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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 recent skimming and phishing scams as we head into the holidays and how you can protect yourself and your organization. Also, read about how the p4 hacking team from Poland won Trend Micro’s Capture the Flag (CTF) competition in Tokyo.
Read on:
Skimming Scams and Redirection Schemes Phish Consumers Credentials Days Before Black Friday
Ahead of Black Friday, cybercriminals are busy rolling out schemes to trick consumers into sharing their card credentials. In one skimming operation, threat actors faked a retailer’s third-party payment service platform (PSP), resulting in a hybrid skimmer-phishing page. Another campaign used redirection malware on WordPress websites so that users would land on their malicious phishing page.
Polish Hacking Team Triumphs in Trend Micro CTF Competition
Machine learning, reverse engineering, and unearthing mobile and IoT vulnerabilities were among the disciplines tested during Trend Micro’s latest international capture the flag (CTF) competition. The fifth Raimund Genes Cup final pitted 13 teams of young hackers against one another. The winning team, p4 from Poland, claimed a ¥1 million prize (US $9,000) and 15,000 Zero Day Initiative points per player at the Tokyo event.
Patched GIF Processing Vulnerability CVE-2019-11932 Still Afflicts Multiple Mobile Apps
CVE-2019-11932, a vulnerability in WhatsApp for Android, was patched with version 2.19.244 of WhatsApp, but the underlying problem lies in the library called libpl_droidsonroids_gif.so, which is part of the android-gif-drawable package. While this flaw has also been patched, many applications still use the older version and remain at risk.
Don’t Overlook the Security of Your Supply Chain
In its 2020 Predictions report, Trend Micro states that organizations will face a growing risk from their cloud and the supply chain. The reliance on open source and third-party software and the introduction of modern workplace practices all present immense risks.
Trickbot Appears to Target OpenSSH and OpenVPN Data in Upgraded Password-Grabbing Module
Trickbot, which was a simple banking trojan when it arrived in 2016, has since mutated into a constantly evolving malware family that includes information theft, vulnerability exploitation, and rapid propagation among its capabilities. In Trend Micro’s recent blog, learn more about how to combat Trickbot and other similarly sophisticated threats.
Stranger Hacks into Baby Monitor, Tells Child, ‘I Love You’
A stranger hacked a Seattle couple’s baby monitor and used it to peer around their home remotely and tell the pair’s 3-year-old, “I love you,” the child’s mother said. It’s not the first time the monitor brand in question, Fredi, made by Shenzhen Jinbaixun Technology Co., Ltd., according to its website, has come under fire for being comparatively easy to access.
Microsoft Says New Dexphot Malware Infected More Than 80,000 Computers
Microsoft security engineers detailed today a new malware strain that has been infecting Windows computers since October 2018 to hijack their resources to mine cryptocurrency and generate revenue for the attackers. Named Dexphot, this malware reached its peak in mid-June this year when its botnet reached almost 80,000 infected computers.
How are you protecting yourself from skimming and phishing scams during this holiday season? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: Skimming and Phishing Scams Ahead of Black Friday and Polish Hacking Team Wins Capture the Flag Competition appeared first on .
We recently held a valuable conversation (and a great dinner) with about a dozen senior IT security leaders in Atlanta, Georgia. I was fortunate to attend and discuss what plagues them most.
Here are some of their concerns.
Many face considerable change in their business environments – one third of the companies called out the high pace of acquisitions as a source of risk.
Acquisitions draw down information security resources disproportionately. First, IT security must participate in the due diligence phase, prior to the actual acquisition. Under significant time pressure, and strictly bound by the terms of the governing NDA, the InfoSec team must verify the integrity of the target environment’s IT infrastructure. It must render a judgment on the trustworthiness of the underlying procedures, the competence of the support team, the appropriateness of funding and staffing, the effectiveness of policy and awareness training, the fitness of the security technology judged against the changing mission of the target firm, and the accessibility of crucial information. In regulated industries, the acquirer has to review past certifications, audit findings and recommendations, and earlier security events, including how they were handled, and how the organization effectively integrated lessons learned into its updated way of doing business. Some of the attendees reported an acquisition every six weeks over the past two years or more. This pace requires efficient process maturity and open communication among the team members, and ample trust.
Some CIOs reported the challenge of balancing the executive team’s need to know with the managerial desire to optimize team focus on critical initiatives. In the Boardroom and among the C-suite, IT remains a hot topic and IT security is a known vulnerability. This leads some organizations toward micromanaging the IT security team. As we all know, this inappropriate focus has two costs: first, it distracts the Board and the C-suite from their primary missions. Second, it distracts the people doing the job from their task. One effective tactic some adopted is the weekly – or even daily – newsletter. This document provides the status for ongoing projects, notes about top performers, assessment of newly discovered vulnerabilities, and pointers towards effective risk mitigation the leadership team can bring to their respective operational areas. When a Board member has a question for the team, the CISO can intercept it and post a response through the newsletter.
Many CISOs discussed their challenges with BYOD policies. Some mentioned concerns with GDPR impeding their ability to wipe corporate applications and information from employee-owned devices. It’s unclear how to balance that business requirement with privacy concerns for smart phones. With laptops, one approach is to limit corporate access through a locked-down virtual desktop image accessed through a secure VPN. An evil-minded employee could take a picture of the screen, but that attack works on a corporate laptop just as well.
BEC remains a concern, along with phishing attacks leading to possible ransomware infections. One approach is to ignore emails from new domains – those that are less than two months old. This would exclude email from nearly all attackers; anyone legitimately trying to reach an employee will try again in time.
The meeting was quite open and convivial. It was an honor to participate in the discussion, and I look forward to similar meetings in the future. My thanks to the participants!
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below, or message me @WilliamMalikTM!
The post What Worries CISOs Most In 2019 appeared first on .
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 stalkerware and why it’s on the rise. Also, read about Trend Micro’s selection as a launch partner for the new Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) Ingress Routing service, announced during AWS re:Invent 2019.
Read on:
You’re in Safe Hands with Trend Micro Home Network Security
Your home should be a haven that protects you. In the cyber age, however, your router, computers, TVs, game consoles and smart devices are continuously connected to the internet and run the risk of being hacked—usually when you least expect it. This blog is the first of a three-part series outlining how to implement Home Network Security to protect your home.
Amazon Web Services Recognizes Trend Micro as Launch Partner for New Service
With Amazon VPC Ingress Routing, Trend Micro customers will gain benefits which include more flexibility and control traffic routing with transparent deployment and no need to re-architect. Deploying in-line allows customers to be proactive in their network security, which in turn can prevent and disrupt attacks before they can be successful.
What Worries CISOs Most In 2019
Trend Micro’s VP of infrastructure strategies, Bill Malik, recently sat down with a dozen senior IT security leaders to discuss challenges they are currently facing in light of considerable changes in their business environments. These include the high pace of acquisitions balancing executive and team focuses, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies and ransomware infections.
Ransomware Attack Hits Major U.S. Data Center Provider
CyrusOne, one of the biggest data center providers in the U.S., has suffered a ransomware attack and is currently working with law enforcement and forensics firms to investigate the attack. CyrusOne is also helping customers restore lost data from backups.
Stalkerware is government-style surveillance software used by individuals to spy on others, which is usually someone you know. With smartphone usage continuing to rise, a whole mini industry has appeared over the past couple of years selling monitoring software, or more treacherously, trojan spyware and code that can hide itself so that you don’t even know it’s on your device.
The California DMV Is Making $50M a Year Selling Drivers’ Personal Information
The California Department of Motor Vehicles is generating revenue of $50,000,000 a year through selling drivers’ personal information, according to a DMV document obtained by Motherboard. This information includes names, physical addresses, and car registration information.
Operation ENDTRADE: Finding Multi-Stage Backdoors that TICK
Trend Micro has followed cyberespionage group TICK (a.k.a. “BRONZE BUTLER” or “REDBALDKNIGHT”) since 2008 but noticed an unusual increase in malware development and deployments towards November 2018 as part of a campaign dubbed “Operation ENDTRADE.”
Iran Targets Mideast Oil with ZeroCleare Wiper Malware
A freshly discovered wiper malware dubbed “ZeroCleare” has been deployed to target the energy and industrial sectors in the Middle East. According to IBM’s X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS), ZeroCleare was involved in a recently spotted APT attack on an oil and gas company, in which it compromised a Windows machine via a vulnerable driver.
Trend Micro has found a new spyware family disguised as chat apps on a phishing website. Trend believes that the apps, which exhibit many cyberespionage behaviors, are initially used for a targeted attack campaign.
Obfuscation Tools Found in the Capesand Exploit Kit Possibly Used in “KurdishCoder” Campaign
In November 2019, Trend Micro analyzed an exploit kit named Capesand that exploited Adobe Flash and Microsoft Internet Explorer flaws. During an analysis of the indicators of compromise (IoCs) in the deployed samples that were infecting the victim’s machines, we noticed that these samples were making use of obfuscation tools that made them virtually undetectable.
Trend Micro More Than Doubles Commitment to Underrepresented Persons in Cybersecurity
This week at AWS re:Invent, Trend Micro announced plans to further strengthen its commitment to underrepresented persons by more than doubling its annual time and financial investments to alleviate the skills and diversity gaps in cybersecurity.
Mobile Security: 80% of Android Apps Now Encrypt Network Traffic by Default
Three years ago, Google started its push to tighten network traffic protection from Android devices to web services. The company has provided an update stating that 80% of Android apps have adopted the HTTPS standard by default. HTTPS encrypts network traffic, preventing third parties from intercepting data from apps.
Magecart Sets Sights on Smith & Wesson, Other High-Profile Stores
After incidents in the past few months that saw the threat actor go after customers of online shops and hotel chains, threat actors from the infamous card-skimming group once again took action, this time on Black Friday on a new set of targets: high-profile stores, including firearms vendor Smith & Wesson (S&W).
Out on a Highway Run: Threats and Risks on ITS and Smart Vehicles
The research firm Counterpoint predicted that by 2022, the number of vehicles with embedded connectivity will grow by 270%. The expected increase in technology adoption, however, does not come without risks — from petty showcases of hacks to possibly bigger threats to safety and financial losses.
StrandHogg Android Vulnerability Allows Malware to Hijack Legitimate Apps
Researchers discovered a vulnerability in Android devices that allows malware to hijack legitimate apps. Using this vulnerability (StrandHogg), cybercriminals could trick users into granting permissions to their malicious apps and provide openings for phishing pages.
Ginp Trojan Targets Android Banking App Users, Steals Login Credentials and Credit Card Details
Counterfeit apps were found carrying a new version of the Android banking trojan Ginp (detected by Trend Micro as AndroidOS_Ginp.HRXB) to steal user login credentials and credit card details. ThreatFabric’s analysis of recent Ginp samples showed that it reused some code from Anubis, an Android malware family notorious for its use in cyberespionage activities before being re-tooled as a banking trojan.
What AWS re:Invent announcement did you find the most interesting? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: Trend Micro Selected as Launch Partner for AWS Ingress Routing Service and Stalkerware on the Rise appeared first on .
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 the threat campaign Waterbear and how it uses API hooking to evade security product detection. Also, read about December Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft and Adobe.
Read on:
Waterbear is Back, Uses API Hooking to Evade Security Product Detection
Previously, Waterbear has been used for lateral movement, decrypting and triggering payloads with its loader component. In most cases, the payloads are backdoors that can receive and load additional modules. However, recently Trend Micro discovered a piece of Waterbear payload with a brand new purpose: hiding its network behaviors from a specific security product by API hooking techniques.
Microsoft December 2019 Patch Tuesday Plugs Windows Zero-Day
Microsoft has released today the December 2019 Patch Tuesday security updates. This month’s updates include fixes for 36 vulnerabilities, including a zero-day in the Windows operating system that has been exploited in the wild.
(Almost) Hollow and Innocent: Monero Miner Remains Undetected via Process Hollowing
Recently, Trend Micro found a cryptomining threat using process hollowing and a dropper component that requires a specific set of command line arguments to trigger its malicious behavior, leaving no trace for malicious activity detection or analysis to reference the file as malicious.
2020 Predictions: Black Hats Begin to Target Facial Recognition Technology
Research interest in defeating facial recognition technology is booming. Adversaries are likely taking notice, but don’t expect widespread adoption overnight. Jon Clay, director of threat communication at Trend Micro, points out that techniques ranging from deep fakes to adversarial machine learning are likely still in an early stage.
US, UK Governments Unite to Indict Hacker Behind Dreaded Dridex Malware
Maksim Yakubets, who allegedly runs Russia-based Evil Corp, the cybercriminal organization that developed and distributed banking malware Dridex, has been indicted in the United States by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
Trend Micro, McAfee and Bitdefender Top Cloud Workload Security List
Trend Micro, McAfee and Bitdefender were named among the leaders in a new report from Forrester Research on cloud workload security that covered 13 vendors.
BEC Scam Successfully Steals US $1 Million Using Look-Alike Domains
A Chinese venture capital firm lost US $1 million to scammers who successfully came between a deal the firm had with an Israeli startup. The business email compromise (BEC) campaign used by the attackers consisted of 32 emails and look-alike domains to trick both parties of their authenticity.
Retail Cyberattacks Set to Soar 20% in 2019 Holiday Season
As cybercriminals grow more sophisticated and holiday shoppers continue to flock online, researchers warn internet-based retailers could face a 20 percent uptick in cyberattacks this holiday season compared to last year.
Bug in Ryuk Ransomware’s Decryptor Can Lead to Loss of Data in Certain Files
Ryuk’s decryptor tool could cause data loss instead of reinstating file access to users. According to a blog post from Emsisoft, a bug with how the tool decrypts files could lead to incomplete recoveries, contrary to what the decryptor is meant to achieve.
Hacker Hacks Hacking Platform, Gets Paid $20,000 By the Hacked Hackers
HackerOne operates as a conduit between ethical hackers looking for vulnerabilities, and organizations like General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and the U.S. Pentagon, want to patch those security holes before malicious threat actors can exploit them. One of the hackers registered with the platform hacked HackerOne instead and was paid $20,000 (£15,250) by HackerOne as a result.
Trickbot’s Updated Password-Grabbing Module Targets More Apps, Services
Researchers from Security Intelligence have reported on a sudden increase of Trickbot’s activities in Japan, and Trend Micro researchers have found updates to the password-grabbing (pwgrab) module and possible changes to the Emotet variant that drops Trickbot.
Ransomware Recap: Snatch and Zeppelin Ransomware
Two ransomware families with noteworthy features – Snatch and Zeppelin –were spotted this week. Snatch ransomware is capable of forcing Windows machines to reboot into Safe Mode. Zeppelin ransomware, on the other hand, was responsible for infecting healthcare and IT organizations across Europe and the U.S.
Brian Krebs is the CISO MAG Cybersecurity Person of the Year
For the first time, CISO Mag named a Cybersecurity Person of the Year, who is defined as someone who been committed to bringing awareness into the realm of cybersecurity. In addition to recognizing Brian Krebs of KrebsOnSecurity.com, two other individuals were recognized: Trend Micro’s Rik Ferguson, VP of security research, and web security expert Troy Hunt.
Do you think retail cyberattacks will soar higher than 20 percent this holiday season? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: December Patch Tuesday Updates and Retail Cyberattacks Set to Soar 20 Percent During 2019 Holiday Season appeared first on .
