sites, Target Russian Users

Fake installers of popular messaging apps are being propagated via fraudulent download sites, as disclosed in a series of tweets by a security researcher from CronUp. Trend Micro has also encountered samples of the files. The sites and the apps are in Russian and are aiming to bait Russian users.

“Twin Flower” Campaign Jacks Up Network Traffic, Downloads Files, Steals Data

A campaign dubbed “Twin Flower” has been detected by Jinshan security researchers in a report published in Chinese and analyzed by Trend Micro. The files are believed to be downloaded unknowingly when visiting malicious sites or dropped into the system by another malware. The potentially unwanted application (PUA) PUA.Win32.BoxMini.A files are either a component or the main executable itself of a music downloader that automatically downloads music files without user consent.

Undertaking Security Challenges in Hybrid Cloud Environments

Businesses are now turning to hybrid cloud environments to make the most of the cloud’s dependability and dynamicity. The hybrid cloud gives organizations the speed and scalability of the public cloud, as well as the control and reliability of the private cloud. A 2019 Nutanix survey shows that 85% of its respondents regard the hybrid cloud as the ideal IT operating model.

How to Secure Video Conferencing Apps

What do businesses have to be wary of when it comes to their video conferencing software? Vulnerabilities, for one. Threat actors are not shy about using everything they have in their toolbox and are always on the lookout for any flaw or vulnerability they can exploit to pull off malicious attacks. In this blog, learn about securing your video conferencing apps and best practices for strengthening the security of work-from-home setups.

Monitoring and Maintaining Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 4: Best Practices

In the last blog of this four-part series, Trend Micro delves deeper into regular monitoring and maintenance of home network security, to ensure you’re getting the best protection that Trend Micro Home Network Security can provide your connected home.

Surprised by the ICEBUCKET operation that has described as “the largest case of SSAI spoofing” known to date? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.

The post This Week in Security News: 5 Reasons to Move Your Endpoint Security to the Cloud Now and ICEBUCKET Group Mimics Smart TVs to Steal Ad Money appeared first on .


Weaponized RTF Document Generator & Mailer in PowerShell, (Fri, Apr 17th)

Another piece of malicious PowerShell script that I found while hunting. Like many malicious activities that occur in those days, it is related to the COVID19 pandemic. Its purpose of simple: It checks if Outlook is used by the victim and, if it's the case, it generates a malicious RTF document that is spread to all contacts extracted from Outlook. Let's have a look at it. The script is available on VT (SHA256: 1f7f0d75fe5dace66ec9b5935d28ba02765527f09f58345c2e33e17ab4c91bd7) and has a low score of 8/60[1].
  • April 17th 2020 at 10:35
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Using AppLocker to Prevent Living off the Land Attacks, (Thu, Apr 16th)

STI student David Brown published an STI research paper in January with some interesting ideas to prevent living off the land attacks with AppLocker. Living off the land attacks use existing Windows binaries instead of downloading specific attack tools. This post-compromise technique is very difficult to block. AppLocker isn't really designed to block these attacks because AppLocker by default does allow standard Windows binaries to run.
  • April 16th 2020 at 21:31
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Irons in the Fire - ESW #179

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we talk Enterprise News, to discuss how NeuVector adds to container security platform and automates end-to-end vulnerability management, Sysdig Expands Unified Monitoring Across IBM Cloud Services Globally, Optiv Hires Deloitte Stalwart Kevin Lynch as Chief Executive Officer, Illusive Networks Integrates with Infoblox to Speed Deployment, and Microsoft's April 2020 Patch Tuesday arrives with fixes for 3 zero-day exploits and 15 critical flaws! In our second segment, we welcome Terry McCorkle, Founder and CEO of PhishCloud, to discuss Phishing's effect on the Corporate Culture! In our final segment, we welcome Tim Williams, Founder and CEO of Index Engines, to talk about how Testing is the Missing Link for Protecting Your Data Against a Ransomware Attack!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ESWEpisode179

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes!

 

Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly

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  • April 16th 2020 at 09:00
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The Red Lions - SCW #24

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Jeffrey Smith, Managing Partner at Cyber Risk Underwriters, to sell us Cyber Insurance, and how he wants to take on the skeptics (e.g. the SCW hosts) about the role that Cyber Insurance plays in security! Jeffrey stays on for the Security and Compliance News, to talk about how Cyber Insurance in playing out in the real world, or at least how it's showing up in the news!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SCWEpisode24

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/scw for all the latest episodes!

 

Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly

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  • April 15th 2020 at 21:00
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Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H

By Jason Dablow
cloud

Whosawhatsit?! –  WHO is responsible for this anyways?

For as long as cloud providers have been in business, we’ve been discussing the Shared Responsibility Model when it comes to customer operation teams. It defines the different aspects of control, and with that control, comes the need to secure, manage, and maintain.

While I often make an assumption that everyone is already familiar with this model, let’s highlight some of the requirements as well as go a bit deeper into your organization’s layout for responsibility.

During your cloud migration, you’ll no doubt come across a variety of cloud services that fits into each of these configurations. From running cloud instances (IaaS) to cloud storage (SaaS), there’s a need to apply operational oversight (including security) to each of these based on your level of control of the service.  For example, in a cloud instance, since you’re still responsible for the Operating System and Applications, you’ll still need a patch management process in place, whereas with file object storage in the cloud, only oversight of permissions and data management is required. I think Mark Nunnikhoven does a great job in going into greater detail of the model here: https://blog.trendmicro.com/the-shared-responsibility-model/.

shared responsibility model

I’d like to zero in on some of the other “WHO”s that should be involved in security of your cloud migration.

InfoSec – I think this is the obvious mention here. Responsible for all information security within an organization. Since your cloud migration is working with “information”, InfoSec needs to be involved with how they get access to monitoring the security and risk associated to an organization. 

Cloud Architect – Another no-brainer in my eyes but worth a mention; if you’re not building a secure framework with a look beyond a “lift-and-shift” initial migration, you’ll be doomed with archaic principles leftover from the old way of doing things. An agile platform built for automating every operation including security should be the focus to achieving success.

IT / Cloud Ops – This may be the same or different teams. As more and more resources move to the cloud, an IT team will have less responsibilities for the physical infrastructure since it’s now operated by a cloud provider. They will need to go through a “migration” themselves to learn new skills to operate and secure a hybrid environment. This adaptation of new skills needs to be lead by…

Leadership – Yes, leadership plays an important role in operations and security even if they aren’t part of the CIO / CISO / COO branch. While I’m going to cringe while I type it, business transformation is a necessary step as you move along your cloud migration journey. The acceleration that the cloud provides can not be stifled by legacy operation and security ideologies. Every piece of the business needs to be involved in accelerating the value you’re delivering your customer base by implementing the agile processes including automation into the operations and security of your cloud.

With all of your key players focused on a successful cloud migration, regardless of what stage you’re in, you’ll reach the ultimate stage: the reinvention of your business where operational and security automation drives the acceleration of value delivered to your customers.

This blog is part of a multi-part series dealing with the principles of a successful cloud migration.  For more information, start at the first post here: https://blog.trendmicro.com/principles-of-a-cloud-migration-from-step-one-to-done/

The post Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H appeared first on .

5 reasons to move your endpoint security to the cloud now

By Chris Taylor

As the world has adopts work from home initiatives, we’ve seen many organizations accelerate their plans to move from on-premises endpoint security and Detection and Response (EDR/XDR) solutions to Software as a Service versions. And several customers who switched to the SaaS version last year, recently wrote us to tell how glad to have done so as they transitioned to working remote. Here are 5 reasons to consider moving to a cloud managed solution:

 

  1. No internal infrastructure management = less risk

If you haven’t found the time to update your endpoint security software and are one or two versions behind, you are putting your organization at risk of attack. Older versions do not have the same level of protection against ransomware and file-less attacks. Just as the threats are always evolving, the same is true for the technology built to protect against them.

With Apex One as a Service, you always have the latest version. There are no software patches to apply or Apex One servers to manage – we take care of it for you. If you are working remote, this is one less task to worry about and less servers in your environment which might need your attention.

  1. High availability, reliability

With redundant processes and continuous service monitoring, Apex One as a Services delivers the uptime you need with 99.9% availability. The operations team also proactively monitors for potential issues on your endpoints and with your prior approval, can fix minor issues with an endpoint agent before they need your attention.

  1. Faster Detection and Response (EDR/XDR)

By transferring endpoint telemetry to a cloud data lake, detection and response activities like investigations and sweeping can be processed much faster. For example, creating a root cause analysis diagram in cloud takes a fraction of the time since the data is readily available and can be quickly processed with the compute power of the cloud.