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 how Trend Micro’s collaboration with INTERPOL’s Global Complex for Innovation helped reduce cryptojacking by 78% in Southeast Asia. Also, read about three malicious apps in the Google Play Store that may be linked to the SideWinder threat group.
Read on:
First Active Attack Exploiting CVE-2019-2215 Found on Google Play, Linked to SideWinder APT Group
Trend Micro found three malicious apps in the Google Play Store that work together to compromise a device and collect user information. The three malicious apps — disguised as photography and file manager tools — are likely to be connected to SideWinder, a known threat group that has reportedly targeted military entities’ Windows machines.
Operation Goldfish Alpha Reduces Cryptojacking Across Southeast Asia by 78%
Interpol announced the results of Operation Goldfish Alpha, a six-month effort to secure hacked routers across the Southeast Asia region. The international law enforcement agency said its efforts resulted in a drop of cryptojacking operations across Southeast Asia by 78%, compared to levels recorded in June 2019. Private sector partners included the Cyber Defense Institute and Trend Micro.
Celebrating Decades of Success with Microsoft at the Security 20/20 Awards
Trend Micro, having worked closely with Microsoft for decades, is honored to be nominated for the Microsoft Security 20/20 Partner awards in the Customer Impact and Industry Changemaker categories. Check out this blog for more information on the inaugural awards and Trend Micro’s recognitions.
Security Predictions for 2020 According to Trend Micro
Threat actors are shifting and adapting in their choice of attack vectors and tactics — prompting the need for businesses and users to stay ahead of the curve. Trend Micro has identified four key themes that will define 2020: a future that is set to be Complex, Exposed, Misconfigured and Defensible. Check out Digital Journal’s Q&A with Greg Young, vice president of cybersecurity at Trend Micro, to learn more about security expectations for this year.
The Everyday Cyber Threat Landscape: Trends from 2019 to 2020
In addition to security predictions for the new year, Trend Micro has listed some of the biggest threats from 2019 as well as some trends to keep an eye on as we begin 2020 in this blog. Many of the most dangerous attacks will look a lot like the ones Trend Micro warned about in 2019.
5 Key Security Lessons from the Cloud Hopper Mega Hack
In December 2019, the U.S. government issued indictments against two Chinese hackers who were allegedly involved in a multi-year effort to penetrate the systems of companies managing data and applications for customers via the computing cloud. The men, who remain at large, are thought to be part of a Chinese hacking collective known as APT10.
The Summit of Cybersecurity Sits Among the Clouds
Shifts in threats in the security landscape have led Trend Micro to develop Trend Micro Apex One, a newly redesigned endpoint protection solution. Trend Micro Apex One brings enhanced fileless attack detection and advanced behavioral analysis and combines Trend Micro’s powerful endpoint threat detection capabilities with endpoint detection and response (EDR) investigative capabilities.
New Iranian Data Wiper Malware Hits Bapco, Bahrain’s National Oil Company
Iranian state-sponsored hackers have deployed a new strain of data-wiping malware on the network of Bapco, Bahrain’s national oil company. The incident took place on December 29th and didn’t have the long-lasting effect hackers might have wanted, as only a portion of Bapco’s computer fleet was impacted and the company continued to operate after the malware’s detonation.
Ransomware Recap: Clop, DeathRansom, and Maze Ransomware
As the new year rolls in, new developments in different ransomware strains have emerged. For example, Clop ransomware has evolved to integrate a process killer that targets Windows 10 apps and various applications; DeathRansom can now encrypt files; and Maze ransomware has been targeting U.S. companies for stealing and encrypting data, alerted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
4 Ring Employees Fired for Spying on Customers
Smart doorbell company Ring said that it has fired four employees over the past four years for inappropriately accessing customer video footage. The disclosure comes in a recent letter to senators from Amazon-owned Ring as it attempts to defend the privacy of its platform, which has been plagued by data privacy incidents over the past year.
Web Skimming Attack on Blue Bear Affects School Admin Software Users
A web skimming attack was recently used to target Blue Bear, a school administration software that handles school accounting, student fees, and online stores for educational institutions. Names, credit card or debit card numbers, expiration dates and security codes, and Blue Bear account usernames and passwords may have been collected.
Patched Microsoft Access ‘MDB Leaker’ (CVE-2019-1463) Exposes Sensitive Data in Database Files
Researchers uncovered an information disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2019-1463) affecting Microsoft Access, which occurs when the software fails to properly handle objects in memory. The vulnerability, dubbed “MDB Leaker” by Mimecast Research Labs, resembles a patched information disclosure bug in Microsoft Office (CVE-2019-0560) found in January 2019.
A Trend Micro honeypot detected a cryptocurrency-mining threat on a compromised site, where the URL hxxps://upajmeter[.]com/assets/.style/min was used to host the command for downloading the main shell script. The miner, a multi-component threat, propagates by scanning vulnerable machines and brute-forcing (primarily default) credentials.
What are your thoughts on the rise of cryptomining malware and cryptojacking tactics? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: INTERPOL Collaboration Reduces Cryptojacking by 78% and Three Malicious Apps Found on Google Play May be Linked to SideWinder APT Group appeared first on .
Variety is welcome in most walks of life, but not when it comes to the threat landscape. Yet that is unfortunately the reality facing modern cybersecurity professionals. As Trend Micro’s 2019 roundup report reveals, hackers have an unprecedented array of tools, techniques and procedures at their disposal today. With 52 billion unique threats detected by our filters alone, this is in danger of becoming an overwhelming challenge for many IT security departments.
In response, many CISOs are rightly re-examining how they approach threat defense. Rather than create potential security gaps and risk budget shortfalls through best-of-breed investments, they’re understanding that it may be better to consolidate on one provider that can do it all.
The state of play
Our report provides an alarming snapshot into a threat landscape characterized by volatility and chaos. Financially motivated cybercriminals collaborate and compete with each other on a daily basis to elicit profits from their victims. And there are plenty of those, thanks to increased investments in cloud and digital platforms that have broadened the corporate attack surface.
Three trends in the report stand out:
Ransomware is on the rise: Although the number of new families fell, the number of detected ransomware components jumped by 10% to top 61 million during the year. Attacks have been causing chaos across the US, particularly among under-funded public sector authorities and schools. The recent outage at Redcar council could be ominous for UK local authorities. As if service downtime wasn’t enough, several groups have also begun stealing sensitive data before they encrypt, and releasing it if victims don’t pay up — which will require organisations to evolve their threat defense strategies.
Phishing is evolving: As always, email-borne attacks accounted for the vast majority (91%) of threats we blocked last year, and increased 15% in volume from 2018. What does this mean? That phishing remains the number one vector for attacks on organisations. Although we noted an overall decline in total attempts to visit phishing sites, there were some spikes. Fraudsters appear to be targeting Office 365 in an attempt to bypass security filters: the number of unique phishing URLs that spoofed the Microsoft cloud platform soared by 100% from the previous year. BEC attacks, which the FBI has claimed cost more than any other cybercrime type last year, grew 5%.
The supply chain is exposed: At the same time, the digital supply chain has rapidly expanded in recent years, exposing more organisations to risk. This was particularly notable in the e-commerce space last year, as Magecart gangs managed to compromise an estimated two million sites. Many of these attacks focused on attacking supply chain partners, which provide JavaScript libraries to the victim sites. We also observed an increase in attacks focused on compromising DevOps tools and deployments, such as misconfigured versions of Docker Engine – Community and unsecured Docker hosts.
What happens now?
This is just the tip of the iceberg. We also detected a 189% brute force IoT logins, an increase in mobile malware, and much more. To regain the initiative in the face of such a wide-ranging set of threats, CISOs may find more value in taking a connected threat defence approach. This would consolidate protection onto a single provider across gateways, networks, servers and endpoints, with underlying threat intelligence optimizing defense at each layer.
Here’s a quick checklist of elements to consider:
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To find out more, read Trend Micro’s 2019 roundup report here: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/research-and-analysis/threat-reports/roundup/the-sprawling-reach-of-complex-threats.
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Tax season has always been a pretty nerve-wracking time for hard-working Americans. But over the years, technology advances have arrived to gradually make the process a bit easier. The bad news is that they can also introduce new cyber risks and even more stress.
There are two things that cybercriminals are always on the hunt for: people’s identity data from their accounts, and their money. And during the tax-filing season both can be unwittingly exposed. Over the years, cybercriminals have adapted multiple tools and techniques to part taxpayers with their personal information and funds.
Let’s take look at some of the main threats out there and what you can do to stay safe.
What do they want?
Cybercrime is a highly efficient money-making business. Some reports suggest this underground economy generates as much as $1.5 trillion each year. (See Into the Web of Profit, April 2018, McGuire, Bromium.) And tax-related scams are an increasingly popular way for the bad guys to drive-up profits. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims that “thousands of people have lost millions of dollars and their personal information” to such attacks.
The bottom line is that they’re after one of two things: to trick you into wiring funds to them, and/or to get hold of your personally identifiable information (PII), including bank account and Social Security Numbers (SSNs). This personal data can subsequently be used to defraud you or the IRS, or may be deployed in follow-on identity fraud schemes to capture illicit funds from you.
There are various ways cyber-criminals can achieve these goals. The most common is by using social engineering tactics to trick taxpayers into sending money or personal information. But they might also use malware, either delivered to you personally or targeted at your tax preparer. This means you not only have to look after your own cybersecurity but also demand that the third-party businesses you work with store and transmit your sensitive information securely.
Look out for these scams
Here’s a round-up of the most popular tactics used by tax scammers today:
Impersonation: The fraudster gets in touch pretending to be an IRS representative. This could be via email, phone, social media or even SMS. They usually claim you owe the IRS money in unpaid taxes or fines and demand a wire transfer, or funds from a prepaid debit card. Sometimes they may ask for personal and financial details—for example, by claiming you’re entitled to a large tax refund and they just need you to supply your bank account info.
These interactions are usually pushy. The scammer knows the best way of making you pay up is by creating a sense of urgency and, sometimes, shaming the individual into believing they’ve been withholding tax payments. Phishing emails may look highly convincing, right down to the logo and sender domain, while phone callers will use fake names and badge numbers. Sometimes the scammers use personal data they may have stolen previously or bought on the Dark Web to make their communications seem more convincing.
In some impersonation scams, the fraudsters may even pretend to work for charities and ask for personal details to help disaster victims with tax refund claims.
Spoofing, phishing, and malware: In some cases, a text, email or social media message spoofed to appear as if sent from the IRS or your tax preparer actually contains malware. The scammers use the same tactics as above but trick the recipient into clicking on a malicious link or opening an attachment laden with malware. The covert download that follows could result in: theft of your personal information; your computer being completely hijacked by hackers via remote control software; or a ransomware download that locks your computer until you pay a fee.
Fake tax returns: Another trick the scammers employ is to use stolen SSNs and other personal information to file tax returns on your behalf. They can then try to claim a large payment in tax refunds from the IRS. The PII they use to file in your name may have been taken from a third-party source without your knowledge, and the first you might hear of it is when you go to file a legitimate tax return. It can take months to resolve the problem.
Attacks targeting tax preparers: Over half of Americans use third-party tax preparation companies to help them with their returns. However, this offers another opportunity for scammers to get hold of your sensitive information. In one recently discovered campaign, malware deployed on tax preparers’ websites was designed to download to the visitor’s computer as soon as they loaded the page. The IRS warns that businesses large and small are potentially at risk, as scammers are keen to get hold of tax information which enables them to file highly convincing fake returns in your name.
What to do
The good news is that by taking a few simple steps you can insulate yourself from the worst of these scams. Remember: the IRS does not contact taxpayers by email, text messages or social media to request personal/financial information— so if you receive communications that do, they are definitely a scam. It’s also important to remember that scams happen all year round, not just in the run-up to the tax filing deadline. That means, unfortunately, that you need to be on your guard all the time.
Here are a few other recommendations:
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It also pays to demand that your tax preparer take their own precautions to keep your data secure. They should not be sending sensitive data or documents unencrypted in emails and must take steps on their own to combat phishing emails that target employees, since these can cascade to you during your tax preparation process. Whether hosted in the cloud or running on-premises, the servers that hold your data should also have adequate protection—and you have a right (and a duty to yourself) to ask ahead of time what they’re doing to protect it.
According to the IRS tax preparers should put the following internal controls in place:
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How Trend Micro can help
Trend Micro offers a range of security tools to help taxpayers keep their personal and financial information safe from fraudsters.
Our flagship consumer solution Trend Micro Security (TMS) provides the following protections:
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To find out more, go to our Trend Micro Security website.
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Few national emergencies have the ability to strike panic into the populace quite like a virus pandemic. It’s fortunately something most of us have never had to experience, until now. At the time of writing, the number of global confirmed cases of Coronavirus infection, or COVID-19, has reached nearly 174,000 worldwide. Although the official US total currently remains a fraction of that (around 4,000), problems with testing mean many cases are likely to be going unreported here.
This is a difficult time for many Americans, as it is for citizens all over the world. But unfortunately it’s extraordinary global events like this that cyber-criminals look for in order to make their schemes more successful. True to form, they’re using mass awareness of the outbreak and a popular desire for more information on the virus, to trick users into giving away personal information and log-ins, or to unwittingly install malware on their devices.
As organizations enforce remote working to reduce the impact of the virus, many of you will be logging-on from home or your mobile computing devices, which may have fewer built-in protections from such threats. This makes it more important than ever to know how the bad guys are trying to cash in on COVID-19 and what you can do to stay safe.
Here’s a quick guide to the key online threats and security tips:
Phishing for trouble
Decades before COVID-19 burst onto the scene, a different kind of pandemic was spreading across the globe. Phishing messages have been one of the most popular tools in the hackers’ arsenal for years. In fact, Trend Micro blocked nearly 48 billion email-borne threats in 2019, 91% of the total we detected. Phishing is designed to trick the user into handing over their log-ins or personal and financial details, or persuading them to unwittingly download malware. Cyber-criminals typically achieve this by spoofing an email to make it appear as if sent from a legitimate and trustworthy source.
Once a user has been hooked, they are enticed into clicking on a malicious link or opening a malware-laden attachment. This could be anything from a banking trojan designed to steal online banking log-ins, to a piece of ransomware which will lock the user out of their PC until they pay a fee. It could even be cryptojacking malware which sits on the infected machine, quietly mining for Bitcoin while running up large energy bills and slowing down your PC.
The bad news is that phishing messages — whether sent by email, social media, text or messaging app — are getting harder to spot. Many now feature perfect English, and official logos and sender domains. They also often use current newsworthy events to trick the user into clicking. And they don’t get more high-profile than the COVID-19 pandemic.
Depending on how well protected your computing devices are, you may be more likely to receive one of these scam messages than be exposed to the virus itself. So, it pays to know what’s out there.
Watch out for these scams
The phishing landscape is evolving all the time. But here is a selection of some of the most common scams doing the rounds at the moment:
‘Official’ updates
Many of these emails purport to come from official organizations such as the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), or the World Health Organization (WHO). They claim to contain key updates on the spread of the virus and must-read recommendations on how to avoid infection. Booby-trapped links and attachments carry malware and/or could redirect users to phishing sites.
Coronavirus map
Sometimes legitimate tools can be hijacked to spread malware. Researchers have spotted a version of the interactive Coronavirus dashboard created by Johns Hopkins University which was altered to contain information-stealing malware known as AZORult. If emails arrive with links to such sites, users should exercise extreme caution.
Corporate updates
Many big brands are proactively contacting their customer base to reassure them of the steps they are taking to keep staff and customers safe from the virus. But here too, the hackers are jumping in with spoof messages of their own purporting to come from the companies you may do business with. FedEx is one such global brand that has been spoofed in this way.
Donations
Another trick is to send phishing emails calling for donations to help fund research into the virus. One, claiming to come from the “Department of Health” has a subject line, “URGENT: Coronavirus, Can we count on your support today?” A key tactic in phishing emails is to create a sense of urgency like this to rush the reader into making hasty decisions.
Click here for a cure
One scam email claims to come from a medical professional and contains details about a vaccine for COVID-19 which has been “hushed up” by global governments. Of course, clicking through to find the non-existent ‘cure’ will bring the recipient nothing but trouble.
Tax refunds
In the UK, users have received emails spoofed to appear as if sent from the government, and promising a tax refund to help citizens cope with the financial shock of the pandemic. As governments in the US and elsewhere start to take more interventionist measures to prop up their economies, we can expect more of these types of phishing email.
How to stay safe
The good news is that there’s plenty you can do to protect you and your family from phishing emails like these. A blend of the following technical and human fixes will go a long way to minimizing the threat:
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How Trend Micro can help
Fortunately, Trend Micro Security can also help. Among its anti-phishing features are the following:
Antispam for Outlook: includes checks on email sender reputation, employs web threat protection to block malicious URLs in messages, and scans for threats in files attached to email messages.
Fraud Buster: uses leading-edge AI technology to detect fake emails in Gmail and Outlook webmail that don’t contain malicious URLs or attachments, but still pose a risk to the user.
To find out more about how Trend Micro can help keep your family safe from online threats and phishing, go to our Trend Micro Security homepage, or watch our video series: How to Prevent Phishing, Part 1 and Part 2.
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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:
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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:
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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.
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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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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:
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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.
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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, read about how the operators of the Shade (Troldesh) ransomware have shut down and released more than 750,000 decryption keys. Also, learn about an attack using Zoom installers to spread a WebMonitor RAT malware.
Read on:
The Industry 4.0 Lab Never Ignores Brownfields – What POLIMI and Trend Micro Aim to Prove
It takes time for new technologies to penetrate the market and even the most innovative technology must be used safely and with confidence. Industry 4.0 technology is no exception. Engineers and researchers, including those at Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) and Trend Micro, are currently investigating how to map ICT technology principles onto OT environments, including factory environments.
Shade (Troldesh) Ransomware Shuts Down and Releases Decryption Keys
The operators of the Shade (Troldesh) ransomware have shut down and, as a sign of goodwill, have released more than 750,000 decryption keys that past victims can now use to recover their files. Security researchers from Kaspersky Lab have confirmed the validity of the leaked keys and are now working on creating a free decryption tool.
Trend Micro’s Top Ten MITRE Evaluation Considerations
The MITRE ATT&CK framework, and the evaluations, have gone a long way in helping advance the security industry, and the individual security products serving the market. The insight garnered from these evaluations is incredibly useful but can be hard to understand. In this blog, read Trend Micro’s top 10 key takeaways for its evaluation results.
New Android Malware Steals Banking Passwords, Private Data and Keystrokes
A new type of mobile banking malware has been discovered abusing Android’s accessibility features to exfiltrate sensitive data from financial applications, read user SMS messages, and hijack SMS-based two-factor authentication codes. Dubbed “EventBot” by Cybereason researchers, the malware can target over 200 different financial apps, including banking, money transfer services, and crypto-currency wallets.
Principles of a Cloud Migration – Security, The W5H – Episode WHAT?
Last week in Trend Micro’s cloud migration blog series, we explained the “WHO” of securing a cloud migration, detailing each of the roles involved with implementing a successful security practice during the migration. This week, Trend Micro touches on the “WHAT” of security: the key principles required before your first workload moves.
Critical WordPress e-Learning Plugin Bugs Open Door to Cheating
Researchers have disclosed critical-severity flaws in three popular WordPress plugins used widely by colleges and universities: LearnPress, LearnDash and LifterLMS. The flaws, now patched, could allow students to steal personal information, change their grades, cheat on tests and more.
WebMonitor RAT Bundled with Zoom Installer
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the usefulness of communication apps for work-from-home setups. However, as expected, cybercriminals look to exploit popular trends and user behavior. Trend Micro has witnessed threats against several messaging apps, including Zoom. In April, Trend Micro spotted an attack using Zoom installers to spread a cryptocurrency miner. Trend Micro recently encountered a similar attack that drops a different malware: RevCode WebMonitor RAT.
Group Behind TrickBot Spreads Fileless BazarBackdoor
A new campaign is spreading a new malware named “BazarBackdoor,” a fileless backdoor created by the same threat actors behind TrickBot, according to BleepingComputer. The conclusion is drawn due to similarities in code, crypters, and infrastructure between the two malware variants. The social engineering attacks used to spread the backdoor use topics such as customer complaints, COVID-19-themed payroll reports, and employee termination lists for the emails they send out.
Critical Adobe Illustrator, Bridge and Magento Flaws Patched
Adobe is warning of critical flaws in Adobe Bridge, Adobe Illustrator and the Magento e-commerce platform. If exploited, the most severe vulnerabilities could enable remote code execution on affected systems. Francis Provencher, Mat Powell, and an anonymous reporter were credited for discovering the flaws, all working with Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative.
Guidance on Kubernetes Threat Modeling
Kubernetes is one of the most used container orchestration systems in cloud environments. As such, like any widely used application, it is an attractive target for cybercriminals and other threat actors. In this blog, Trend Micro shares three general areas that cloud administrators need to secure their deployments against, as they can introduce threats or risks to their Kubernetes-driven containerization strategies.
Loki Info Stealer Propagates Through LZH Files
Trend Micro previously encountered a spam sample that propagates the info stealer Loki through Windows Cabinet (CAB) files. Recently, Trend Micro also acquired another sample that delivers the same malware, but through LZH compressed archive files. Trend Micro detects the attachment and the dropper as TrojanSpy.Win32.LOKI.TIOIBYTU.
Security 101: How Fileless Attacks Work and Persist in Systems
As security measures improve, modern adversaries continue to craft sophisticated techniques to evade detection. One of the most persistent evasion techniques involves fileless attacks, which don’t require malicious software to break into a system. Instead of relying on executables, these threats misuse tools that are already in the system to initiate attacks.
COVID-19 Lockdown Fuels Increase in RDP Attacks
The number of attacks abusing the remote desktop protocol (RDP) to compromise corporate environments has increased significantly over the past couple of months, according to Kaspersky. With employees worldwide forced to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the volume of corporate traffic has increased significantly, just as the use of third-party services has increased to keep teams connected and efficient.
What measures are you taking to secure your migration to the cloud? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
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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 Microsoft’s largest-ever Patch Tuesday update including 129 CVEs. Also, read about a new Android Spyware dubbed ActionSpy.
Read on:
Microsoft June Patch Tuesday Fixes 129 Flaws in Largest-Ever Update
Microsoft has released patches for 129 vulnerabilities as part of its June Patch Tuesday updates – the highest number of CVEs ever released by Microsoft in a single month. Within the blockbuster security update, 11 critical remote code-execution flaws were patched in Windows, SharePoint server, Windows Shell, VBScript and other products.
#LetsTalkSecurity: Become the Hunter
This week, Rik Ferguson, vice president of Security Research at Trend Micro, hosted the sixth episode of #LetsTalkSecurity featuring guest Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec. Check out this week’s episode and follow the link to find more information about upcoming episodes and guests.
Not Just Good Security Products, But a Good Partner
This week, Trend Micro announced it has been placed in the Champions quadrant of the Canalys Global Cybersecurity Leadership Matrix, in recognition of major investments and improvements in the channel over the past year. The report particularly highlights Trend Micro’s partner portal improvements that include significant investments in deal registration, sales kits, promotions and training.
12 Biggest Cloud Threats and Vulnerabilities In 2020
Data breaches, cybercrime and targeted attacks in the cloud have driven demand for cloud security products and services in recent years. From misconfigured storage buckets and excess privileges to Infrastructure as Code (IoC) templates and automated attacks, here’s a look at 12 of the biggest cloud threats technical experts are worried about this year. Data breaches, cybercrime and targeted attacks in the cloud have driven demand for cloud security products and services in recent years.
Trend Micro Guardian: Protecting Your Kids On-the-Go
Some smart devices are not limited for use on the home network, for example, your child’s mobile phone or tablet. Keeping your kids safe with on-the-go devices means extending your security policies beyond the home. Trend Micro Home Network Security makes it easy with its free app, Trend Micro Guardian. Guardian integrates with HNS’s parental control rules via Mobile Device Management technology to extend the rules you’ve applied on your home network to your children’s Wi-Fi/mobile connections outside the home.
Microsoft Discovers Cryptomining Gang Hijacking ML-Focused Kubernetes Clusters
Microsoft published a report detailing a never-before-seen series of attacks against Kubeflow, a toolkit for running machine learning (ML) operations on top of Kubernetes clusters. The attacks have been going on since April, and Microsoft says its end-goal has been to install a cryptocurrency miner on Kubernetes clusters running Kubeflow instances exposed to the internet.
New Tekya Ad Fraud Found on Google Play
In late March, researchers from CheckPoint found the Tekya malware family being used to carry out ad fraud on Google Play. These apps have since been removed from the store, but Trend Micro recently found a variant of this family that had made its way onto Google Play via five malicious apps, although these have also been removed.
Fake COVID-19 Contact-Tracing Apps Infect Android Phones
Security researchers have identified 12 malicious Android applications, disguised to appear as official government COVID-19 contact-tracing apps, distributing malware onto devices. The Anomali Threat Research team found multiple applications containing a range of malware families, primarily banking Trojan Anubis and SpyNote, an Android Trojan with the goal of collecting and monitoring data on infected devices.
Tracking, Detecting, and Thwarting PowerShell-based Malware and Attacks
While traditional malware and attacks rely on crafted executables to function, fileless malware reside in memory to evade traditional scanners and detection methods. PowerShell, a legitimate management tool used by system administrators, provides an ideal cover for threat actors as they craft payloads heavily dependent on its deep Windows integration. Trend Micro has published multiple reports on this phenomenon, which has been further validated by telemetry data.
Updated Analysis on Nefilim Ransomware’s Behavior
Shortly after the discovery of Nefilim in March 2019, Trend Micro released its analysis of the ransomware and its behavior. Through recent investigations of cases observed in several companies, Trend Micro has amassed more information on how this ransomware operates. Some notable updates added the use of other tools such as Mimikatz, AdFind, CobaltStrike, and MegaSync, and the description of events that occur within the attack phases weeks or even months before the ransomware is deployed.
New Android Spyware ActionSpy Revealed via Phishing Attacks from Earth Empusa
While tracking Earth Empura, also known as POISON CARP/Evil Eye, Trend Micro identified an undocumented Android spyware it has dubbed ActionSpy. During the first quarter of 2020, Trend Micro observed Earth Empusa’s activity targeting users in Tibet and Turkey before they extended their scope to include Taiwan.
Babylon Health Admits ‘Software Error’ Led to Patient Data Breach
Babylon Health, a UK AI chatbot and telehealth startup which has been valued in excess of $2BN, has suffered an embarrassing data breach after a user of the app found he was able to access other patients’ video consultations. The company confirmed the breach yesterday, telling the BBC that a “software error” related to a feature that lets users switch from audio to video-based consultations part way through a call had caused a “small number” of UK users to be able to see others sessions.
In part three of this five-part blog series, Trend Micro looks at the security risks of promoting smart factories by examining overlooked attack vectors, feasible attack scenarios, and recommended defense strategies. This blog describes the usage of Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices and overlooked security risks in software supply chains.
Surprised by the new Android spyware ActionSpy that was revealed via phishing attacks from Earth Empusa? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
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Trend Micro is excited to launch new Trend Micro Cloud One – Conformity capabilities that will strengthen protection for Azure resources.
As with any launch, there is a lot of new information, so we decided to sit down with one of the founders of Conformity, Mike Rahmati. Mike is a technologist at heart, with a proven track record of success in the development of software systems that are resilient to failure and grow and scale dynamically through cloud, open-source, agile, and lean disciplines. In the interview, we picked Mike’s brain on how these new capabilities can help customers prevent or easily remediate misconfigurations on Azure. Let’s dive in.
What are the common business problems that customers encounter when building on or moving their applications to Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
The common problem is there are a lot of tools and cloud services out there. Organizations are looking for tool consolidation and visibility into their cloud environment. Shadow IT and business units spinning up their own cloud accounts is a real challenge for IT organizations to keep on top of. Compliance, security, and governance controls are not necessarily top of mind for business units that are innovating at incredible speeds. That is why it is so powerful to have a tool that can provide visibility into your cloud environment and show where you are potentially vulnerable from a security and compliance perspective.
Common misconfigurations on AWS are an open Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) or a misconfigured IAM policy. What is the equivalent for Microsoft?
The common misconfigurations are actually quite similar to what we’ve seen with AWS. During the product preview phase, we’ve seen customers with many of the same kinds of misconfiguration issues as we’ve seen with AWS. For example, Microsoft Azure Blobs Storage is the equivalent to Amazon S3 – that is a common source of misconfigurations. We have observed misconfiguration in two main areas: Firewall and Web Application Firewall (WAF),which is equivalent to AWS WAF. The Firewall is similar to networking configuration in AWS, which provides inbound protection for non-HTTP protocols and network related protection for all ports and protocols. It is important to note that this is based on the 100 best practices and 15 services we currently support for Azure and growing, whereas, for AWS, we have over 600 best practices in total, with over 70 controls with auto-remediation.
Can you tell me about the CIS Microsoft Azure Foundation Security Benchmark?
We are thrilled to support the CIS Microsoft Azure Foundation Security Benchmark. The CIS Microsoft Azure Foundations Benchmark includes automated checks and remediation recommendations for the following: Identity and Access Management, Security Center, Storage Accounts, Database Services, Logging and Monitoring, Networking, Virtual Machines, and App Service. There are over 100 best practices in this framework and we have rules built to check for all of those best practices to ensure cloud builders are avoiding risk in their Azure environments.
Can you tell me a little bit about the Microsoft Shared Responsibility Model?
In terms of shared responsibility model, it’s is very similar to AWS. The security OF the cloud is a Microsoft responsibility, but the security IN the cloud is the customers responsibility. Microsoft’s ecosystem is growing rapidly, and there are a lot of services that you need to know in order to configure them properly. With Conformity, customers only need to know how to properly configure the core services, according to best practices, and then we can help you take it to the next level.
Can you give an example of how the shared responsibility model is used?
Yes. Imagine you have a Microsoft Azure Blob Storage that includes sensitive data. Then, by accident, someone makes it public. The customer might not be able to afford an hour, two hours, or even days to close that security gap.
In just a few minutes, Conformity will alert you to your risk status, provide remediation recommendations, and for our AWS checks give you the ability to set up auto-remediation. Auto-remediation can be very helpful, as it can close the gap in near-real time for customers.
What are next steps for our readers?