  1. Increased MITRE mapping

The unmatched power of cloud computing also enables analytics across a high volume of events and telemetry to identify a suspicious series of activities. This allows for innovative detection methods but also additional mapping of techniques and tactics to the MITRE framework.  Building the equivalent compute power in an on- premises architecture would be cost prohibitive.

  1. XDR – Combined Endpoint + Email Detection and Response

According to Verizon, 94% of malware incidents start with email.  When an endpoint incident occurs, chances are it came from an email message and you want to know what other users have messages with the same email or email attachment in their inbox? You can ask your email admin to run these searches for you which takes time and coordination. As Forrester recognized in the recently published report: The Forrester Wave™ Enterprise Detection and Response, Q1 2020:

“Trend Micro delivers XDR functionality that can be impactful today. Phishing may be the single most effective way for an adversary to deliver targeted payloads deep into an infrastructure. Trend Micro recognized this and made its first entrance into XDR by integrating Microsoft office 365 and Google G suite management capabilities into its EDR workflows.”

This XDR capability is available today by combining alerts, logs and activity data of Apex One as a Service and Trend Micro Cloud App Security. Endpoint data is linked with Office 365 or G Suite email information from Cloud App Security to quickly assess the email impact without having to use another tool or coordinate with other groups.

Moving endpoint protection and detection and response to the cloud, has enormous savings in customer time while increasing their protection and capabilities. If you are licensed with our Smart Protection Suites, you already have access to Apex One as a Service and our support team is ready to help you with your migration. If you are an older suite, talk to your Trend Micro sales rep about moving to a license which includes SaaS.

 

The post 5 reasons to move your endpoint security to the cloud now appeared first on .

Monitoring and Maintaining Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 4: Best Practices

By Trend Micro

We continue our four-part series on protecting your home and family. See the links to the previous parts at the end of this blog.

We’re now done with familiarizing ourselves with the features of Trend Micro Home Network Security (HNS) It’s now time for you to get a bit more adept at regular monitoring and maintenance, to ensure you’re getting the best protection HNS can provide your connected home.

Keeping Tabs on Your Home Network

Once you’re tracking the various internet-capable devices in your home within HNS, as with any security-related device it’s essential to monitor the activities captured by it. In the same way that we need to periodically review the videos taken by our security cameras, to check for any unusual events in or around the home that need our attention; so too, do you need to keep abreast of the goings on in your home network, particularly those of an unusual or suspect nature, as revealed by HNS. This can easily be done in two ways: via Voice Control and Reports.

Voice Control. When you want just a quick overview of the status of your network, you can use HNS’s Voice Control. Voice Control is available as a skill for both Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

Once the skill has been enabled, you can ask Alexa or Google Assistant to control your Home Network Security (HNS) using the following voice commands:

  • Start a Check Devices Scan – To check your network and devices, say: “Alexa (or Ok, Google), tell Trend Micro to scan my network.”
  • Get Your Security Status – To get a network security status update, say: “Alexa (Ok, Google), ask Trend Micro if my network is ok.”
  • Get An Online Activity Summary – To get a summary of a profile’s online activity, say: “Alexa (Ok, Google), ask Trend Micro what Tom (or any member of your household) did today.”
  • Pause the Internet for a Profile – To disconnect the devices assigned to a profile from the internet, say: “Alexa (Ok, Google), ask Trend Micro to pause the Internet for Tom (or any member of your household).”
  • Pause YouTube for a Profile – To prevent the devices assigned to a profile from accessing YouTube, say: “Alexa (Ok, Google), ask Trend Micro to turn off YouTube for Tom (or any member of your household).”
  • Use the Dashboard – Lastly, though not a voice command, checking out the Dashboard of the HNS app will give you a brief summary of the state of security of your home network, and will let you know if anything triggered any Parental Control rules that you’ve set.

Reports. On the other hand, if you have more time to spare, you can peruse the Reports for your devices, user profiles, and network usage.

  • Devices. On your HNS app, Tap Menu > Devices and select a device. Then, tap Report and choose the report you want to view in order to see more details.
  • User Profiles. From your HNS app, Tap Menu > Family and select a user profile. Then, tap Report and choose an event card from the list to see more details.
  • Network Usage. Besides knowing the status of your devices and users, it’s also necessary to know your network usage, especially when your home network relies on a metered connection. Having an idea which devices are hogs on the network will allow you to make proper adjustments, either to rules you implement for your youngsters and other members of your household; or to let you know that maybe you need to upgrade your internet plan to address the more intensive internet needs of your family. Network usage can be viewed by scrolling down to the bottom of the Dashboard and tapping the Network Usage graph; or you can just simply tap Menu > Network. Both will display more detailed network usage information.

Responding to Network Events

Now that you’re more acquainted with your home network through HNS, it’s vital that you know what to do when, for instance, you received a Smart Alert notification indicating an unusually high network activity detected on one of your connected devices.

A Range of Network Events. In brief, you’ll need to review the recent activities and perform the required actions to eliminate risks such as the following:

  • Check if there are any important security-related issues you need to resolve by checking if the ball at the top of the Dashboard says “Action Required”. Tap the ball to find out what you need to do to make sure your network and device security are optimal.
  • Check detected network activities.
  • Check if the device where the unusually high network activity was detected.
  • Select the device where the unusual activity was detected to view the Summary Report for the past 7 days.
  • You will see the unusual network traffic details, including the time range of the traffic and the amount of data used.
  • Check if the top 3 activity destinations were done by you or your family member.
  • If you are aware of the activities and not concerned about these events, tap Report > Not Unusual.
  • If these unusually high traffic activities were not caused by you or your family member, you need to double-check that the Network and Security settings are still enabled, to keep your connected devices protected. Moreover, you should fix any vulnerabilities on your devices, usually resolved by a software or firmware update.

For more specific information regarding these types of incidents, you may refer to this Technical Support article.

Monitoring the Health of Your Home Network Security Station

The Home Network Security Station takes care of your home and your family’s security and safety. In return, you should know how to check if it’s in good working condition.

Physical Status. Check whether the physical components (LED, Reset button, Power, and Ethernet ports) of your Station are intact.

Power. Ensure that the Station is powered on. To check if the Station has power supply, just follow these simple steps:

  • Connect the adapter to the outlet and the Station.
  • Make sure power on the outlet is turned on.
  • Change outlets to ensure power is on.

Offline Notifications. When the HNS Station is offline the user will receive a notification about it. In addition, the HNS app will indicate the Station is offline. This situation can be attributed to loss of either the internet or LAN connections.

Internet Connection. Make sure you have stable internet connection. Checking your internet connection is easy:

  • Disconnect your Home Network Security Station from the router.
  • Check if internet line is connected to the router’s WAN port.
  • If there is no internet connection, do the following:
  • Reboot your router
  • Check the network status from your Internet Service Provider
  • Check your router settings

If you are able to connect to the internet, just reconnect your Home Network Security Station to the router.

LAN Connection. Check the connection between the router and the HNS Station.

  • Ensure that the Ethernet cable provided is used to connect the HNS Station to any available LAN port of your router.
  • Check if the two LED lights of the LAN port are turned on.
  • The port on the right should be blinking green, while the other port should be a steady green or yellow.
  • If the LED lights don’t light up as mentioned, move the Ethernet cable to another router LAN port. Once the LED lights become normal, your HNS Station should be connected to the network.

Updates. Make sure that you update the HNS App if you receive a notification that indicates, “Update Needed. Please click the button below to get the latest version.” This will guarantee that your HNS is up-to-date with app improvements.

Getting Help. Always remember, if you encounter any questions, issues or concerns that you’re unable to resolve, Help is just a click away.

Final Thoughts

Home networks are everywhere these days. However, the user knowledge required to secure and maintain our home networks spans from tech newbies to gurus and often seems to be a rather complicated or even confusing task.

To help you maintain and monitor your home network, Trend Micro offers a simple plug-and-protect home network device to protect your smart home and connected devices from being hacked, while keeping the internet safe for your kids on any device. But plug-and-protect doesn’t mean plug-and-forget. As with any security device, ongoing monitoring and maintenance is needed to provide the best protection your home network and family members need and deserve.

For more information, go to Trend Micro Home Network Security.

To read the rest of our series on HNS, go to

You’re in Safe Hands with Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 1: Setup and Configuration

Trend Micro Home Network Security Has Got You Covered – Part 2: Parental Controls

In Safe Hands with Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 3: Testing Its Functions

The post Monitoring and Maintaining Trend Micro Home Network Security – Part 4: Best Practices appeared first on .

No IOCs? No Problem! Getting a Start Hunting for Malicious Office Files, (Wed, Apr 15th)

Most of us know that macros in Office documents are one of the most common ways to get malware into an organization.  Unfortunately, all to many organizations depend on their AV products to detect these macros and the associated malware.  It's sad fact that macro's are easy to write, and it's not too tough to evade AV by being smart about how you write a malicious macro.
  • April 15th 2020 at 12:53
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Higher Priority - BSW #169

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, it's our Security Money show, where we'll review the Security Weekly 25 Index and all the financial updates for both the public and private security markets! In the Leadership and Communications segment, the 3 stages of adapting to a crisis, build a culture that aligns to people's values, stop, start, defer: how companies are navigating technology spend in a crisis, and more!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/BSWEpisode169

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes!

 

Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/securityweekly

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  • April 15th 2020 at 09:00
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Some Good Meatiness - ASW #103

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Brad Geesaman, Co-Founder of Darkbit, to talk about Making Kubernetes a Hostile Place for Attackers! In the Application Security News, Zoom Taps Ex-Facebook CISO Amid Security Snafus, Lawsuit, How we abused Slack's TURN servers to gain access to internal services, Moving from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha, Automate Security Testing with ZAP and GitHub Actions, Shift-Right Testing: The Emergence of TestOps, and Building Secure and Reliable Systems!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ASWEpisode103

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 14th 2020 at 21:00
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5G Conspiracies, Zombieware, & C-Suite Targets - SWN #25

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week on the Security Weekly News, Checkpoint Global Threat Index moved Dridex to third place, Dutch Telco towers damaged by 5G protestors, CyberCube reports indicate Increased targeting of C-Suite employees, Cybercrime may be the world's third-largest economy by 2021, and Jason Wood joins for the Expert Commentary on how WooCommerce Falls to Fresh Card-Skimmer Malware!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode25

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  • April 14th 2020 at 19:57
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Microsoft April 2020 Patch Tuesday, (Tue, Apr 14th)

This month we got patches for 113 vulnerabilities total. According to Microsoft, three of them are being exploited (CVE-2020-1020, CVE-2020-0938 and CVE-2020-0968)  and two were previously disclosed (CVE-2020-1020 and CVE-2020-0935).
  • April 14th 2020 at 18:22
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Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere

By Leah MacMillan

Over the past three decades, we’ve had time at Trend Micro to observe the industry trends that have the biggest impact on our customers. And one of the big things we’ve seen is that threats move largely in tandem with changes to IT infrastructure. This matters today because most organizations are transforming the way they run and manage their infrastructure—a daunting task on its own.

But with digital transformation also comes an expanded corporate attack surface, driving security leaders to demand enhanced visibility, detection & response across the entire enterprise — this is not just about the endpoint.

Transforming business

Over the past five years, there has been a major shift in the way IT infrastructure is delivered, and with that shift, increasing complexity. A big part of this change has been the use of the cloud, reflected in Gartner’s prediction that the market will grow to over $266 billion in 2020. Organizations everywhere are leveraging the cloud and DevOps to rapidly deliver new and differentiated applications and services for their customers, partners and employees. And the use of containers and microservices across a multi-cloud and hybrid environment is increasingly common.

In addition to leveraging public cloud services like IaaS, organizations are also rapidly adopting SaaS applications like Office 365, and expanding their use of mobile and collaborative applications to support remote working. Some are even arguing that working patterns may never be the same again, following the changes forced on many employers by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Combine these changes with networks that continue to extend to include branch offices and add new areas to protect like operational technology including industrial systems, and we can certainly see that the challenges facing the modern enterprise look nothing like they did a few years ago.

Under fire, under pressure

All of these infrastructure changes make for a broader attack surface that the bad guys can take advantage of, and they’re doing so with an increasingly wide range of tools and techniques. In the cloud there is a new class of vulnerabilities introduced through a greater use of open source, containers, orchestration platforms, supply chain applications and more. For all organizations, the majority of threats still prey upon the user, arriving via email (over 90% of the 52.3 billion we blocked in 2019), and they’re no longer just basic phishing attempts. There’s been an uptick in fileless events designed to bypass traditional security filters (we blocked 1.4 million last year). And Business Email Compromise (BEC) and ransomware continue to evolve, the latter causing major outages across local government, healthcare and other vulnerable sectors.

Organizations are often left flat-footed because they don’t have the in-house skills to secure a rapidly evolving IT environment. Mistakes get made, and configuration errors can allow the hackers to sneak in.

Against this backdrop, CISOs need visibility, detection and response capabilities across the extended enterprise. But in too many cases, teams are struggling because they have:

  • Too many security tools, in silos. Security leaders want to consolidate the 10, 20 or even 50+ security technologies currently in use across their organizations. And ideally, they need capabilities that work seamlessly together, sharing threat intelligence across security layers, and delivering a fully connected threat defense.
  • Too few people. Global cybersecurity skills shortages have now exceeded four million, with existing teams often overwhelmed by alerts, allowing serious threats to fly under the radar
  • Increased compliance pressures. CISOs are under pressure to comply with a number of regulations, and the impacts of non-compliance are increasingly strict. While newer, more demanding compliance requirements like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act aim to protect data, they also present operational challenges for cloud teams with complex, manual and time consuming audits. Not to mention new regulations have teeth, with fines that can have a serious impact on the bottom line.  For example, as of March 2020, 227 GDPR fines had been levied, totalling over 466 million euros.

Beyond the endpoint

While endpoint detection and response (EDR) has become a popular response to some of these problems over recent years, the reality is that cyber-attacks are rarely straightforward and limited to the endpoint (as noted in the email statistic above). Security teams actually need visibility, detection, and response across the entire IT environment, so they can better contextualize and deal with threats.

This is what Trend Micro XDR offers. It provides visibility across not just endpoints but also email, servers, cloud workloads and networks, applying AI and expert security analytics to correlate and identify potential threats. The result is fewer, higher fidelity alerts for stretched IT security teams to deal with. Recognizing the skills shortage reality, we also offer a managed XDR service that augments in-house SOC activities with the power of Trend Micro security experts.

Detection and response is too important to be limited to the endpoint. Today’s CISOs need visibility, detection, and response everywhere.

The post Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere appeared first on .

Letter from the CEO: A time of kindness and compassion

By Trend Micro

Dear Customers,

Together, we are facing a truly unprecedented situation and we have all had to adapt to the new reality. The global coronavirus pandemic is affecting our families, our communities, our organizations – indeed, it affects our perspective and way of life. As you certainly have too, at Trend Micro we have been busy over the past few weeks ensuring our employees are safe while also delivering uninterrupted service and protection for our customers. We have made it a priority to help organizations around the globe strengthen their security and ensure business continuity while so many of their employees work remotely.

As a global company with headquarters in Japan, we have been exposed to COVID-19 from the very early days when it first erupted in Asia. We have seen the massive impact this novel coronavirus has had on all of us: from social distancing, to families being separated, illness and even death. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who has been impacted by the virus, directly or indirectly.

The safety of our employees is our first priority and for the last few weeks the vast majority of our employees are all working from home – all 7,000 across 60 countries. It is heartwarming to see the different activities teams have launched to stay connected while being apart: virtual happy hours or morning coffee meetings, online sports classes to stay fit together, movie watching nights and even remote karaoke. I sometimes feel that we are more connected now than ever before.

In the midst of these difficult times, we have also seen the amazing power of positivity and kindness around the world. I am very touched and proud of how our employees, our Trenders, are stepping up even more than usual to engage in acts of generosity and community support. A few examples include:

  • Employee-initiated neighborhood help services such as shopping for the elderly
  • Tools developed to help our medical heroes, for example a 3D printed clip that allows medical staff to wear face masks more comfortably
  • New content for students and parents who are now working from home, developed by our Internet Safety for Kids & Families team
  • Over 60,000 masks donated to our communities
  • Give & Match activities supporting underserved neighborhoods in India and the Philippines, with the company matching each employee donation.

We have also seen Trenders donating some of their accrued paid vacation days to colleagues who might need additional time off to take care of family. There have been thousands of such acts of kindness – likely many more that I’m not even aware of. Knowing the passion of our employees, I know that there are new activities being organized and happening at this exact moment.