I’d say that whether your cloud exploration is just taking shape, you’re midway through a migration, or you’re already running complex workloads in the cloud, we can help. You can gain full visibility of your infrastructure with continuous cloud security and compliance posture management. We can do the heavy lifting so you can focus on innovating and growing. Also, you can ask anyone from our team to set you up with a complimentary cloud health check. Our cloud engineers are happy to provide an AWS and/or Azure assessment to see if you are building a secure, compliant, and reliable cloud infrastructure. You can find out your risk level in just 10-minutes.
Get started today with a 60-day free trial >
Check out our knowledge base of Azure best practice rules>
Do you see value in building a security culture that is shifted left?
Yes, we have done this for our customers using AWS and it has been very successful. The more we talk about shifting security left the better, and I think that’s where we help customers build a security culture. Every cloud customer is struggling with implementing earlier on in the development cycle and they need tools. Conformity is a tool for customers which is DevOps or DevSecOps friendly and helps them build a security culture that is shifted left.
We help customers shift security left by integrating the Conformity API into their CI/CD pipeline. The product also has preventative controls, which our API and template scanners provide. The idea is we help customers shift security left to identify those misconfigurations early on, even before they’re actually deployed into their environments.
We also help them scan their infrastructure-as-code templates before being deployed into the cloud. Customers need a tool to bake into their CI/CD pipeline. Shifting left doesn’t simply mean having a reporting tool, but rather a tool that allows them to shift security left. That’s where our product, Conformity, can help.
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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 two recently detected variants of existing Linux botnet malware types targeting exposed Docker servers. Also, read about a group of vulnerabilities dubbed Ripple20 that have the potential to critically impact millions of IoT devices across many different industries.
Read on:
The Fear of Vendor Lock-in Leads to Cloud Failures
Vendor lock-in, the fear that by investing too much with one vendor an organization reduces their options in the future, has been an often-quoted risk since the mid-1990s. Organizations continue to walk a fine line with their technology vendors. Ideally, you select a set of technologies that not only meet your current needs but that align with your future vision as well.
How Do I Select a Mobile Security Solution for My Business?
The percentage of companies admitting to suffering a mobile-related compromise has grown, despite a higher percentage of organizations deciding not to sacrifice the security of mobile devices to meet business targets. To make things worse, the C-suite is the most likely group within an organization to ask for relaxed mobile security protocols – despite also being highly targeted by cyberattacks.
Knowing Your Shared Security Responsibility in Microsoft Azure and Avoiding Misconfigurations
Trend Micro is excited to launch new Trend Micro Cloud One – Conformity capabilities that will strengthen protection for Azure resources. As with any launch, there is a lot of new information, so we held a Q&A with one of the founders of Conformity, Mike Rahmati. In the interview, Mike shares how these new capabilities can help customers prevent or easily remediate misconfigurations on Azure.
FBI Warns K-12 Schools of Ransomware Attacks via RDP
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week sent out a security alert to K-12 schools about the increase in ransomware attacks during the coronavirus pandemic, and especially about ransomware gangs that abuse RDP connections to break into school systems.
XORDDoS, Kaiji Botnet Malware Variants Target Exposed Docker Servers
Trend Micro recently detected variants of two existing Linux botnet malware types targeting exposed Docker servers: XORDDoS malware and Kaiji DDoS malware. Having Docker servers as their target is a new development for both XORDDoS and Kaiji; XORDDoS was known for targeting Linux hosts on cloud systems, while recently discovered Kaiji was first reported to affect internet of things (IoT) devices.
Frost & Sullivan Employee, Customer Data for Sale on Dark Web
A group is hawking records of more than 12,000 Frost & Sullivan employees and customers on a hacker folder. According to Cyble CEO Beenu Arora the breach was a result of a misconfigured backup directory on one of Frost & Sullivan’s public-facing servers. The KelvinSecurity Team said they put the information – which includes names, email addresses, company contacts, login names and hashed passwords – for sale in a hacking forum to sound the “alarm” after Frost & Sullivan didn’t respond to the group’s attempt to alert it to the exposed database.
Millions of IoT Devices Affected by Ripple20 Vulnerabilities
Israeli cybersecurity firm JSOF has released information on a group of vulnerabilities dubbed Ripple20. These vulnerabilities have the potential to critically impact millions of internet of things (IoT) devices across many different industries — crucial machines in the medical, oil and gas, transportation, power, and manufacturing industries can be affected by these bugs.
Nvidia Warns Windows Gamers of Serious Graphics Driver Bugs
Graphics chipmaker Nvidia has fixed two high-severity flaws in its graphics drivers. Attackers can exploit the vulnerabilities to view sensitive data, gain escalated privileges or launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks in impacted Windows gaming devices.
Cyberattacks from the Frontlines: Incident Response Playbook for Beginners
For enterprises, staying competitive in an ever-changing market involves keeping up with the latest technological trends. However, without the parallel development of security infrastructure and robust response, new technology could be used as a conduit for cyberthreats that result in losses. Organizations should aim to prevent these breaches from happening — but having protocols for reducing a breach lifecycle is an essential and realistic approach for dealing with current threats.
OneClass Unsecured S3 Bucket Exposes PII on More than One Million Students, Instructors
An unsecured database belonging to remote learning platform OneClass has exposed information associated with more than a million students in North America who use the platform to access study guides and educational assistance. Data exposed includes full names, email addresses (some masked), schools and universities attended, phone numbers, school and university course enrollment details and OneClass account details.
During the past decade, various countries and industries have actively developed guidelines and frameworks for OT security. Recently, multiple guidelines have been integrated, and two standards as global standards are IEC62443 and the NIST CSF, SP800 series, from the viewpoint of security in smart factories. In this series, Trend Miro explains the overviews of IEC62443 and NIST CSF, in order to understand their concepts required for security in smart factories.
Many businesses have misperceptions about cloud environments, providers, and how to secure it all. In order to help separate fact from fiction when it comes to your cloud environment, Trend Micro debunks 8 myths to help you confidently take the next steps in the cloud.
Does your organization have an incident response playbook for potential breaches? Share your thoughts in the comments below or follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation: @JonLClay.
The post This Week in Security News: XORDDoS and Kaiji Botnet Malware Variants Target Exposed Docker Servers and Ripple20 Vulnerabilities Could Impact Millions of IoT Devices appeared first on .
Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) require harmonization among manufacturers to have any chance of succeeding in the real world. No large-scale car manufacturer, multimodal shipper, or MaaS (Mobility as a Service) provider will risk investing in a single-vendor solution. Successful ITS require interoperable components, especially for managing cybersecurity issues. See https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/intelligent-transportation-systems for a set of reports on ITS cybersecurity.
The good news is we now have a standard for automotive cybersecurity, ISA/SAE 21434. This standard addresses all the major elements of connected car security including V2X, reaching from the internals of ECUs and communications busses including CAN to the broader issues of fleet management and public safety. See https://www.iso.org/standard/70918.html for the current draft version of this standard.
Intelligent transport systems rely on complex, contemporary infrastructure elements, including cloud (for data aggregation, traffic analysis, and system-wide recommendations) and 5G (for inter-component networking and real-time sensing). ITS also rely on aging industrial control systems and components, for vehicle detection, weather reporting, and traffic signaling, some dating back forty years or more. This profound heterogeneity makes the cybersecurity problem unwieldy. Automotive systems generally are the most complex public-facing applications of industrial IoT. Any information security problems with them will erode public trust in this important and ultimately critical infrastructure.
Robert Bosch GmbH began working on the first automotive bus architecture in 1986. Automobiles gained increasing electronic functions (smog controls, seat belt monitors, electric window controls, climate controls, and so on). With each new device, the manufacturers had to install additional point-to-point wiring to monitor and control them. This led to increasing complexity, the possibility for error, extended manufacturing time, more costly diagnosis and repair post-sales, and added weight. See Figure 1 for details. By replacing point-to-point wiring with a simple bus, manufacturers could introduce new features connected with one pair of wires for control. This simplified design, manufacturing, diagnosis, and improved quality and maintainability.
Figure 1: CAN Networks Significantly Reduce Wiring (from National Instruments https://www.ni.com/en-us/innovations/white-papers/06/controller-area-network–can–overview.html)
The bus was simple: all devices saw all traffic and responded to messages relevant to them. Each message has a standard format, with a header describing the message content and priority (the arbitration IDs), the body which contains the relevant data, and a cyclic redundancy check (CRC), which is a code to verify that the message contents are accurate. This CRC uses a mathematical formula to determine if any bits have flipped, and for small numbers of errors can correct the message, like a checksum. This is not as powerful as a digital signature. It has no cryptographic power. Every device on the bus can use the CRC algorithm to create a code for messages it sends and to verify the data integrity of messages it receives. Other than this, there is no data confidentiality, authentication, authorization, data integrity, or non-repudiation in CAN bus messages – or any other automotive bus messages. The devices used in cars are generally quite simple, lightweight, and inexpensive: 8-bit processors with little memory on board. Any device connected to the network is trusted. Figure 2 shows the layout of a CAN bus message.
Figure 2: The Standard CAN Frame Format, from National Instruments
Today’s automobiles have more sophisticated devices on board. The types of messages and the services the offer are becoming more complex. In-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems provide maps, music, Bluetooth connectivity for smartphones and other devices, in addition to increasingly more elaborate driving assistance and monitoring systems all add more traffic to the bus. But given the diversity of manufacturers and suppliers, impeding security measures over the automotive network. No single vendor could today achieve what Robert Bosch did nearly forty years ago. Yet the need for stronger vehicle security is growing.
The ISO/SAE 21434 standard describes a model for securing the supply chain for automotive technology, for validating the integrity of the development process, detecting vulnerabilities and cybersecurity attacks in automotive systems, and managing the deployment of fixes as needed. It is comprehensive. ISO/SAE 21434 builds on decades of work in information security. By applying that body of knowledge to the automotive case, the standard will move the industry towards a safer and more trustworthy connected car world.
But the standard’s value doesn’t stop with cars and intelligent transport systems. Domains far beyond connected cars will benefit from having a model for securing communications among elements from diverse manufacturers sharing a common bus. The CAN bus and related technologies are used onboard ships, in aircraft, in railroad management, in maritime port systems, and even in controlling prosthetic limbs. The vulnerabilities are common, the complexity of the supply chain is equivalent, and the need for a comprehensive architectural solution is as great. So this standard is a superb achievement and will go far to improve the quality, reliability, and trustworthiness of critical systems globally.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below or @WilliamMalikTM.
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Migrating to the cloud is hard. The PowerPoint deck and pretty architectures are drawn up quickly but the work required to make the move will take months and possibly years.
The early stages require significant effort by teams to learn new technologies (the cloud services themselves) and new ways of the working (the shared responsibility model).
In the early days of your cloud efforts, the cloud center of expertise is a logical model to follow.
A cloud center of excellence is exactly what it sounds like. Your organization forms a new team—or an existing team grows into the role—that focuses on setting cloud standards and architectures.
They are often the “go-to” team for any cloud questions. From the simple (“What’s an Amazon S3 bucket?”), to the nuanced (“What are the advantages of Amazon Aurora over RDS?”), to the complex (“What’s the optimum index/sort keying for this DynamoDB table?”).
The cloud center of excellence is the one-stop shop for cloud in your organization. At the beginning, this organizational design choice can greatly accelerate the adoption of cloud technologies.
The problem is that accelerated adoption doesn’t necessarily correlate with accelerated understanding and learning.
In fact, as the center of excellent continues to grow its success, there is an inverse failure in organizational learning which create a general lack of cloud fluency.
Cloud fluency is an idea introduced by Forrest Brazeal at A Cloud Guru that describes the general ability of all teams within the organization to discuss cloud technologies and solutions. Forrest’s blog post shines a light on this situation and is summed up nicely in this cartoon;
Our own Mark Nunnikhoven also spoke to Forrest on episode 2 of season 2 for #LetsTalkCloud.
Even though the cloud center of excellence team sets out to teach everyone and raise the bar, the work soon piles up and the team quickly shifts away from an educational mandate to a “fix everything” one.
What was once a cloud accelerator is now a place of burnout for your top, hard-to-replace cloud talent.
If you’ve paid attention to how cybersecurity teams operate within organizations, you have probably spotted a number of very concerning similarities.
Cybersecurity teams are also considered a center of excellence and the central team within the organization for security knowledge.
Most requests for security architecture, advice, operations, and generally anything that includes the prefix “cyber”, word “risk”, or hints of “hacking” get routed to this team.
This isn’t the security team’s fault. Over the years, systems have increased in complexity, more and more incidents occur, and security teams rarely get the opportunity to look ahead. They are too busy stuck in “firefighting mode” to take as step back and re-evaluate the organizational design structure they work within.
According to Gartner, for every 750 employees in an organization, one of those is dedicated to cybersecurity. Those are impossible odds that have lead to the massive security skills gap.
Security needs to follow the example of cloud fluency. We need “security fluency” in order to import the security posture of the systems we built and to reduce the risk our organizations face.
This is the reason that security teams need to turn their efforts to educating development teams. DevSecOps is a term chock full of misconceptions and it lacks context to drive the needed changes but it is handy for raising awareness of the lack of security fluency.
Successful adoption of a DevOps philosophy is all about removing barriers to customer success. Providing teams with the tools and autonomy they require is a critical factor in their success.
Security is just one aspect of the development team’s toolkit. It’s up to the current security team to help educate them on the principles driving modern cybersecurity and how to ensure that the systems they build work as intended…and only as intended.
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Trend Micro Research has developed a go-to resource for all things related to cybercriminal underground hosting and infrastructure. Today we released the second in this three-part series of reports which detail the what, how, and why of cybercriminal hosting (see the first part here).
As part of this report, we dive into the common life cycle of a compromised server from initial compromise to the different stages of monetization preferred by criminals. It’s also important to note that regardless of whether a company’s server is on-premise or cloud-based, criminals don’t care what kind of server they compromise.
To a criminal, any server that is exposed or vulnerable is fair game.
Cloud vs. On-Premise Servers
Cybercriminals don’t care where servers are located. They can leverage the storage space, computation resources, or steal data no matter what type of server they access. Whatever is most exposed will most likely be abused.
As digital transformation continues and potentially picks up to allow for continued remote working, cloud servers are more likely to be exposed. Many enterprise IT teams, unfortunately, are not arranged to provide the same protection for cloud as on-premise servers.
As a side note, we want to emphasize that this scenario applies only to cloud instances replicating the storage or processing power of an on-premise server. Containers or serverless functions won’t fall victim to this same type of compromise. Additionally, if the attacker compromises the cloud account, as opposed to a single running instance, then there is an entirely different attack life cycle as they can spin up computing resources at will. Although this is possible, however, it is not our focus here.
Attack Red Flags
Many IT and security teams might not look for earlier stages of abuse. Before getting hit by ransomware, however, there are other red flags that could alert teams to the breach.
If a server is compromised and used for cryptocurrency mining (also known as cryptomining), this can be one of the biggest red flags for a security team. The discovery of cryptomining malware running on any server should result in the company taking immediate action and initiating an incident response to lock down that server.
This indicator of compromise (IOC) is significant because while cryptomining malware is often seen as less serious compared to other malware types, it is also used as a monetization tactic that can run in the background while server access is being sold for further malicious activity. For example, access could be sold for use as a server for underground hosting. Meanwhile, the data could be exfiltrated and sold as personally identifiable information (PII) or for industrial espionage, or it could be sold for a targeted ransomware attack. It’s possible to think of the presence of cryptomining malware as the proverbial canary in a coal mine: This is the case, at least, for several access-as-a-service (AaaS) criminals who use this as part of their business model.