In this same spirit, it is very important to me – as well as the entire executive team – that we do the right thing for our employees and our customers during these difficult times, rather than focusing solely on what’s best for our bottom line. We intend to retain all of our employees, and are working to ensure that our teams that work on commission will continue to have a steady income, no matter how business goes. We know that not every company is as fortunate as we are, and many family members of our employees are out of jobs, so our executives have also committed to reducing their salaries if necessary, to ensure that every employee will receive company bonuses for the first half of 2020. If we protect our Trend Micro family, our Trend Micro family can protect and care for their communities.

I understand these times are difficult and while we are celebrating acts of kindness and positivity, many of our friends and families are struggling with health issues and other concerns. Our hearts go out to all those who are affected, to our healthcare workers and all essential employees who help keep our lives going. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Please stay safe – and stay at home!

Kind regards,

Eva Chen

 

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Shift Well-Architecture Left. By Extension, Security Will Follow

By Raphael Bottino, Solutions Architect

A story on how Infrastructure as Code can be your ally on Well-Architecting and securing your Cloud environment

By Raphael Bottino, Solutions Architect — first posted as a medium article
Using Infrastructure as Code(IaC for short) is the norm in the Cloud. CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform, Serverless Framework, ARM… the options are endless! And they are so many just because IaC makes total sense! It allows Architects and DevOps engineers to version the application infrastructure as much as the developers are already versioning the code. So any bad change, no matter if on the application code or infrastructure, can be easily inspected or, even better, rolled back.

For the rest of this article, let’s use CloudFormation as reference. And, if you are new to IaC, check how to create a new S3 bucket on AWS as code:

Pretty simple, right? And you can easily create as many buckets as you need using the above template (if you plan to do so, remove the BucketName line, since names are globally unique on S3!). For sure, way simpler and less prone to human error than clicking a bunch of buttons on AWS console or running commands on CLI.

Pretty simple, right? And you can easily create as many buckets as you need using the above template (if you plan to do so, remove the BucketName line, since names are globally unique on S3!). For sure, way simpler and less prone to human error than clicking a bunch of buttons on AWS console or running commands on CLI.

Well, it’s not that simple…

Although this is a functional and useful CloudFormation template, following correctly all its rules, it doesn’t follow the rules of something bigger and more important: The AWS Well-Architected Framework. This amazing tool is a set of whitepapers describing how to architect on top of AWS, from 5 different views, called Pillars: Security, Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, Reliability and Performance Efficiency. As you can see from the pillar names, an architecture that follows it will be more secure, cheaper, easier to operate, more reliable and with better performance.

Among others, this template will generate a S3 bucket that doesn’t have encryption enabled, doesn’t enforce said encryption and doesn’t log any kind of access to it–all recommended by the Well-Architected Framework. Even worse, these misconfigurations are really hard to catch in production and not visibly alerted by AWS. Even the great security tools provided by them such as Trusted Advisor or Security Hub won’t give an easy-to-spot list of buckets with those misconfigurations. Not for nothing Gartner states that 95% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault¹.

The DevOps movement brought to the masses a methodology of failing fast, which is not exactly compatible with the above scenario where a failure many times is just found out whenever unencrypted data is leaked or the access log is required. The question is, then, how to improve it? Spoiler alert: the answer lies on the IaC itself 🙂

Shifting Left

Even before making sure a CloudFormation template is following AWS’ own best practices, the first obvious requirement is to make sure that the template is valid. A fantastic open-source tool called cfn-lint is made available by AWS on GitHub² and can be easily adopted on any CI/CD pipeline, failing the build if the template is not valid, saving precious time. To shorten the feedback loop even further and fail even faster, the same tool can be adopted on the developer IDE³ as an extension so the template can be validated as it is coded. Pretty cool, right? But it still doesn’t help us with the misconfiguration problem that we created with that really simple template in the beginning of this post.

Conformity⁴ provides, among other capabilities, an API endpoint to scan CloudFormation templates against the Well-Architected Framework, and that’s exactly how I know that template is not adhering to its best practices. This API can be implemented on your pipeline, just like the cfn-lint. However, I wanted to move this check further left, just like the cfn-lint extension I mentioned before.

The Cloud Conformity Template Scanner Extension

With that challenge in mind, but also with the need for scanning my templates for misconfigurations fast myself, I came up with a Visual Studio Code extension that, leveraging Conformity’s API, allows the developer to scan the template as it is coded. The Extension can be found here⁵ or searching for “Conformity” on your IDE.

After installing it, scanning a template is as easy as running a command on VS Code. Below it is running for our template example:

This tool allows anyone to shift misconfiguration and compliance checking as left as possible, right on developers’ hands. To use the extension, you’ll need a Conformity API key. If you don’t have one and want to try it out, Conformity provides a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. If you like it but feels that this time period is not enough for you, let me know and I’ll try to make it available to you.

But… What about my bucket template?

Oh, by the way, if you are wondering how a S3 bucket CloudFormation template looks like when following the best practices, take a look:

   
A Well-Architected bucket template

Not as simple, right? That’s exactly why this kind of tool is really powerful, allowing developers to learn as they code and organizations to fail the deployment of any resource that goes against the AWS recommendations.

References

[1] https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/why-cloud-security-is-everyones-business

[2] https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cfn-python-lint

[3] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kddejong.vscode-cfn-lint

[4] https://www.cloudconformity.com/

[5] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=raphaelbottino.cc-template-scanner

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Look at the same phishing campaign 3 months apart, (Mon, Apr 13th)

While going through a batch of malicious e-mails, which were caught by my mail filters in March, I noticed a simple phishing e-mail, which carried an entire credential-stealing page in its attachment. This, although interesting in its own way, would not be that unusual[1,2]. While I was analyzing it, however, I found that a nearly identical e-mail message, which was obviously part of the same campaign, was uploaded to Any.Run[3] back in January. Since I had two samples from nearly 3 months apart, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at how much has changed in this phishing campaign over that time.
  • April 13th 2020 at 13:54
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Critical Vuln in vCenter vmdir (CVE-2020-3952), (Fri, Apr 10th)

On April 9, VMware published VMSA-2020-0006, a security advisory for a critical vulnerability in vCenter Server that received the maximum CVSSv3 score of 10.0.  The vulnerablity, %%cve:2020-3952%% , involves a sensitive information disclosure flaw in the VMware Directory Service (vmdir) which is included with VMware vCenter. Per the advisory, vmdir does not implement proper access controls, which could allow a malicious attacker with network access to obtain sensitive information.  This likely can allow the attacker to compromise other services which rely on vmdir for authentication.
  • April 10th 2020 at 22:30
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PowerShell Sample Extracting Payload From SSL, (Fri, Apr 10th)

Another diary, another technique to fetch a malicious payload and execute it on the victim host. I spotted this piece of Powershell code this morning while reviewing my hunting results. It implements a very interesting technique. As usual, all the code snippets below have been beautified.
  • April 10th 2020 at 09:32
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Performing deception to OS Fingerprint (Part 1: nmap), (Sat, Mar 28th)

How can you know which operating system is running on a specific remote host? The technique to answer this question corresponds to the fingerprinting of the operating system and is executed by sending a specific set of packages to the remote host and see how it behaves. Each operating system responds differently, which allows it to be identified. 
  • April 9th 2020 at 21:58
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What do serverless compute platforms mean for security?

By Trend Micro

By Kyle Klassen Product Manager – Cloud Native Application Security at Trend Micro

Containers provide many great benefits to organizations – they’re lightweight, flexible, add consistency across different environments and scale easily.

One of the characteristics of containers is that they run in dedicated namespaces with isolated resource requirements. General purpose OS’s deployed to run containers might be viewed as overkill since many of their features and interfaces aren’t needed.

A key tenant in the cybersecurity doctrine is to harden platforms by exposing only the fewest number of interfaces and applying the tightest configurations required to run only the required operations.

Developers deploying containers to restricted platforms or “serverless” containers to the likes of AWS Fargate for example, should think about security differently – by looking upward, looking left and also looking all-around your cloud domain for opportunities to properly security your cloud native applications. Oh, and don’t forget to look outside. Let me explain…

Looking Upward

As infrastructure, OS, container orchestration and runtimes become the domain of the cloud provider, the user’s primary responsibility becomes securing the containers and applications themselves. This is where Trend Micro Cloud One™, a security services platform for cloud builders, can help Dev and Ops teams better implement build pipeline and runtime security requirements.  Cloud One – Application Security embeds a security library within the application itself to provide defense against web application attacks and to detect malicious activity.

One of the greatest benefits of this technology is that once an application is secured in this manner, it can be deployed anywhere and the protection comes along for the ride. Users can be confident their applications are secure whether deployed in a container on traditional hosts, into EKS on AWS Bottlerocket, serverless on AWS Fargate, or even as an AWS Lambda function!