Attack Life Cycle
Attacks on compromised servers follow a common path:
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The monetization lifecycle of a compromised server
Often, targeted ransomware is the final stage. In most cases, asset categorization reveals data that is valuable to the business but not necessarily valuable for espionage.
A deep understanding of the servers and network allows criminals behind a targeted ransomware attack to hit the company where it hurts the most. These criminals would know the dataset, where they live, whether there are backups of the data, and more. With such a detailed blueprint of the organization in their hands, cybercriminals can lock down critical systems and demand higher ransom, as we saw in our 2020 midyear security roundup report.
In addition, while a ransomware attack would be the visible urgent issue for the defender to solve in such an incident, the same attack could also indicate that something far more serious has likely already taken place: the theft of company data, which should be factored into the company’s response planning. More importantly, it should be noted that once a company finds an IOC for cryptocurrency, stopping the attacker right then and there could save them considerable time and money in the future.
Ultimately, no matter where a company’s data is stored, hybrid cloud security is critical to preventing this life cycle.
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Introduction to Lockphish Phishing attacks are a common tactic for gaining initial access to a system. If an attacker can convince their target to hand over their login credentials or install and execute malware on their machine, this provides an attacker with a foothold that can be used to expand their access and achieve their […]
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Introduction to dark web phishing kits The internet is like an iceberg: there is a lot more to it than can be seen from the surface. In addition to the surface web (what can be accessed and indexed by search engines), there is the deep web (gated content on internet-connected computers) and the darknet or […]
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Introduction It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In the world of malware, a picture is worth an infection — in other words, a picture can actually be the malware (ransomware, specifically in this case) that initially infects the compromised machine. This malware is called Tycoon and it uses an […]
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Introduction Imagine a situation where criminals steal access to your property. They offer you a seemingly valid solution in the way of a tool that will give you your access back. But you use that solution and yet you still do not have access? Welcome to the nightmarish world of STOP/DJVU — a ransomware that […]
The post Fake STOP/DJVU decryptor malware: What it is, how it works and how to prevent it appeared first on Infosec Resources.
We are living in an era where malware is part of our daily lives. Emergent campaigns are increasing, each more sophisticated and harder to detect than the last. Malware can reveal itself through different abnormal behaviors, including a giant wave of annoying ads flooding your screen, your system crashing, blocks or repeatedly showing a BSOD […]
The post Troystealer malware: What it is, how it works and how to prevent it | Malware spotlight appeared first on Infosec Resources.
The COVID-19 pandemic, when it struck earlier this year, ushered in an immediate period of adjustment for all of us. And just as the challenges posed by COVID-19 in 2020 have been truly unprecedented, Verisign’s mission – enabling the world to connect online with reliability and confidence, anytime, anywhere – has never been more relevant. We are grateful for the continued dedication of our workforce, which enables us to provide the building blocks people need for remote working and learning, and simply for keeping in contact with each other.
At Verisign we took early action to adopt a COVID-19 work posture to protect our people, their families, and our operations. This involved the majority of our employees working from home, and implementing new cleaning and health safety protocols to protect those employees and contractors for whom on-site presence was essential to maintain key functions.
Our steps to address the pandemic did not stop there. On March 25 we announced a series of measures to help the communities where we live and work, and the broader DNS community in which we operate. This included, under our Verisign Cares program, making contributions to organizations supporting key workers, first responders and medical personnel, and doubling the company’s matching program for employee giving so that employee donations to support the COVID-19 response could have a greater impact.
Today, while vaccines may offer signs of long term hope, the pandemic has plunged many families into economic hardship and has had a dramatic effect on food insecurity in the U.S., with an estimated 50 million people affected. With this hardship in mind, we have this week made contributions totaling $275,000 to food banks in the areas where we have our most substantial footprint: the Washington DC-Maryland-Virginia region; Delaware; and the canton of Fribourg, in Switzerland. This will help local families put food on their tables during what will be a difficult winter for many.
The pandemic has also had a disproportionate, and potentially permanent, impact on certain sectors of the economy. So today Verisign is embarking on a partnership with Virginia Ready, which helps people affected by COVID-19 access training and certification for in-demand jobs in sectors such as technology. We are making an initial contribution of $250,000 to Virginia Ready, and will look to establish further partnerships of this kind across the country in 2021.
The post Meeting the Evolving Challenges of COVID-19 appeared first on Verisign Blog.
As we begin a new year, it is important to look back and reflect on our accomplishments and how we can continue to improve. A significant positive the DNS community could appreciate from 2020 is the receptiveness and responsiveness of the Chromium team to address the large amount of DNS queries being sent to the root server system.
In a previous blog post, we quantified that upwards of 45.80% of total DNS traffic to the root servers was, at the time, the result of Chromium intranet redirection detection tests. Since then, the Chromium team has redesigned its code to disable the redirection test on Android systems and introduced a multi-state DNS interception policy that supports disabling the redirection test for desktop browsers. This functionality was released mid-November of 2020 for Android systems in Chromium 87 and, quickly thereafter, the root servers experienced a rapid decline of DNS queries.
The figure below highlights the significant decline of query volume to the root server system immediately after the Chromium 87 release. Prior to the software release, the root server system saw peaks of ~143 billion queries per day. Traffic volumes have since decreased to ~84 billion queries a day. This represents more than a 41% reduction of total query volume.
This type of broad root system measurement is facilitated by ICANN’s Root Server System Advisory Committee standards document RSSAC002, which establishes a set of baseline metrics for the root server system. These root server metrics are readily available to the public for analysis, monitoring, and research. These metrics represent another milestone the DNS community could appreciate and continue to support and refine going forward.
Rightly noted in ICANN’s Root Name Service Strategy and Implementation publication, the root server system currently “faces growing volumes of traffic” from legitimate users but also from misconfigurations, misuse, and malicious actors and that “the costs incurred by the operators of the root server system continue to climb to mitigate these attacks using the traditional approach”.
As we reflect on how Chromium’s large impact to root server traffic was identified and then resolved, we as a DNS community could consider how outreach and engagement should be incorporated into a traditional approach of addressing DNS security, stability, and resiliency. All too often, technologists solve problems by introducing additional layers of technology abstractions and disregarding simpler solutions, such as outreach and engagement.
We believe our efforts show how such outreach and community engagement can have significant impact both to the parties directly involved, and to the broader community. Chromium’s actions will directly aide and ease the operational costs to mitigate attacks at the root. Reducing the root server system load by 41%, with potential further reduction depending on future Chromium deployment decisions, will lighten operational costs incurred to mitigate attacks by relinquishing their computing and network resources.
In pursuit of maintaining a responsible and common-sense root hygiene regimen, Verisign will continue to analyze root telemetry data and engage with entities such as Chromium to highlight operational concerns, just as Verisign has done in the past to address name collisions problems. We’ll be sharing more information on this shortly.
This piece was co-authored by Matt Thomas and Duane Wessels, Distinguished Engineers at Verisign.
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This is the first in a multi-part blog series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
As one of the earliest protocols in the internet, the DNS emerged in an era in which today’s global network was still an experiment. Security was not a primary consideration then, and the design of the DNS, like other parts of the internet of the day, did not have cryptography built in.
Today, cryptography is part of almost every protocol, including the DNS. And from a cryptographer’s perspective, as I described in my talk at last year’s International Cryptographic Module Conference (ICMC20), there’s so much more to the story than just encryption.
The first broad-scale deployment of cryptography in the DNS was not for confidentiality but for data integrity, through the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), introduced in 2005.
The story begins with the usual occurrence that happens millions of times a second around the world: a client asks a DNS resolver a query like “What is example.com’s Internet Protocol (IP) address?” The resolver in this case answers: “example.com’s IP address is 93.184.216.34”. (This is the correct answer.)
If the resolver doesn’t already know the answer to the request, then the process to find the answer goes something like this:
But how does the resolver know that the answer it ultimately receives is correct? The process defined by DNSSEC follows the same “delegation” model from root to TLD to SLD as I’ve described above.
Indeed, DNSSEC provides a way for the resolver to check that the answer is correct by validating a chain of digital signatures, by examining digital signatures at each level of the DNS hierarchy (or technically, at each “zone” in the delegation process). These digital signatures are generated using public key cryptography, a well-understood process that involves encryption using key pairs, one public and one private.
In a typical DNSSEC deployment, there are two active public keys per zone: a Key Signing Key (KSK) public key and a Zone Signing Key (ZSK) public key. (The reason for having two keys is so that one key can be changed locally, without the other key being changed.)
The responses returned to the resolver include digital signatures generated by either the corresponding KSK private key or the corresponding ZSK private key.
Using mathematical operations, the resolver checks all the digital signatures it receives in association with a given query. If they are valid, the resolver returns the “Digital Signature Validated” indicator to the client that initiated the query.
A convenient way to visualize the collection of digital signatures is as a “trust chain” from a “trust anchor” to the DNS record of interest, as shown in the figure above. The chain includes “chain links” at each level of the DNS hierarchy. Here’s how the “chain links” work:
The root KSK public key is the “trust anchor.” This key is widely distributed in resolvers so that they can independently authenticate digital signatures on records in the root zone, and thus authenticate everything else in the chain.
The root zone chain links consist of three parts:
The TLD zone chain links also consist of three parts:
The SLD zone chain links once more consist of three parts:
A resolver (or anyone else) can thereby verify the signature on any set of DNS records given the chain of public keys leading up to the trust anchor.
Note that this is a simplified view, and there are other details in practice. For instance, the various KSK public keys are also signed by their own private KSK, but I’ve omitted these signatures for brevity. The DNSViz tool provides a very nice interactive interface for browsing DNSSEC trust chains in detail, including the trust chain for example.com discussed here.
The effort to update the root KSK public key, the aforementioned “trust anchor” was one of the challenging and successful projects by the DNS community over the past couple of years. This initiative – the so-called “root KSK rollover” – was challenging because there was no easy way to determine whether resolvers actually had been updated to use the latest root KSK — remember that cryptography and security was added on rather than built into the DNS. There are many resolvers that needed to be updated, each independently managed.
The research paper “Roll, Roll, Roll your Root: A Comprehensive Analysis of the First Ever DNSSEC Root KSK Rollover” details the process of updating the root KSK. The paper, co-authored by Verisign researchers and external colleagues, received the distinguished paper award at the 2019 Internet Measurement Conference.
I’ve focused here on how a resolver validates correctness when the response to a query has a “positive” answer — i.e., when the DNS record exists. Checking correctness when the answer doesn’t exist gets even more interesting from a cryptographer’s perspective. I’ll cover this topic in my next post.
Read the complete six blog series:
The post The Domain Name System: A Cryptographer’s Perspective appeared first on Verisign Blog.
This is the second in a multi-part blog series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
In my previous post, I described the first broad scale deployment of cryptography in the DNS, known as the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). I described how a name server can enable a requester to validate the correctness of a “positive” response to a query — when a queried domain name exists — by adding a digital signature to the DNS response returned.
The designers of DNSSEC, as well as academic researchers, have separately considered the answer of “negative” responses – when the domain name doesn’t exist. In this case, as I’ll explain, responding with a signed “does not exist” is not the best design. This makes the non-existence case interesting from a cryptographer’s perspective as well.
Consider a domain name like example.arpa that doesn’t exist.
If it did exist, then as I described in my previous post, the second-level domain (SLD) server for example.arpa would return a response signed by example.arpa’s zone signing key (ZSK).
So a first try for the case that the domain name doesn’t exist is for the SLD server to return the response “example.arpa doesn’t exist,” signed by example.arpa’s ZSK.
However, if example.arpa doesn’t exist, then example.arpa won’t have either an SLD server or a ZSK to sign with. So, this approach won’t work.
A second try is for the parent name server — the .arpa top-level domain (TLD) server in the example — to return the response “example.arpa doesn’t exist,” signed by the parent’s ZSK.
This could work if the .arpa DNS server knows the ZSK for .arpa. However, for security and performance reasons, the design preference for DNSSEC has been to keep private keys offline, within the zone’s provisioning system.
The provisioning system can precompute statements about domain names that do exist — but not about every possible individual domain name that doesn’t exist. So, this won’t work either, at least not for the servers that keep their private keys offline.
The third try is the design that DNSSEC settled on. The parent name server returns a “range statement,” previously signed with the ZSK, that states that there are no domain names in an ordered sequence between two “endpoints” where the endpoints depend on domain names that do exist. The range statements can therefore be signed offline, and yet the name server can still choose an appropriate signed response to return, based on the (non-existent) domain name in the query.
The DNS community has considered several approaches to constructing range statements, and they have varying cryptographic properties. Below I’ve described two such approaches. For simplicity, I’ve focused just on the basics in the discussion that follows. The astute reader will recognize that there are many more details involved both in the specification and the implementation of these techniques.
The first approach, called NSEC, involved no additional cryptography beyond the DNSSEC signature on the range statement. In NSEC, the endpoints are actual domain names that exist. NSEC stands for “Next Secure,” referring to the fact that the second endpoint in the range is the “next” existing domain name following the first endpoint.
The NSEC resource record is documented in one of the original DNSSEC specifications, RFC4033, which was co-authored by Verisign.
The .arpa zone implements NSEC. When the .arpa server receives the request “What is the IP address of example.arpa,” it returns the response “There are no names between e164.arpa and home.arpa.” This exchange is shown in the figure below and is analyzed in the associated DNSviz graph. (The response is accurate as of the writing of this post; it could be different in the future if names were added to or removed from the .arpa zone.)
NSEC has a side effect: responses immediately reveal unqueried domain names in the zone. Depending on the sensitivity of the zone, this may be undesirable from the perspective of the minimum disclosure principle.
A second approach, called NSEC3 reduces the disclosure risk somewhat by defining the endpoints as hashes of existing domain names. (NSEC3 is documented in RFC 5155, which was also co-authored by Verisign.)
An example of NSEC3 can be seen with example.name, another domain that doesn’t exist. Here, the .name TLD server returns a range statement that “There are no domain names with hashes between 5SU9… and 5T48…”. Because the hash of example.name is “5SVV…” the response implies that “example.name” doesn’t exist.
This statement is shown in the figure below and in another DNSviz graph. (As above, the actual response could change if the .name zone changes.)
To find out which domain name corresponds to one of the hashed endpoints, an adversary would have to do a trial-and-error or “dictionary” attack across multiple guesses of domain names, to see if any has a matching hash value. Such a search could be performed “offline,” i.e., without further interaction with the name server, which is why the disclosure risk is only somewhat reduced.
NSEC and NSEC3 are mutually exclusive. Nearly all TLDs, including all TLDs operated by Verisign, implement NSEC3. In addition to .arpa, the root zone also implements NSEC.
In my next post, I’ll describe NSEC5, an approach still in the experimental stage, that replaces the hash function in NSEC3 with a verifiable random function (VRF) to protect against offline dictionary attacks. I’ll also share some research Verisign Labs has done on a complementary approach that helps protect a client’s queries for non-existent domain names from disclosure.
Read the complete six blog series:
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This is the third in a multi-part blog series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
In my last post, I looked at what happens when a DNS query renders a “negative” response – i.e., when a domain name doesn’t exist. I then examined two cryptographic approaches to handling negative responses: NSEC and NSEC3. In this post, I will examine a third approach, NSEC5, and a related concept that protects client information, tokenized queries.