Looking Left

It’s great that cloud providers are taking security seriously and providing increasingly secure environments within which to deploy your containers. But you need to make sure your containers themselves are not introducing security risks. This can be accomplished with container image scanning to identify security issues before these images ever make it to the production environment.

Enter Deep Security Smart Check – Container Image Scanning part of the Cloud One offering. Scans must be able to detect more than just vulnerabilities. Developer reliance on code re-use, public images, and 3rd party contributions mean that malware injection into private images is a real concern. Sensitive objects like secrets, keys and certificates must be found and removed and assurance against regulatory requirements like PCI, HIPAA or NIST should be a requirement before a container image is allowed to run.

Looking All-Around

Imagine taking the effort to ensure your applications, containers and functions are built securely, comply with strict security regulations and are deployed into container optimized cloud environments only to find out that you’ve still become a victim of an attack! How could this be? Well, one common oversight is recognizing the importance of disciplined configuration and management of the cloud resources themselves – you can’t assume they’re secure just because they’re working.

But, making sure your cloud services are secure can be a daunting task – likely comprised of dozens of cloud services, each with as many configuration options – these environments are complex. Cloud One – Conformity is your cloud security companion and gives you assurance that any hidden security issues with your cloud configurations are detected and prioritized. Disabled security options, weak keys, open permissions, encryption options, high-risk exposures and many, many more best practice security rules make it easy to conform to security best practices and get the most from your cloud provider services.

Look Outside

All done? Not quite. You also need to think about how the business workflows of your cloud applications ingest files (or malware?).  Cloud storage like S3 Buckets are often used to accept files from external customers and partners.  Blindly accepting uploads and pulling them into your workflows is an open door for attack.

Cloud One – File Storage Security incorporates Trend Micro’s best-in-class malware detection technology to identify and remove files infected with malware. As a cloud native application itself, the service deploys easily with deployment templates and runs as a ‘set and forget’ service – automatically scanning new files of any type, any size and automatically removing malware so you can be confident that all of your downstream workflows are protected.

It’s still about Shared Responsibility

Cloud providers will continue to offer security features for deploying cloud native applications – and you should embrace all of this capability.  However, you can’t assume your cloud environment is optimally secure without validating your configurations. And once you have a secure environment, you need to secure all of the components within your control – your functions, applications, containers and workflows. With this practical approach, Trend Micro Cloud One™ perfectly complements your cloud services with Network Security, Workload Security, Application Security, Container Security, File Storage Security and Conformity for cloud posture management, so you can be confident that you’ve got security covered no matter which way you look.

To learn more visit Trendmicro.com/CloudOne and join our webinar on cloud native application threats https://resources.trendmicro.com/Cloud-One-Webinar-Series-Cloud-Native-Application-Threats.html

 

 

 

 

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Exploitable By Design - PSW #646

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we bring you one of Security Weekly's very own, Tyler Robinson, Managing Director of Network Operations at Nisos, for a Technical Segment titled: To Hunt or Not To Hunt: Using offensive tooling to obtain OSINT and Real-Time Intelligence on a subject of interest for hunting or targeting! In our second segment, we talk Security News, to discuss Vulnerabilities in B&R Automation Software Facilitate Attacks on ICS Networks, Using AWS to secure your web applications, Serious Vulnerabilities Patched in Chrome & Firefox, Email Provider that got Hacked & Data of 600,000 Users is Now being Sold on the Dark Web, and As if the world couldn't get any weirder, this AI toilet scans your anus to identify you! In our final segment, we air a pre recorded interview with Jeff Man, entitled "Tales from the Crypt...Analysts pt.2", discussing many myths, legends and fables in hacker history!

 

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  • April 10th 2020 at 21:00
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COBOL, Grace Hopper, & AI Toilets - Wrap Up - SWN #24

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, Doug White brings you the latest on the Security Weekly Network in the Weekly Wrap Up, discussing Soaring phone calls, analprints, yes, I said that correctly, snake oil, Grace Hopper's ghost, and COBOL. No one has ever said all those things in a single sentence in the history of the world. All this and more on the Security Weekly News Wrapup.

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode24

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  • April 10th 2020 at 19:37
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This Week in Security News: Exploring Common Threats to Cloud Security and Zoom Removes Meeting IDs from App Title Bar to Improve Privacy

By Jon Clay (Global Threat Communications)
week in security

Welcome to our weekly roundup, where we share what you need to know about the cybersecurity news and events that happened over the past few days. This week, learn about why Zoom has released an update for its Linux, Mac, and Windows apps that removes the meeting ID from the app’s title bar. Also, read about Trend Micro’s latest research on cloud-specific security, with examples of threats and risks that organizations could face when migrating to the cloud or using cloud services.

Read on:

Trend Micro Study Shows Cloud Misconfiguration as Major Threat

This week, Trend Micro released new research findings concerning cloud security, a major area of concern for enterprises of all sizes. The research confirms the role of both human errors and complex deployments in creating cloud-based cyber threats; above all, Trend Micro notes the dangers of cloud misconfiguration to cloud environments.  

NCSA Small Business Webinar Series

The National Cyber Security Alliance is hosting a series of webinars for small business owners, and Trend Micro is proud to support this effort with guest speakers sharing threat intelligence and security expertise. The topics will help small companies deal with the challenges of COVID-19, including sessions on telework, digital spring cleaning, e-commerce security, how to avoid COVID-19 scams and more.

Cisco ‘Critical Update’ Phishing Attack Steals Webex Credentials

An ongoing phishing campaign is reeling in victims with a recycled Cisco security advisory that warns of a critical vulnerability. The campaign urges victims to “update,” only to steal their credentials for Cisco’s Webex web conferencing platform instead. The campaign is looking to leverage the wave of remote workers who have come to rely on online conferencing tools like Webex and other platforms.

Principles of a Cloud Migration – From Step One to Done

Cloud migrations are happening every day and analysts predict over 75% of mid-size to large enterprises will migrate a workload to the cloud by 2021 – but how can you make sure your workload is successful? In this multi-part blog series, Trend Micro explores best practices, forward thinking, and use cases around creating a successful cloud migration from multiple perspectives.  

Zoomed In: A Look into a Coinminer Bundled with Zoom Installer

Trend Micro recently found a Coinminer bundled with the legitimate installer of video conferencing app Zoom, luring users who want to install the software but end up downloading a malicious file. The compromised files are assumed to come from fraudulent websites. Trend Micro has been working with Zoom to ensure that they are able to communicate this to their users appropriately.

Investigation into a Nefilim Attack Shows Signs of Lateral Movement, Possible Data Exfiltration

Trend Micro’s Managed XDR (MxDR) and Incident Response (IR) teams recently investigated an incident involving a company that was hit by the Nefilim ransomware, which was initially discovered in March 2020. What makes Nefilim especially devious is that the threat actors behind the attack threaten to release the victim’s stolen data on an online leak site.

Zoom Removes Meeting IDs from App Title Bar to Improve Privacy

Video conferencing service Zoom has released an update for its Linux, Mac, and Windows apps that removes the meeting ID from the app’s title bar. The update comes after the company’s users have often leaked their meeting IDs, and even meeting passwords, when sharing screenshots of their meetings on social media.

Analysis: Suspicious “Very Hidden” Formula on Excel 4.0 Macro Sheet

A malicious Microsoft Excel 4.0 Macro sheet with a suspicious formula that is set as “Very Hidden” was submitted by a customer and further analyzed by Trend Micro researchers. The sheet is not readily accessible via the Microsoft Excel User Interface (UI) due to a feature documented in the Microsoft website that allows users to hide sheets. The compromised files were commonly used as an attachment in spam.

Actively Exploited MS Exchange Flaw Present on 80% of Exposed Servers

Attackers looking to exploit CVE-2020-0688, a critical Microsoft Exchange flaw patched by Microsoft in February 2020, don’t have to look hard to find a server they can attack: according to an internet-wide scan performed by Rapid7 researchers, there are at least 315,000 and possibly as many as 350,000 vulnerable on-premise Exchange servers (out of 433,464 total) out there.

Misconfigured Docker Daemon API Ports Attacked for Kinsing Malware Campaign

A campaign that targets misconfigured Docker Daemon API ports through Kinsing malware was reported by security researchers from Aqua Security. The campaign exploited the ports to run an Ubuntu container. According to the researchers, Kinsing malware’s strings revealed that it is a Golang-based Linux agent.

Threat Actors Deliver Courier-Themed Spam Campaign with Attached ACE Files

Trend Micro researchers detected a new courier service-themed malicious spam campaign that uses ACE files as attachments. The samples were gathered from Trend Micro’s honeypot. The email poses as a shipment arrival notification with a fake receipt attached. It then convinces receivers to download the attachment by asking them to check if the address on the receipt is correct.blo

Exploring Common Threats to Cloud Security

Trend Micro’s recent cloud research provides examples of threats and risks organizations could face when migrating to the cloud or using cloud services. No matter the cloud service or platform, the common theme is that misconfiguration continues to be one of the major pitfalls of cloud security, affecting both companies who subscribe to cloud services and users of software that are hosted on the cloud.

PowerPoint ‘Weakness’ Opens Door to Malicious Mouse-Over Attack

A researcher is sounding the alarm over what he believes could be a novel attack vector which allows a hacker to manipulate a PowerPoint file to download and begin the installation of malware, simply by hovering over a hypertext link. The technique does require a victim to accept one pop-up dialogue box to run or install a program. For those reasons, Microsoft does not consider this a vulnerability.

Cloud Transformation Is the Biggest Opportunity to Fix Security

Lower costs, improved efficiencies and faster time to market are some of the primary benefits of transitioning to the cloud. However, it’s not done overnight. It can take years to move complete data centers and operational applications to the cloud and the benefits won’t be fully realized until most functional data have been transitioned.

Who is World Wired Labs and Why Are They Selling an Android Trojan?

A company advertising a remote access tool frequently used by criminals and nation-state hackers may be serving as a front for a Chinese hacking group, according to research published by BlackBerry Cylance. In a report on remote access trojans (RAT), researchers detail an Android malware variant, which they call PWNDROID4, that can be used to monitor targets’ phone calls, record audio, send and receive text messages, and track victims’ GPS location.

Is your organization looking to migrate to the cloud? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.

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Cloud Native Application Development Enables New Levels of Security Visibility and Control

By Trend Micro

We are in unique times and it’s important to support each other through unique ways. Snyk is providing a community effort to make a difference through AllTheTalks.online, and Trend Micro is proud to be a sponsor of their virtual fundraiser and tech conference.

In today’s threat landscape new cloud technologies can pose a significant risk. Applying traditional security techniques not designed for cloud platforms can restrict the high-volume release cycles of cloud-based applications and impact business and customer goals for digital transformation.

When organizations are moving to the cloud, security can be seen as an obstacle. Often, the focus is on replicating security controls used in existing environments, however, the cloud actually enables new levels of visibility and controls that weren’t possible before.

With today’s increased attention on cyber threats, cloud vulnerabilities provide an opportunistic climate for novice and expert hackers alike as a result of dependencies on modern application development tools, and lack of awareness of security gaps in build pipelines and deployment environments.

Public clouds are capable of auditing API calls to the cloud management layer. This gives in-depth visibility into every action taken in your account, making it easy to audit exactly what’s happening, investigate and search for known and unknown attacks and see who did what to identify unusual behavior.

Join Mike Milner, Global Director of Application Security Technology at Trend Micro on Wednesday April 15, at 11:45am EST to learn how to Use Observability for Security and Audit. This is a short but important session where we will discuss the tools to help build your own application audit system for today’s digital transformation. We’ll look at ways of extending this level of visibility to your applications and APIs, such as using new capabilities offered by cloud providers for network mirroring, storage and massive data handling.

Register for a good cause and learn more at https://www.allthetalks.org/.

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Cloud Transformation Is The Biggest Opportunity To Fix Security

By Greg Young (Vice President for Cybersecurity)

This overview builds on the recent report from Trend Micro Research on cloud-specific security gaps, which can be found here.

Don’t be cloud-weary. Hear us out.

Recently, a major tipping point was reached in the IT world when more than half of new IT spending was on cloud over non- cloud. So rather than being the exception, cloud-based operations have become the rule.

However, too many security solutions and vendors still treat the cloud like an exception – or at least not as a primary use case. The approach remains “and cloud” rather than “cloud and.”

Attackers have made this transition. Criminals know that business security is generally behind the curve with its approach to the cloud and take advantage of the lack of security experience surrounding new cloud environments. This leads to ransomware, cryptocurrency mining and data exfiltration attacks targeting cloud environments, to name a few.

Why Cloud?

There are many reasons why companies transition to the cloud. Lower costs, improved efficiencies and faster time to market are some of the primary benefits touted by cloud providers.

These benefits come with common misconceptions. While efficiency and time to market can be greatly improved by transitioning to the cloud, this is not done overnight. It can take years to move complete data centers and operational applications to the cloud. The benefits won’t be fully realized till the majority of functional data has been transitioned.

Misconfiguration at the User Level is the Biggest Security Risk in the Cloud

Cloud providers have built in security measures that leave many system administrators, IT directors and CTOs feeling content with the security of their data. We’ve heard it many times – “My cloud provider takes care of security, why would I need to do anything additional?”

This way of thinking ignores the shared responsibility model for security in the cloud. While cloud providers secure the platform as a whole, companies are responsible for the security of their data hosted in those platforms.

Misunderstanding the shared responsibility model leads to the No. 1 security risk associated with the cloud: Misconfiguration.

You may be thinking, “But what about ransomware and cryptomining and exploits?” Other attack types are primarily possible when one of the 3 misconfigurations below are present.

You can forget about all the worst-case, overly complex attacks: Misconfigurations are the greatest risk and should be the No. 1 concern. These misconfigurations are in 3 categories:

  1. Misconfiguration of the native cloud environment
  2. Not securing equally across multi-cloud environments (i.e. different brands of cloud service providers)
  3. Not securing equally to your on-premises (non-cloud) data centers

How Big is The Misconfiguration Problem?

Trend Micro Cloud One™ – Conformity identifies an average of 230 million misconfigurations per day.

To further understand the state of cloud misconfigurations, Trend Micro Research recently investigated cloud-specific cyber attacks. The report found a large number of websites partially hosted in world-writable cloud-based storage systems. Despite these environments being secure by default, settings can be manually changed to allow more access than actually needed.

These misconfigurations are typically put in place without knowing the potential consequences. But once in place, it is simple to scan the internet to find this type of misconfiguration, and criminals are exploiting them for profit.

Why Do Misconfigurations Happen?

The risk of misconfigurations may seem obvious in theory, but in practice, overloaded IT teams are often simply trying to streamline workflows to make internal processes easier. So, settings are changed to give read and/or write access to anyone in the organization with the necessary credentials. What is not realized is that this level of exposure can be found and exploited by criminals.

We expect this trend will increase in 2020, as more cloud-based services and applications gain popularity with companies using a DevOps workflow. Teams are likely to misconfigure more cloud-based applications, unintentionally exposing corporate data to the internet – and to criminals.

Our prediction is that through 2025, more than 75% of successful attacks on cloud environments will be caused by missing or misconfigured security by cloud customers rather than cloud providers.

How to Protect Against Misconfiguration

Nearly all data breaches involving cloud services have been caused by misconfigurations. This is easily preventable with some basic cyber hygiene and regular monitoring of your configurations.

Your data and applications in the cloud are only as secure as you make them. There are enough tools available today to make your cloud environment – and the majority of your IT spend – at least as secure as your non-cloud legacy systems.

You can secure your cloud data and applications today, especially knowing that attackers are already cloud-aware and delivering vulnerabilities as a service. Here are a few best practices for securing your cloud environment:

  • Employ the principle of least privilege: Access is only given to users who need it, rather than leaving permissions open to anyone.
  • Understand your part of the Shared Responsibility Model: While cloud service providers have built in security, the companies using their services are responsible for securing their data.
  • Monitor your cloud infrastructure for misconfigured and exposed systems: Tools are available to identify misconfigurations and exposures in your cloud environments.
  • Educate your DevOps teams about security: Security should be built in to the DevOps process.

To read the complete Trend Micro Research report, please visit: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/virtualization-and-cloud/exploring-common-threats-to-cloud-security.

For additional information on Trend Micro’s approach to cloud security, click here: https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/business/products/hybrid-cloud.html.

The post Cloud Transformation Is The Biggest Opportunity To Fix Security appeared first on .

Down That Road - ESW #178

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we talk Enterprise News, to discuss how Ping Identity's PingID multi-factor authentication is now available in AWS Marketplace, 8,000 Unprotected Redis Instances Accessible From Internet, Tufin Announces Free Firewall Change Tracker to Enhance Network Security and Connectivity for Remote Workforces, Simple Advanced Persistent Threat Emulation with BreakingPoint Attack Campaigns from Ixia, and more! In our second segment, we welcome back Ferruh Mavituna, CEO and Founder of Netsparker, to talk about the Time to Measure Security Improvement in Application Security! In our final segment, we air a pre recorded interview from RSAC 2020 with Ed Bellis, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Kenna Security, discussing Moving Towards Modern Vulnerability Management!