The concepts I discuss below are topics we’ve studied in our long-term research program as we evaluate new technologies. They do not necessarily represent Verisign’s plans or position on a new product or service. Concepts developed in our research program may be subject to U.S. and international patents and patent applications.
NSEC5 is a result of research by cryptographers at Boston University and the Weizmann Institute. In this approach, which is still in an experimental stage, the endpoints are the outputs of a verifiable random function (VRF), a cryptographic primitive that has been gaining interest in recent years. NSEC5 is documented in an Internet Draft (currently expired) and in several research papers.
A VRF is like a hash function but with two important differences:
So, it’s not only hard for an adversary to reverse the VRF – which is also a property the hash function has – but it’s also hard for the adversary to compute the VRF in the forward direction, thus preventing dictionary attacks. And yet a relying party can still confirm that the VRF output for a given input is correct, because of the proof.
How does this work in practice? As in NSEC and NSEC3, range statements are prepared in advance and signed with the zone signing key (ZSK). With NSEC5, however, the range endpoints are two consecutive tokens.
When a domain name doesn’t exist, the name server applies the VRF to the domain name to obtain a token and a proof. The name sever then returns a range statement where the token falls within the range, as well as the proof, as shown in the figure below. Note that the token values are for illustration only.
Because the range statement reveals only tokenized versions of other domain names in a zone, an adversary who doesn’t know the private key doesn’t learn any new existing domain names from the response. Indeed, to find out which domain name corresponds to one of the tokenized endpoints, the adversary would need access to the VRF itself to see if a candidate domain name has a matching hash value, which would involve an online dictionary attack. This significantly reduces disclosure risk.
The name server needs a copy of the zone’s NSEC5 private key so that it can generate proofs for non-existent domain names. The ZSK itself can stay in the provisioning system. As the designers of NSEC5 have pointed out, if the NSEC5 private key does happen to be compromised, this only makes it possible to do a dictionary attack offline— not to generate signatures on new range statements, or on new positive responses.
NSEC5 is interesting from a cryptographer’s perspective because it uses a less common cryptographic technique, a VRF, to achieve a design goal that was at best partially met by previous approaches. As with other new technologies, DNS operators will need to consider whether NSEC5’s benefits are sufficient to justify its cost and complexity. Verisign doesn’t have any plans to implement NSEC5, as we consider NSEC and NSEC3 adequate for the name servers we currently operate. However, we will continue to track NSEC5 and related developments as part of our long-term research program.
A few years before NSEC5 was published, Verisign Labs had started some research on an opposite application of tokenization to the DNS, to protect a client’s information from disclosure.
In our approach, instead of asking the resolver “What is <name>’s IP address,” the client would ask “What is token 3141…’s IP address,” where 3141… is the tokenization of <name>.
(More precisely, the client would specify both the token and the parent zone that the token relates to, e.g., the TLD of the domain name. Only the portion of the domain name below the parent would be obscured, just as in NSEC5. I’ve omitted the zone information for simplicity in this discussion.)
Suppose now that the domain name corresponding to token 3141… does exist. Then the resolver would respond with the domain name’s IP address as usual, as shown in the next figure.
In this case, the resolver would know that the domain name associated with the token does exist, because it would have a mapping between the token and the DNS record, i.e., the IP address. Thus, the resolver would effectively “know” the domain name as well for practical purposes. (We’ve developed another approach that can protect both the domain name and the DNS record from disclosure to the resolver in this case, but that’s perhaps a topic for another post.)
Now, consider a domain name that doesn’t exist and suppose that its token is 2718… .
In this case, the resolver would respond that the domain name doesn’t exist, as usual, as shown below.
But because the domain name is tokenized and no other information about the domain name is returned, the resolver would only learn the token 2718… (and the parent zone), not the actual domain name that the client is interested in.
The resolver could potentially know that the name doesn’t exist via a range statement from the parent zone, as in NSEC5.
How does the client tokenize the domain name, if it doesn’t have the private key for the VRF? The name server would offer a public interface to the tokenization function. This can be done in what cryptographers call an “oblivious” VRF protocol, where the name server doesn’t see the actual domain name during the protocol, yet the client still gets the token.
To keep the resolver itself from using this interface to do an online dictionary attack that matches candidate domain names with tokens, the name server could rate-limit access, or restrict it only to authorized requesters.
Additional details on this technology may be found in U.S. Patent 9,202,079B2, entitled “Privacy preserving data querying,” and related patents.
It’s interesting from a cryptographer’s perspective that there’s a way for a client to find out whether a DNS record exists, without necessarily revealing the domain name of interest. However, as before, the benefits of this new technology will be weighed against its operational cost and complexity and compared to other approaches. Because this technique focuses on client-to-resolver interactions, it’s already one step removed from the name servers that Verisign currently operates, so it is not as relevant to our business today in a way it might have been when we started the research. This one will stay under our long-term tracking as well.
The examples I’ve shared in these last two blog posts make it clear that cryptography has the potential to bring interesting new capabilities to the DNS. While the particular examples I’ve shared here do not meet the criteria for our product roadmap, researching advances in cryptography and other techniques remains important because new events can sometimes change the calculus. That point will become even more evident in my next post, where I’ll consider the kinds of cryptography that may be needed in the event that one or more of today’s algorithms is compromised, possibly through the introduction of a quantum computer.
Read the complete six blog series:
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A name collision occurs when a user attempts to resolve a domain in one namespace, but it unexpectedly resolves in a different namespace. Name collision issues in the public global Domain Name System (DNS) cause billions of unnecessary and potentially unsafe DNS queries every day. A targeted outreach program that Verisign started in March 2020 has remediated one billion queries per day to the A and J root name servers, via 46 collision strings. After contacting several national internet service providers (ISPs), the outreach effort grew to include large search engines, social media companies, networking equipment manufacturers, national CERTs, security trust groups, commercial DNS providers, and financial institutions.
While this unilateral outreach effort resulted in significant and successful name collision remediation, it is broader DNS community engagement, education, and participation that offers the potential to address many of the remaining name collision problems. Verisign hopes its successes will encourage participation by other organizations in similar positions in the DNS community.
Verisign is proud to be the operator for two of the world’s 13 authoritative root servers. Being a root server operator carries with it many operational responsibilities. Ensuring the security, stability and resiliency of the DNS requires proactive efforts so that attacks against the root name servers do not disrupt DNS resolution, as well as the monitoring of DNS resolution patterns for misconfigurations, signaling telemetry, and unexpected or unintended uses that, without closer collaboration, could have unforeseen consequences (e.g. Chromium’s impact on root DNS traffic).
Monitoring may require various forms of responsible disclosure or notification to the underlying parties. Further, monitoring the root server system poses logistical challenges because any outreach and remediation programs must work at internet scale, and because root operators have no direct relationship with many of the involved entities.
Despite these challenges, Verisign has conducted several successful internet-scale outreach efforts to address various issues we have observed in the DNS.
In response to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN) proposal to mitigate name collision risks in 2013, Verisign conducted a focused study on the collision string .CBA. Our measurement study revealed evidence of a substantial internet-connected infrastructure in Japan that relied on the non-resolution of names that end in .CBA. Verisign informed the network operator, who subsequently reconfigured some of its internal systems, resulting in an immediate decline of queries for .CBA observed at A and J root servers.
Prior to the 2018 KSK rollover, several operators of DNSSEC-validating name servers appeared to be sending out-of-date RFC 8145 signals to root name servers. To ensure the KSK rollover did not disrupt internet name resolution functions for billions of end users, Verisign augmented ICANN’s outreach effort and conducted a multi-faceted technical outreach program by contacting and working with The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and other national CERTs, industry partners, various DNS operator groups and performing direct outreach to out-of-date signalers. The ultimate success of the KSK rollover was due in large part to outreach efforts by ICANN and Verisign.
In response to the ICANN Board’s request in resolutions 2017.11.02.29 – 2017.11.02.31, the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) was asked to conduct studies, and to present data and points of view on collision strings, including specific advice on three higher risk strings: .CORP, .HOME and .MAIL. While Verisign is actively engaged in this Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP) developed by SSAC, we are also reviving and expanding our 2012 name collision outreach efforts.
Verisign’s name collision outreach program is based on the guidance we provided in several recent peer-reviewed name collision publications, which highlighted various name collision vulnerabilities and examined the root causes of leaked queries and made remediation recommendations. Verisign’s program uses A and J root name server traffic data to identify high-affinity strings related to particular networks, as well as high query volume strings that are contextually associated with device manufacturers, software, or platforms. We then attempt to contact the underlying parties and assist with remediation as appropriate.
While we partially rely on direct communication channel contact information, the key enabler of our outreach efforts has been Verisign’s relationships with the broader collective DNS community. Verisign’s active participation in various industry organizations within the ICANN and DNS communities, such as M3AAWG, FIRST, DNS-OARC, APWG, NANOG, RIPE NCC, APNIC, and IETF1, enables us to identify and communicate with a broad and diverse set of constituents. In many cases, participants operate infrastructure involved in name collisions. In others, they are able to put us in direct contact with the appropriate parties.
Through a combination of DNS traffic analysis and publicly accessible data, as well as the rolodexes of various industry partnerships, across 2020 we were able to achieve effective outreach to the anonymized entities listed in Table 1.
| Organization | Queries per Day to A & J | Status | Number of Collision Strings (TLDs) | Notes / Root Cause Analysis |
| Search Engine | 650M | Fixed | 1 string | Application not using FQDNs |
| Telecommunications Provider | 250M | Fixed | N/A | Prefetching bug |
| eCommerce Provider | 150M | Fixed | 25 strings | Application not using FQDNs |
| Networking Manufacturer | 70M | Pending | 3 strings | Suffix search list |
| Cloud Provider | 64M | Fixed | 15 strings | Suffix search list |
| Telecommunications Provider | 60M | Fixed | 2 strings | Remediated through device vendor |
| Networking Manufacturer | 45M | Pending | 2 strings | Suffix search list problem in router/modem device |
| Financial Corporation | 35M | Fixed | 2 strings | Typo / misconfiguration |
| Social Media Company | 30M | Pending | 9 strings | Application not using FQDNs |
| ISP | 20M | Fixed | 1 string | Suffix search list problem in router/modem device |
| Software Provider | 20M | Pending | 50+ strings | Acknowledged but still investigating |
| ISP | 5M | Pending | 1 string | At time of writing, still investigating but confirmed it is a router/modem device |
Many of the name collision problems encountered are the result of misconfigurations and not using fully qualified domain names. After operators deploy patches to their environments, as shown in Figure 1 below, Verisign often observes an immediate and dramatic traffic decrease at A and J root name servers. Although several networking equipment vendors and ISPs acknowledge their name collision problems, the development and deployment of firmware to a large userbase will take time.
Cumulatively, the operators who have deployed patches constitute a reduction of one billion queries per day to A and J root servers (roughly 3% of total traffic). Although root traffic is not evenly distributed among the 13 authoritative servers, we expect a similar impact at the other 11, resulting in a system-wide reduction of approximately 6.5 billion queries per day.
As the ICANN community prepares for Subsequent Procedures (the introduction of additional new TLDs) and the SSAC NCAP continues to work to answer the ICANN Board’s questions, we encourage the community to participate in our efforts to address name collisions through active outreach efforts. We believe our efforts show how outreach can have significant impact to both parties and the broader community. Verisign is committed to addressing name collision problems and will continue executing the outreach program to help minimize the attack surface exposed by name collisions and to be a responsible and hygienic root operator.
For additional information about name collisions and how to properly manage private-use TLDs, please see visit ICANN’s Name Collision Resource & Information website.
1. The Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG), Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Center (DNS-OARC), Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG), Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC), Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
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This is the fourth in a multi-part series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
One of the “key” questions cryptographers have been asking for the past decade or more is what to do about the potential future development of a large-scale quantum computer.
If theory holds, a quantum computer could break established public-key algorithms including RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), building on Peter Shor’s groundbreaking result from 1994.
This prospect has motivated research into new so-called “post-quantum” algorithms that are less vulnerable to quantum computing advances. These algorithms, once standardized, may well be added into the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) — thus also adding another dimension to a cryptographer’s perspective on the DNS.
(Caveat: Once again, the concepts I’m discussing in this post are topics we’re studying in our long-term research program as we evaluate potential future applications of technology. They do not necessarily represent Verisign’s plans or position on possible new products or services.)
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started a Post-Quantum Cryptography project in 2016 to “specify one or more additional unclassified, publicly disclosed digital signature, public-key encryption, and key-establishment algorithms that are capable of protecting sensitive government information well into the foreseeable future, including after the advent of quantum computers.”
Security protocols that NIST is targeting for these algorithms, according to its 2019 status report (Section 2.2.1), include: “Transport Layer Security (TLS), Secure Shell (SSH), Internet Key Exchange (IKE), Internet Protocol Security (IPsec), and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC).”
The project is now in its third round, with seven finalists, including three digital signature algorithms, and eight alternates.
NIST’s project timeline anticipates that the draft standards for the new post-quantum algorithms will be available between 2022 and 2024.
It will likely take several additional years for standards bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task (IETF) to incorporate the new algorithms into security protocols. Broad deployments of the upgraded protocols will likely take several years more.
Post-quantum algorithms can therefore be considered a long-term issue, not a near-term one. However, as with other long-term research, it’s appropriate to draw attention to factors that need to be taken into account well ahead of time.
The three candidate digital signature algorithms in NIST’s third round have one common characteristic: all of them have a key size or signature size (or both) that is much larger than for current algorithms.
Key and signature sizes are important operational considerations for DNSSEC because most of the DNS traffic exchanged with authoritative data servers is sent and received via the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which has a limited response size.
Response size concerns were evident during the expansion of the root zone signing key (ZSK) from 1024-bit to 2048-bit RSA in 2016, and in the rollover of the root key signing key (KSK) in 2018. In the latter case, although the signature and key sizes didn’t change, total response size was still an issue because responses during the rollover sometimes carried as many as four keys rather than the usual two.
Thanks to careful design and implementation, response sizes during these transitions generally stayed within typical UDP limits. Equally important, response sizes also appeared to have stayed within the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) of most networks involved, thereby also avoiding the risk of packet fragmentation. (You can check how well your network handles various DNSSEC response sizes with this tool developed by Verisign Labs.)
The larger sizes associated with certain post-quantum algorithms do not appear to be a significant issue either for TLS, according to one benchmarking study, or for public-key infrastructures, according to another report. However, a recently published study of post-quantum algorithms and DNSSEC observes that “DNSSEC is particularly challenging to transition” to the new algorithms.
Verisign Labs offers the following observations about DNSSEC-related queries that may help researchers to model DNSSEC impact:
A typical resolver that implements both DNSSEC validation and qname minimization will send a combination of queries to Verisign’s root and top-level domain (TLD) servers.
Because the resolver is a validating resolver, these queries will all have the “DNSSEC OK” bit set, indicating that the resolver wants the DNSSEC signatures on the records.