 

To learn more about Netsparker, visit: https://securityweekly.com/netsparker

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ESWEpisode178

 

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes!

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  • April 9th 2020 at 09:00
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Warming Jeff's Heart - SCW #23

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Chris Golden, Board Member for the Accreditation Body, as he will answer questions surrounding the DOD's release of the CMMC program to keep the amount of false information to a minimum!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SCWEpisode23

To view the CMMC Model, visit: https://www.acq.osd.mil/cmmc/docs/CMMC_v1.0_Public_Briefing_20200131_v2.pdf

 

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  • April 8th 2020 at 21:00
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Principles of a Cloud Migration – From Step One to Done

By Jason Dablow
cloud

Boiling the ocean with the subject, sous-vide deliciousness with the content.

Cloud Migrations are happening every day.  Analysts predict over 75% of mid-large enterprises will migrate a workload to the cloud by 2021 – but how can you make sure your workload is successful? There are not just factors with IT teams, operations, and security, but also with business leaders, finance, and many other organizations of your business. In this multi-part series, I’ll explore best practices, forward thinking, and use cases around creating a successful cloud migration from multiple perspectives.  Whether you’re a builder in the cloud or an executive overseeing the transformation, you’ll learn from my firsthand experience and knowledge on how to bring value into your cloud migration project.

Here are just a few advantages of a cloud migration:

  • Technology benefits like scalability, high availability, simplified infrastructure maintenance, and an environment compliant with many industry certifications
  • The ability to switch from a CapEx to an OpEx model
  • Leaving the cost of a data center behind

While there can certainly be several perils associated with your move, with careful planning and a company focus, you can make your first step into cloud a successful one.  And the focus of a company is an important step to understand. The business needs to adopt the same agility that the cloud provides by continuing to learn, grow, and adapt to this new environment. The Phoenix Project and the Unicorn Project are excellent examples that show the need and the steps for a successful business transformation.

To start us off, let’s take a look at some security concepts that will help you secure your journey into this new world. My webinar on Principles to Make Your Cloud Migration Journey Secure is a great place to start: https://resources.trendmicro.com/Cloud-One-Webinar-Series-Secure-Cloud-Migration.html

The post Principles of a Cloud Migration – From Step One to Done appeared first on .

The Fifth Domain - BSW #168

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Richard Clarke to discuss his new book, The Fifth Domain, and the need for cyber resilience, especially these days! In the Leadership and Communications segment, 4 Behaviors That Help Leaders Manage a Crisis, The Right Way to Keep Your Remote Team Accountable, 15 Steps to Take Before Your Next Video Call, and more!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/BSWEpisode168

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/bsw for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 8th 2020 at 16:00
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Zoombombers, CyberHeroes, & Bad Bots - SWN #23

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, Zoombombers threatened with jail time by FBI, Cybercriminals are trying to cash in on Zoom use, How to protect your Zoom calls, Bad Bots in 2020, CyberHero Comics: Defending your Health, and zoom configurations along with the lack of effective zooming on the zoom camera application!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/SWNEpisode23

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 7th 2020 at 23:07
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Why the Latest Marriott Breach Should Make Us "Stop and Think" About Security Behaviors

Marriott International has experienced their second data breach after two franchise employee logins were used to access more than five million guest records beginning in January. Contact details, airline loyalty program account numbers, birth dates and more were collected -- but likely not Bonvoy loyalty account numbers, PINs or payment information.

As noted, this is the second breach that Marriott has undergone in recent times, the first being through its acquired Starwood brand of hotels back in 2018 when it lost a large amount of personal information relating to its customers.  So here we go again. While this breach may not be as serious this time around, the big question is what will this do for customer trust in Marriott’s brand and reputation. 

“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” comes to mind.

Most organizations who have gone through a breach review their security procedures and policies – no one wants it to happen to them again – traditionally extra funding is provided to deal with necessary remediation, which of itself can run into millions of dollars when, at the most basic level, funding a personal information monitoring service for victims along with the inevitable fines and cost of brand rebuild are taken into account. 

Therefore, the issue that Marriott will need to address is how did this happen again, within a short period of time of the last breach and for some, particularly those accustomed to the European GDPR notification period, the question may also be and why did it take a month from discovery for Marriott to notify those affected? 

Well the answer to the second question is simple, the U.S. has no national data breach notification requirement, and the patchwork quilt of 48 state laws that exist typically require notification within 30 to 45 days – this is clearly quite a bit longer that the mandatory 72-hour GDPR breach notification period in Europe.  As for the bigger question of how did it happen again, well only time will tell, but for me this highlights a key challenge for many organisations, not just in the hospitality sector, namely that of how do you secure your third party suppliers?

The breach occurred at one of Marriott’s franchise properties by accessing the login credentials of two employees at the property.  From a security standpoint this shines a light on two key challenges for security professionals today: the third party supplier and awareness about the insider threat.  Unfortunately, third parties are becoming more of a vulnerability than ever before.

Organizations of all sizes need to think about the consequences of a trusted third party, in this case a franchisee, providing accidental, but harmful, access to their corporate information. Information shared in the supply chain can include intellectual property, customer or employee data, commercial plans or negotiations, and logistics. To address information risk, breach or data leakage across third parties, organizations should adopt robust, scalable and repeatable processes – obtaining assurance proportionate to the risk faced. Whether or not this was the case with Marriott remains to be seen. 

Supply chain information risk management should be embedded within existing procurement and vendor management processes, so supply chain information risk management becomes part of regular business operations.  Will this also help address the insider threat?  Well it should certainly help raise awareness but the reality is that the insider threat is unlikely to diminish in the coming years. Efforts to mitigate this threat, such as additional security controls and improved vetting of new employees, will remain at odds with efficiency measures.  

Organizations need to shift from promoting awareness of the problem to creating solutions and embedding information security behaviors that affect risk positively. The risks are real because people remain a ‘wild card’ and our businesses today exist on sharing of critical information with third party providers.

Many organizations recognize people as their biggest asset, yet many still fail to recognize the need to secure ‘the human element’ of information security. In essence, people should be an organization’s strongest control. Instead of simply making people aware of their information security responsibilities and how they should respond, the answer for businesses of all sizes is to embed positive information security behaviors that will result in “stop and think” behavior becoming a habit and part of an organization’s information security culture.

While many organizations have compliance activities which fall under the general heading of ‘security awareness’, the commercial driver should be risk, and how new behaviors can reduce that risk. For some, that message may come too late and it may take a breach or two to drive the message home.  

The real question is for how much longer will consumers accept that the loss of their data is a cost of doing business before voting with their feet and taking their business to more trusted providers?

About the author: Steve Durbin is Managing Director of the Information Security Forum (ISF). His main areas of focus include strategy, information technology, cyber security and the emerging security threat landscape across both the corporate and personal environments. Previously, he was senior vice president at Gartner.

Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec Island
  • April 7th 2020 at 07:07
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Examining Potential Election Vulnerabilities: Are They Avoidable?

In the U.S and global communities, election security is a large concern because so many aspects of it can be insecure and open to attacks that may shift public opinion or be used for personal gain. Not only does the complexity of the U.S. government raise concerns about security, campaigns also have weak points that make it a target for attacks.

Limited IT Resources Put Campaigns and Voters at Risk

Given limited IT budgets, volunteers— who often work directly with voters, sometimes use their own personal devices and applications to communicate with other team members and supporters; they also have access to key private data belonging to candidates and team members. These personal devices are also used to access campaign systems such as the Voter Activation Network (NGP VAN) that include voter information to support operations such as phone banking and door-to-door canvassing. Without proper security controls, these personal devices can be used by adversaries to put both the campaign and voters at risk. Additionally, the threat of fake news has evolved with the advent of deepfake technology, which in recent times has been combined with artificial intelligence (AI), video and audio to create media that appears to be authentic— but is not. 

Although security controls such as two-factor authentication (2FA) are helpful, campaigns and voters may still be at risk. Abel Morales, a security engineer at Exabeam, recommends that campaigns use user and entity behavior analysis (UEBA) to detect anomalous authentications. “By monitoring staffers’ behaviors and detecting anomalies from their typical workflows, IT would be able to reduce the impact of threats introduced through social engineering, phishing and other malicious techniques.” This method also can be used to detect voter anomalies as well.