The content of typical responses by Verisign’s root and TLD servers to these queries are given in Table 1 below. (In the table, <SLD>.<TLD> are the final two labels of a domain name of interest, including the TLD and the second-level domain (SLD); record types involved include A, Name Server (NS), and DNSKEY.)
| Name Server | Resolver Query Scenario | Typical Response Content from Verisign’s Servers |
| Root | DNSKEY record set for root zone | • DNSKEY record set including root KSK RSA-2048 public key and root ZSK RSA-2048 public key • Root KSK RSA-2048 signature on DNSKEY record set |
| A or NS record set for <TLD> — when <TLD> exists | • NS referral to <TLD> name server • DS record set for <TLD> zone • Root ZSK RSA-2048 signature on DS record set |
|
| A or NS record set for <TLD> — when <TLD> doesn’t exist | • Up to two NSEC records for non-existence of <TLD> • Root ZSK RSA-2048 signatures on NSEC records |
|
| .com / .net | DNSKEY record set for <TLD> zone | • DNSKEY record set including <TLD> KSK RSA-2048 public key and <TLD> ZSK RSA-1280 public key • <TLD> KSK RSA-2048 signature on DNSKEY record set |
| A or NS record set for <SLD>.<TLD> — when <SLD>.<TLD> exists | • NS referral to <SLD>.<TLD> name server • DS record set for <SLD>.<TLD> zone (if <SLD>.<TLD> supports DNSSEC) • <TLD> ZSK RSA-1280 signature on DS record set (if present) |
|
| A or NS record set for <SLD>.<TLD> — when <SLD>.<TLD> doesn’t exist | • Up to three NSEC3 records for non-existence of <SLD>.<TLD> • <TLD> ZSK RSA-1280 signatures on NSEC3 records |
For an A or NS query, the typical response, when the domain of interest exists, includes a referral to another name server. If the domain supports DNSSEC, the response also includes a set of Delegation Signer (DS) records providing the hashes of each of the referred zone’s KSKs — the next link in the DNSSEC trust chain. When the domain of interest doesn’t exist, the response includes one or more Next Secure (NSEC) or Next Secure 3 (NSEC3) records.
Researchers can estimate the effect of post-quantum algorithms on response size by replacing the sizes of the various RSA keys and signatures with those for their post-quantum counterparts. As discussed above, it is important to keep in mind that the number of keys returned may be larger during key rollovers.
Most of the queries from qname-minimizing, validating resolvers to the root and TLD name servers will be for A or NS records (the choice depends on the implementation of qname minimization, and has recently trended toward A). The signature size for a post-quantum algorithm, which affects all DNSSEC-related responses, will therefore generally have a much larger impact on average response size than will the key size, which affects only the DNSKEY responses.
Post-quantum algorithms are among the newest developments in cryptography. They add another dimension to a cryptographer’s perspective on the DNS because of the possibility that these algorithms, or other variants, may be added to DNSSEC in the long term.
In my next post, I’ll make the case for why the oldest post-quantum algorithm, hash-based signatures, could be a particularly good match for DNSSEC. I’ll also share the results of some research at Verisign Labs into how the large signature sizes of hash-based signatures could potentially be overcome.
Read the complete six blog series:
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This is the fifth in a multi-part series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
In my last article, I described efforts underway to standardize new cryptographic algorithms that are designed to be less vulnerable to potential future advances in quantum computing. I also reviewed operational challenges to be considered when adding new algorithms to the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC).
In this post, I’ll look at hash-based signatures, a family of post-quantum algorithms that could be a good match for DNSSEC from the perspective of infrastructure stability.
I’ll also describe Verisign Labs research into a new concept called synthesized zone signing keys that could mitigate the impact of the large signature size for hash-based signatures, while still maintaining this family’s protections against quantum computing.
(Caveat: The concepts reviewed in this post are part of Verisign’s long-term research program and do not necessarily represent Verisign’s plans or positions on new products or services. Concepts developed in our research program may be subject to U.S. and/or international patents and/or patent applications.)
The DNS community’s root key signing key (KSK) rollover illustrates how complicated a change to DNSSEC infrastructure can be. Although successfully accomplished, this change was delayed by ICANN to ensure that enough resolvers had the public key required to validate signatures generated with the new root KSK private key.
Now imagine the complications if the DNS community also had to ensure that enough resolvers not only had a new key but also had a brand-new algorithm.
Imagine further what might happen if a weakness in this new algorithm were to be found after it was deployed. While there are procedures for emergency key rollovers, emergency algorithm rollovers would be more complicated, and perhaps controversial as well if a clear successor algorithm were not available.
I’m not suggesting that any of the post-quantum algorithms that might be standardized by NIST will be found to have a weakness. But confidence in cryptographic algorithms can be gained and lost over many years, sometimes decades.
From the perspective of infrastructure stability, therefore, it may make sense for DNSSEC to have a backup post-quantum algorithm built in from the start — one for which cryptographers already have significant confidence and experience. This algorithm might not be as efficient as other candidates, but there is less of a chance that it would ever need to be changed. This means that the more efficient candidates could be deployed in DNSSEC with the confidence that they have a stable fallback. It’s also important to keep in mind that the prospect of quantum computing is not the only reason system developers need to be considering new algorithms from time to time. As public-key cryptography pioneer Martin Hellman wisely cautioned, new classical (non-quantum) attacks could also emerge, whether or not a quantum computer is realized.
The 1970s were a foundational time for public-key cryptography, producing not only the RSA algorithm and the Diffie-Hellman algorithm (which also provided the basic model for elliptic curve cryptography), but also hash-based signatures, invented in 1979 by another public-key cryptography founder, Ralph Merkle.
Hash-based signatures are interesting because their security depends only on the security of an underlying hash function.
It turns out that hash functions, as a concept, hold up very well against quantum computing advances — much better than currently established public-key algorithms do.
This means that Merkle’s hash-based signatures, now more than 40 years old, can rightly be considered the oldest post-quantum digital signature algorithm.
If it turns out that an individual hash function doesn’t hold up — whether against a quantum computer or a classical computer — then the hash function itself can be replaced, as cryptographers have been doing for years. That will likely be easier than changing to an entirely different post-quantum algorithm, especially one that involves very different concepts.
The conceptual stability of hash-based signatures is a reason that interoperable specifications are already being developed for variants of Merkle’s original algorithm. Two approaches are described in RFC 8391, “XMSS: eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme” and RFC 8554, “Leighton-Micali Hash-Based Signatures.” Another approach, SPHINCS+, is an alternate in NIST’s post-quantum project.
Hash-based signatures can potentially be applied to any part of the DNSSEC trust chain. For example, in Figure 1, the DNS record sets can be signed with a zone signing key (ZSK) that employs a hash-based signature algorithm.
The main challenge with hash-based signatures is that the signature size is large, on the order of tens or even hundreds of thousands of bits. This is perhaps why they haven’t seen significant adoption in security protocols over the past four decades.
Verisign Labs has been exploring how to mitigate the size impact of hash-based signatures on DNSSEC, while still basing security on hash functions only in the interest of stable post-quantum protections.
One of the ideas we’ve come up with uses another of Merkle’s foundational contributions: Merkle trees.
Merkle trees authenticate multiple records by hashing them together in a tree structure. The records are the “leaves” of the tree. Pairs of leaves are hashed together to form a branch, then pairs of branches are hashed together to form a larger branch, and so on. The hash of the largest branches is the tree’s “root.” (This is a data-structure root, unrelated to the DNS root.)
Each individual leaf of a Merkle tree can be authenticated by retracing the “path” from the leaf to the root. The path consists of the hashes of each of the adjacent branches encountered along the way.
Authentication paths can be much shorter than typical hash-based signatures. For instance, with a tree depth of 20 and a 256-bit hash value, the authentication path for a leaf would only be 5,120 bits long, yet a single tree could authenticate more than a million leaves.
Returning to the example above, suppose that instead of signing each DNS record set with a hash-based signature, each record set were considered a leaf of a Merkle tree. Suppose further that the root of this tree were to be published as the ZSK public key (see Figure 2). The authentication path to the leaf could then serve as the record set’s signature.
The validation logic at a resolver would be the same as in ordinary DNSSEC:
The only difference on the resolver’s side would be that signature validation would involve retracing the authentication path to the ZSK public key, rather than a conventional signature validation operation.
The ZSK public key produced by the Merkle tree approach would be a “synthesized” public key, in that it is obtained from the records being signed. This is noteworthy from a cryptographer’s perspective, because the public key wouldn’t have a corresponding private key, yet the DNS records would still, in effect, be “signed by the ZSK!”
In this type of DNSSEC implementation, the Merkle tree approach only applies to the ZSK level. Hash-based signatures would still be applied at the KSK level, although their overhead would now be “amortized” across all records in the zone.
In addition, each new ZSK would need to be signed “on demand,” rather than in advance, as in current operational practice.
This leads to tradeoffs, such as how many changes to accumulate before constructing and publishing a new tree. Fewer changes and the tree will be available sooner. More changes and the tree will be larger, so the per-record overhead of the signatures at the KSK level will be lower.
My last few posts have discussed cryptographic techniques that could potentially be applied to the DNS in the long term — or that might not even be applied at all. In my next post, I’ll return to more conventional subjects, and explain how Verisign sees cryptography fitting into the DNS today, as well as some important non-cryptographic techniques that are part of our vision for a secure, stable and resilient DNS.
Read the complete six blog series:
The post Securing the DNS in a Post-Quantum World: Hash-Based Signatures and Synthesized Zone Signing Keys appeared first on Verisign Blog.
This is the final in a multi-part series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
In previous posts in this series, I’ve discussed a number of applications of cryptography to the DNS, many of them related to the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC).
In this final blog post, I’ll turn attention to another application that may appear at first to be the most natural, though as it turns out, may not always be the most necessary: DNS encryption. (I’ve also written about DNS encryption as well as minimization in a separate post on DNS information protection.)
In 2014, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) chartered the DNS PRIVate Exchange (dprive) working group to start work on encrypting DNS queries and responses exchanged between clients and resolvers.
That work resulted in RFC 7858, published in 2016, which describes how to run the DNS protocol over the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, also known as DNS over TLS, or DoT.
DNS encryption between clients and resolvers has since gained further momentum, with multiple browsers and resolvers supporting DNS over Hypertext Transport Protocol Security (HTTPS), or DoH, with the formation of the Encrypted DNS Deployment Initiative, and with further enhancements such as oblivious DoH.
The dprive working group turned its attention to the resolver-to-authoritative exchange during its rechartering in 2018. And in October of last year, ICANN’s Office of the CTO published its strategy recommendations for the ICANN-managed Root Server (IMRS, i.e., the L-Root Server), an effort motivated in part by concern about potential “confidentiality attacks” on the resolver-to-root connection.
From a cryptographer’s perspective the prospect of adding encryption to the DNS protocol is naturally quite interesting. But this perspective isn’t the only one that matters, as I’ve observed numerous times in previous posts.
A common theme in this series on cryptography and the DNS has been the question of whether the benefits of a technology are sufficient to justify its cost and complexity.
This question came up not only in my review of two newer cryptographic advances, but also in my remarks on the motivation for two established tools for providing evidence that a domain name doesn’t exist.
Recall that the two tools — the Next Secure (NSEC) and Next Secure 3 (NSEC3) records — were developed because a simpler approach didn’t have an acceptable risk / benefit tradeoff. In the simpler approach, to provide a relying party assurance that a domain name doesn’t exist, a name server would return a response, signed with its private key, “<name> doesn’t exist.”
From a cryptographic perspective, the simpler approach would meet its goal: a relying party could then validate the response with the corresponding public key. However, the approach would introduce new operational risks, because the name server would now have to perform online cryptographic operations.
The name server would not only have to protect its private key from compromise, but would also have to protect the cryptographic operations from overuse by attackers. That could open another avenue for denial-of-service attacks that could prevent the name server from responding to legitimate requests.
The designers of DNSSEC mitigated these operational risks by developing NSEC and NSEC3, which gave the option of moving the private key and the cryptographic operations offline, into the name server’s provisioning system. Cryptography and operations were balanced by this better solution. The theme is now returning to view through the recent efforts around DNS encryption.
Like the simpler initial approach for authentication, DNS encryption may meet its goal from a cryptographic perspective. But the operational perspective is important as well. As designers again consider where and how to deploy private keys and cryptographic operations across the DNS ecosystem, alternatives with a better balance are a desirable goal.
In addition to encryption, there has been research into other, possibly lower-risk alternatives that can be used in place of or in addition to encryption at various levels of the DNS.
We call these techniques collectively minimization techniques.
In “textbook” DNS resolution, a resolver sends the same full domain name to a root server, a top-level domain (TLD) server, a second-level domain (SLD) server, and any other server in the chain of referrals, until it ultimately receives an authoritative answer to a DNS query.
This is the way that DNS resolution has been practiced for decades, and it’s also one of the reasons for the recent interest in protecting information on the resolver-to-authoritative exchange: The full domain name is more information than all but the last name server needs to know.
One such minimization technique, known as qname minimization, was identified by Verisign researchers in 2011 and documented in RFC 7816 in 2016. (In 2015, Verisign announced a royalty-free license to its qname minimization patents.)
With qname minimization, instead of sending the full domain name to each name server, the resolver sends only as much as the name server needs either to answer the query or to refer the resolver to a name server at the next level. This follows the principle of minimum disclosure: the resolver sends only as much information as the name server needs to “do its job.” As Matt Thomas described in his recent blog post on the topic, nearly half of all .com and .net queries received by Verisign’s .com TLD servers were in a minimized form as of August 2020.
Other techniques that are part of this new chapter in DNS protocol evolution include NXDOMAIN cut processing [RFC 8020] and aggressive DNSSEC caching [RFC 8198]. Both leverage information present in the DNS to reduce the amount and sensitivity of DNS information exchanged with authoritative name servers. In aggressive DNSSEC caching, for example, the resolver analyzes NSEC and NSEC3 range proofs obtained in response to previous queries to determine on its own whether a domain name doesn’t exist. This means that the resolver doesn’t always have to ask the authoritative server system about a domain name it hasn’t seen before.
All of these techniques, as well as additional minimization alternatives I haven’t mentioned, have one important common characteristic: they only change how the resolver operates during the resolver-authoritative exchange. They have no impact on the authoritative name server or on other parties during the exchange itself. They thereby mitigate disclosure risk while also minimizing operational risk.
The resolver’s exchanges with authoritative name servers, prior to minimization, were already relatively less sensitive because they represented aggregate interests of the resolver’s many clients1. Minimization techniques lower the sensitivity even further at the root and TLD levels: the resolver sends only its aggregate interests in TLDs to root servers, and only its interests in SLDs to TLD servers. The resolver still sends the aggregate interests in full domain names at the SLD level and below2, and may also include certain client-related information at these levels, such as the client-subnet extension. The lower levels therefore may have different protection objectives than the upper levels.
Minimization techniques and encryption together give DNS designers additional tools for protecting DNS information — tools that when deployed carefully can balance between cryptographic and operational perspectives.
These tools complement those I’ve described in previous posts in this series. Some have already been deployed at scale, such as a DNSSEC with its NSEC and NSEC3 non-existence proofs. Others are at various earlier stages, like NSEC5 and tokenized queries, and still others contemplate “post-quantum” scenarios and how to address them. (And there are yet other tools that I haven’t covered in this series, such as authenticated resolution and adaptive resolution.)
Modern cryptography is just about as old as the DNS. Both have matured since their introduction in the late 1970s and early 1980s respectively. Both bring fundamental capabilities to our connected world. Both continue to evolve to support new applications and to meet new security objectives. While they’ve often moved forward separately, as this blog series has shown, there are also opportunities for them to advance together. I look forward to sharing more insights from Verisign’s research in future blog posts.