The continuing threat of ransomware attacks and nation-state attacks 

Ransomware attacks on voter databases and systems can facilitate payments in exchange for voter information. Ransomware encrypts data until a ransom is paid and could also be used to manipulate voting results or lock administrators out of critical data during an election therefore compromising voter confidence. Additionally, the increase in nation-state attacks are another major concern. Some officials believe that foreign influence on our elections will more likely come through social media to shape public opinion towards whatever direction serves their specific goals. In particular, the FBI is worried that Russia will use social media to cause further division between the political parties or hack campaign websites to spread misinformation.   

Does the government’s structure make election security more difficult?.

The intricacies of the U.S. voting system also affect the security of elections because state and local governments are not forced to use the federal government’s testing standards. State and local governments have the option to adopt these security standards, use their own, or a hybrid. Also, testing for state and local governments can be completed by private companies or local universities, as there is no single federal test certification program. This deviation from the federal standard is also seen in the lack of mandatory audits to verify the integrity of the machines and testing procedures, and the management of the voter registration database system which contains voter records. Many of these database systems are outdated and ill-equipped to handle today’s cybersecurity threats, making it easier for adversaries to delete or add voters. Although these differences can be detrimental to the security of elections, they make it difficult for attackers to launch a large-scale, coordinated attack. 

The makeup of the voting machine market is a huge risk

Three companies make up more than 90 percent of the voting machine market, suggesting that a compromise of just one of these three companies could have a significant impact on any election. Manipulation is not a formidable task given many of these machines are running outdated software with existing vulnerabilities. As transitioning to machines running newer Windows operating systems in time for the 2020 election may not be possible, Microsoft has committed to providing free updates for all certified voting machines in operation running on Windows 7.

Internet-connected devices increase risk

Our U.S. voting system is comprised of many different types of devices with varying functions including tallying and reporting votes. Security experts note that web-based systems such as election-reporting websites, candidate websites and voter roll websites are easier to attack compared to a voting machine. Many of these systems are IoT devices that have their own unique security challenges. Often, they are shipped with factory-set, hardcoded passwords; they’re unable to be patched or updated; and have outdated protocols and lack encryption. They are also susceptible to botnets that can exploit large numbers of devices in a short period. IoT attacks could also compromise a user’s browser to manipulate votes and cut power to polling stations. 

Proactive responses to help understaffed election IT teams

To prevent targeted attacks, campaign IT tech teams and staffers are performing training courses to learn how to detect and report suspicious emails. The DNC has created a security checklist for campaigns with recommendations, and the Center for Internet Security has also developed a library of resources to help campaigns including a Handbook for Elections Infrastructure Security. Machine-based learning systems enable limited teams to operate 50 percent more efficiently through automation – which is essential given the scale and number of elections. Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) as part of a modern SIEM can also orchestrate remediation in response to an identified anomaly through playbooks. SOAR automatically identifies and prioritizes cybersecurity risks and responds to low-level security events, which is extremely useful for state and local government agencies that operate with small cybersecurity teams.  

Republicans and Democrats unite to offer a helping hand

In late 2019, recognizing the seriousness of election attacks and the lack of security resources, former campaign managers for Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney launched a non-profit organization, Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC), which offers free to low-cost security technology and services to federal election campaigns. Some experts predict that the 2020 election will be one of the most anticipated digital security events in U.S. history. Given the complexity of the election process and voting system, security automation, behavior analytics and security education can be a part of the solution for managing a secure voting process.

image

About the author: Tim Matthews brings over 20 years of experience building and running software marketing teams and a focus on the security market. Prior to Exabeam, he was Vice President of Marketing at Imperva, where he led a worldwide marketing team.

Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec Island
  • April 7th 2020 at 06:58
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The Sky Is Falling - ASW #102

By paul@securityweekly.com

This week, we welcome Grant Ongers, Co-Founder of Secure Delivery, to discuss why "You re (probably) Doing AppSec Wrong"! In the Application Security News, Zoom is gaining lots of attention for flaws, Popular Digital Wallet Exposes Millions to Risk in Huge Data Leak, 12k+ Android apps contain master passwords, secret access keys, secret commands in not-so-secret client-side code identified by a research tool Inputscope, and more!

 

Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ASWEpisode102

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/asw for all the latest episodes!

 

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  • April 6th 2020 at 21:00
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Password Protected Malicious Excel Files, (Mon, Apr 6th)

We've been seeing quite some malicious Excel files with Excel 4 macros lately.
  • April 6th 2020 at 18:32
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NCSA Small Business Webinar Series

By William "Bill" Malik (CISA VP Infrastructure Strategies)
virus

Working from home? How do you keep your employees cyber-safe and cyber-secure? How do you protect your reputation, profit, and cash flow when you depend on your IT infrastructure as never before?

The National Cyber Security Alliance is hosting a series of webinars for small business owners, and we’re proud to support this effort with guest speakers to share our threat intelligence and security expertise.

The topics will help small companies deal with the challenges of COVID-19. The agenda is at https://staysafeonline.org/event_category/cybersecure-my-business/.

Here’s a quick overview of each session and why it might benefit your organization to tune in.

Telework Cybersecurity Best Practices – April 7: Many small business owners rely on face-to-face meetings with their teams. But, social distancing and work-from-home directives interrupt that way of doing things. In this session, we’ll discuss how to adjust your business to deal with a remote workforce. For some managers, not seeing every member of the team can be unsettling. We’ll talk about ways to overcome that barrier. For many organizations, using remote tools can put an extra burden on your IT gear and staff. We’ll talk about alternatives to lighten that load. And for most organizations, the new way of working can expose new and different information security vulnerabilities. We’ll offer some good practices to reduce your exposure.

Guest speakers from Trend Micro will be Greg Young and Ed Cabrera.

Spring has Sprung! Time for a Digital Spring Cleaning – April 14: One way to cut down on IT resource use is to get rid of unnecessary stuff. This webcast will suggest tactics to reduce the burden on your infrastructure. You will learn about cleaning up your storage, getting off unnecessary email lists, improving your – and your customers’ – privacy, and lowering your attack profile by getting rid of stale applications and services.

E-Commerce Security During COVID-19 – April 21, 2020: Businesses that rely on foot traffic are pivoting to on-line offerings. Restaurants support demand with delivery or curbside pick-up, which both put a strain on your IT resources. Unfortunately, the bad guys are exploiting weaknesses in on-line ordering and payment systems. We’ll talk about measures small businesses should consider to protect their reputation, cash flow, and profits during this transition.

Guest speakers from Trend Micro will be myself and Mitchel Chang.

How to Avoid COVID-19 Scams – May 5, 2020: Bad guys are trying to make money off Covid-19 worries. In this session, Lesley Fair, a Senior Attorney with the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission talks about different kinds of scams and what to do about them, hopefully before anyone gets conned, and what steps you can take if you think you might have gotten stung. Ths session will be repeated on May 26.

Guest speakers from Trend Micro will be myself and Jon Clay.

What Are Phishing, Vishing and Smishing? How Can I Protect My Small Business From These Threats? – May 12, 2020: This session will discuss attacks that can arrive through email, messages, and video chats. Small businesses are targets as well as big firms and the public at large – the bad guys are going anywhere they can to make a (dishonest) buck. You’ll help your employees and customers protect themselves with some good advice, practices, and tools.

Mitchel Chang will be a guest panelist.

How to Avoid COVID-19 Scams – May 26, 2020: A second session of the May 5 discussion. This time Jon Clay and Myla Pilao will be guest speakers from Trend Micro.

Telework Cybersecurity Best Practices – June 9, 2020: A second session of the April 7 event. Greg and Ed will give a repeat performance attendees.

Each session starts at 2:00 PM Eastern time. NCSA will record each session, but you should register to listen in and ask questions live. While the information is tuned to meet the needs of small businesses, individuals at larger organizations, and the general public, will find good ideas and helpful hints an tips to stay safe and cope with this challenging time. We hope to see you soon.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below or @WilliamMalikTM

The post NCSA Small Business Webinar Series appeared first on .

Maldoc XLS Invoice with Excel 4 Macros, (Sun, Apr 5th)

This week I got an email claiming to be a YellowPages invoice with an XLS attachment containing an Excel 4.0 macro which has similarity to [1][2].
  • April 5th 2020 at 20:20
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New Bypass Technique or Corrupt Word Document?, (Sat, Apr 4th)

I was taking a closer look at Xavier's Word document he analyzed in yesterday's diary entry: "Obfuscated with a Simple 0x0A".
  • April 4th 2020 at 23:07
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