Read the complete six blog series:
1. This argument obviously holds more weight for large resolvers than for small ones — and doesn’t apply for the less common case of individual clients running their own resolvers. However, small resolvers and individual clients seeking additional protection retain the option of sending sensitive queries through a large, trusted resolver, or through a privacy-enhancing proxy. The focus in our discussion is primarily on large resolvers.
2. In namespaces where domain names are registered at the SLD level, i.e., under an effective TLD, the statements in this note about “root and TLD” and “SLD level and below” should be “root through effective TLD” and “below effective TLD level.” For simplicity, I’ve placed the “zone cut” between TLD and SLD in this note.
The post Information Protection for the Domain Name System: Encryption and Minimization appeared first on Verisign Blog.
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Selling essays is an excellent way to earn extra money. With these tips, you can succeed in making money by selling essays.
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The post Tips For Purchasing Essays Online appeared first on Infosec Resources.
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The post Term Paper Writers For Hire – 3 Things to Search For in Requirements and Topic Writers appeared first on Infosec Resources.
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You get an email from bank0famerica@acc0unt.com claiming that they have found suspicious activity on your credit card statement and are requesting that you verify your financial information. What do you do? While you may be tempted to click on a link to immediately resolve the issue, this is likely the work of a cybercriminal. Phishing is a scam that tricks you into voluntarily providing important personal information. Protect yourself from phishing by reviewing some examples of phishing emails and learning more about this common online scam.
Phishing is a cybercrime that aims to steal your sensitive information. Scammers disguise themselves as major corporations or other trustworthy entities to trick you into willingly providing information like website login credentials or, even worse, your credit card number.
A phishing email or text (also known as SMiShing) is a fraudulent message made to look legitimate, and typically asks you to provide sensitive personal information in various ways. If you don’t look carefully at the emails or texts, however, you might not be able to tell the difference between a regular message and a phishing message. Scammers work hard to make phishing messages closely resemble emails and texts sent by trusted companies, which is why you need to be cautious when you open these messages and click the links they contain.
Phishing scammers often undo their own plans by making simple mistakes that are easy to spot once you know how to recognize them. Check for the following signs of phishing every time you open an email or text:
Even the biggest companies sometimes make minor errors in their communications. Phishing messages often contain grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and other blatant errors that major corporations wouldn’t make. If you see multiple, glaring grammatical errors in an email or text that asks for your personal information, you might be a target of a phishing scam.
To enhance their edibility, phishing scammers often steal the logos of who they’re impersonating. In many cases, however, they don’t steal corporate logos correctly. The logo in a phishing email or text might have the wrong aspect ratio or low-resolution. If you have to squint to make out the logo in a message, the chances are that it’s phishing.
Phishing always centers around links that you’re supposed to click. Here are a few ways to check whether a link someone sent you is legitimate:
If the URL you discover doesn’t match up with the entity that supposedly sent you the message, you probably received a phishing email.
Phishing messages come in all shapes and sizes, but there are a few types of phishing emails and texts that are more common than others. Let’s review some examples of the most frequently sent phishing scams:
Some phishing emails appear to notify you that your bank temporarily suspended your account due to unusual activity. If you receive an account suspension email from a bank that you haven’t opened an account with, delete it immediately, and don’t look back. Suspended account phishing emails from banks you do business with, however, are harder to spot. Use the methods we listed above to check the email’s integrity, and if all else fails, contact your bank directly instead of opening any links within the email you received.
Two-factor authentication scam
Two-factor authentication (2FA) has become common, so you’re probably used to receiving emails that ask you to confirm your login information with six-digit numerical codes. Phishing scammers also know how standard 2FA has become, and they could take advantage of this service that’s supposed to protect your identity. If you receive an email asking you to log in to an account to confirm your identity, use the criteria we listed above to verify the message’s authenticity. Be especially wary if someone asks you to provide 2FA for an account you haven’t accessed for a while.
We all know how important tax season is. That’s what phishing scammers are counting on when they send you phony IRS refund emails. Be careful when an email informs you that you’ve received a windfall of cash and be especially dubious of emails that the IRS supposedly sent since this government agency only contacts taxpayers via snail mail. Tax refund phishing scams can do serious harm since they usually ask for your social security number as well as your bank account information.
Sometimes, cybercriminals will try to tick you by sending emails with fake order confirmations. These messages often contain “receipts” attached to the email or links claiming to contain more information on your order. However, criminals often use these attachments and links to spread malware to the victim’s device.
You need to be wary of phishing when you’re using your work email as well. One popular phishing scam involves emails designed to look like someone in the C-suite of your company sent them. They ask workers to wire funds to supposed clients, but this cash actually goes to scammers. Use the tips we listed above to spot these phony emails.
Often, hackers look for ways to update old schemes so that they go undetected by users already aware of certain cyberthreats. Such is the case with the latest phishing evasion technique, which detects virtual machines to fly under the radar. Cybersecurity firms often use headless devices or virtual machines (a computer file that behaves like an actual computer) to determine if a website is actually a phishing page. But now, some phishing kits contain JavaScript — a programming language that allows you to implement complex features on web pages — that checks whether a virtual machine is analyzing the page. If it detects any analysis attempts, the phishing kit will show a blank page instead of the phishing page, allowing the scam to evade detection. To help ensure that you don’t fall for the latest phishing scams, stay updated on the most recent phishing techniques so you can stay one step ahead of cybercriminals.
Never click links in suspicious emails. If you click a link you suspect a phishing scammer sent, the link will take you to a web page with a form where you can enter sensitive data such as your Social Security number, credit card information, or login credentials. Do not enter any data on this page.
If you accidentally enter data in a webpage linked to a suspicious email, perform a full malware scan on your device. Once the scan is complete, backup all of your files and change your passwords. Even if you only provided a phishing scammer with the data from one account, you may have also opened the door to other personal data, so it’s important to change all the passwords you use online in the wake of a suspected phishing attack.
Let’s wrap things up with some summarized tips on how to avoid phishing emails:
Phishing emails only work on the unaware. Now that you know how to spot phishing emails and what to do if you suspect scammers are targeting you, you’re far less likely to fall for these schemes. Remember to be careful with your personal information when you use the internet and err on the side of caution whenever anybody asks you to divulge sensitive details about your identity, finances, or login information.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, subscribe to our email, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Phishing Email Examples: How to Recognize a Phishing Email appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
According to Statista, 3.5 billion people worldwide are forecasted to own a smartphone by the end of 2020. These connected devices allow us to have a wealth of apps and information constantly at our fingertips – empowering us to remain in constant contact with loved ones, make quick purchases, track our fitness progress, you name it. Hackers are all too familiar with our reliance on our smartphones – and are eager to exploit them with stealthy tricks as a result.
One recent example of these tricks? Suspicious text messages claiming to be from USPS. According to Gizmodo, a recent SMS phishing scam is using the USPS name and fraudulent tracking codes to trick users into clicking on malicious links.
Let’s dive into the details of this scheme, what it means for users, and what you can do to protect yourself from SMS phishing.
To orchestrate this phishing scheme, hackers send out text messages from random numbers claiming that a user’s delivery from USPS, FedEx, or another delivery service is experiencing a transit issue that requires urgent attention. If the user clicks on the link in the text, the link will direct them to a form fill page asking them to fill in their personal and financial information to “verify their purchase delivery.” If the form is completed, the hacker could exploit that information for financial gain.
However, scammers also use this phishing scheme to infect users’ devices with malware. For example, some users received links claiming to provide access to a supposed USPS shipment. Instead, they were led to a domain that did nothing but infect their browser or phone with malware. Regardless of what route the hacker takes, these scams leave the user in a situation that compromises their smartphone and personal data.
While delivery alerts are a convenient way to track packages, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the signs of phishing scams – especially as we approach the holiday shopping season. Doing so will help you safeguard your online security without sacrificing the convenience of your smartphone. To do just that, follow these actionable steps to help secure your devices and data from SMiShing schemes:
Be skeptical of text messages claiming to be from companies with peculiar asks or information that seems too good to be true. Instead of clicking on a link within the text, it’s best to go straight to the organization’s website to check on your delivery status or contact customer service.
Many spammers send texts from an internet service in an attempt to hide their identities. Combat this by using the feature on your mobile device that blocks texts sent from the internet or unknown users. For example, you can disable all potential spam messages from the Messages app on an Android device by navigating to Settings, clicking on Spam protection, and turning on the Enable spam protection switch. Learn more about how you can block robotexts and spam messages on your device.
Prepare your mobile devices for any threat coming their way. To do just that, cover these devices with an extra layer of protection via a mobile security solution, such as McAfee Mobile Security.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Special Delivery: Don’t Fall for the USPS SMiShing Scam appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, another pandemic of sorts took root—this one an “infodemic.” Whether designed to mislead, instill fear, capitalize on crank remedies, or push phony cures that caused harm or worse, millions of outright false stories about COVID-19 proliferated across the internet. And continue to do so.
Now, with our upcoming election in the U.S., there’s concern that this infodemic of misinformation about COVID-19 will keep people away from the polls or from working at them. Particularly elders.
With this blog, my aim is to point you toward trustworthy resources online that can help you get your vote cast and counted safely.
First, a word about COVID-19 misinformation in general.
Since the initial outbreak, we’ve monitored online threats and scams related to COVID-19. As shown in our July 2020 Threat Report, the first three months saw the number of malicious and scam websites related to COVID-19 jump from 1,600 to more than 39,000, along with a wave of spam emails and posts that peddled bogus sites for protective gear, masks, and cures. Now, in mid-September, our threat detection team has uncovered three million online threats related to COVID-19 and counting. (See the daily tally here for the latest figures.)
Elsewhere, global and national public health officials have worked diligently to counter these waves of misinformation, such as the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 “mythbuster” site, in addition to further mythbusting from major news outlets around the world and yet more mythbusting from respected science publications. However, instances of misinformation, both big and small, persist and can lead to negative health consequences for those who buy into such misinformation.
Whether you’ll vote in person or by mail, these links provide a mix of trustworthy information about voting and the latest verified information about the virus:
Be aware that our collective understanding of COVID-19 continues to evolve. The pandemic isn’t even a year old at this time, and new research continues to reveal more about its nature. Be sure to check with these resources along with your local public health resources for the latest on the virus and how to stay safe.
If you’re considering voting by mail, the following is for you. Published by U.S. News and World Report, this article breaks down how you can vote by mail in your state. While all 50 states allow for mail-in voting in some form or fashion, specifics vary, and some states make it easier to do than others. (For example, a handful of states like Texas, Indiana, and Louisiana currently do not allow COVID-19 concerns as a valid reason for requesting a mail-in ballot.)
Note that this article was published at the end of August, so be sure to follow the links for your state as published in the article for the absolute latest information. Yet don’t wait to look into your absentee or mail-in options. As noted above, each state has its terms and deadlines, so it’s best to review your options now.
Meanwhile, five states— Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington state, and Utah already conduct their elections entirely by mail. Such practices have proven to be successful alternatives to voting in person, they have slightly increased voter turnout while minimizing the risks of voter fraud.
Get your vote out safely. Whether it’s by visiting the polls following the safety guidelines or by way of mail as also allowed by your state, it can be done—particularly when you have trusted information sources at hand.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and for more resources on staying secure from home, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
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Today, there are so many different avenues where we receive information.
Personally, I prefer finding out what’s going on in the world by scanning my favorite news channels’ websites and by receiving personalized feeds and notifications to my phone. My wife, however, scans social media platforms – from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram – to discover the latest happenings. My teenage daughter spends 2+ hrs a day on social media platforms engaging with her friends.
While were initially meant to help us stay connected, they come with their own handful of security implications. Let’s explore what these threats are and how to stay protected.
Users rely on social media to feel connected. So while the world was social distancing, social media grew more popular than ever before – as of March 2020, people are on social media 44% more worldwide. However, with these platforms being so popular, they’ve become a hotspot for cybercriminal schemes.
There’s a variety of potential threats on social platforms, including misinformation, account takeovers, and phishing scams. The latter threat is all too common, as these platforms have become a popular avenue for cybercriminals to spread troublesome links and websites.
To lure unsuspecting users into clicking on these links, hackers often tap into what consumers care about. These topics have ranged from fake tech support scams to getting verified on Instagram.
At McAfee, we want users to enjoy a safe online social life. That’s why we created a new McAfee® WebAdvisor feature that scans for dangerous links across six major social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and LinkedIn – so users can scroll their feeds with confidence. To do this, McAfee WebAdvisor now color codes links across these social platforms, as it has always done for online searches, to show which ones are safe to visit.
It’s important to take advantage of new technologies that help us adapt and grow into security superstars. My family and I are excited to see this new feature roll out across our existing McAfee® Total Protection subscription. That way we can keep up with the latest news and trends, as well as stay connected with family and friends without worrying about any potential threats. I can sleep much better at night knowing that my whole family will be both connected and protected.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and for more resources on staying secure from home, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Stay Connected & Protected: Weaving Security Into Our Social Media Habits appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Network Products Guide, the industry’s leading technology research and advisory guide, recently named the winners in their 15th Annual 2020 Network PG’s IT World Awards. Judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices around the world participated and their average scores determined the 2020 award winners. McAfee took center stage with three wins, including Gold for McAfee MVISION Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Silver for McAfee MVISION Cloud for Containers and McAfee MVISION Unified Cloud Edge (UCE).
The IT World Awards are industry and peer recognitions from Network Products Guide honoring achievements of world’s best in organizational performance, product and service innovations, hot technologies, executives and management teams, successful deployments, product management and engineering, customer satisfaction, and public relations in information technology and cyber security. These wins further validate McAfee’s position as a company poised to successfully help organizations solve for real-time security issues.
McAfee was recognized in the following categories:
For a complete list of McAfee’s accolades and industry recognition, visit: https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/en-us/about/awards.html
The post McAfee Leapfrogs Competition with trio of awards at 2020 IT World Awards appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Where do you get your news? There’s a good chance much of it comes from social media.
In 2019, Pew Research found that 55% of American adults said they get their news from social media either “often” or “sometimes,” which is an 8% rise over the previous year. We can visualize what that mix might look like. Some of their news on social media may come from information sources they’ve subscribed to and yet more news may appear via articles reposted or retweeted by friends.
So, as we scroll through our feeds and quickly find ourselves awash in a cascade of news and comments on the news, we also find ourselves wondering: what’s true and false here?
And that’s the right question to ask. With the advent of the internet, anyone can become a publisher. That’s one of the internet’s greatest strengths—we can all have a voice. Publishing is no longer limited to newspaper, TV, and radio ownership bodies. Yet it’s one of the internet’s greatest challenges as well—with millions of publishers out there, not everyone is posting the truth. And sometimes, people aren’t doing the posting at all.
For example, last May, researchers at Carnegie Melon University studied more than 200 million tweets about the current virus. Of the top 50 most influential retweeters, 82% of them were bots. Some 62% of the top 1,000 retweeters were bots as well. What were they retweeting? Researchers said the tweets revolved around more than 100 types of inaccurate stories that included unfounded conspiracy theories and phony cures. Researchers cited two reasons for this surge: “First, more individuals have time on their hands to create do-it-yourself bots. But the number of sophisticated groups that hire firms to run bot accounts also has increased.”
With the sheer volume of news and information we wade through each day, you can be assured that degrees of false and misleading information make their way into people’s social media mix. And that calls for all of us to build up our media literacy—which is our ability to critically analyze the media we consume for bias and accuracy.
What follows are a few basics of media literacy that can help you to discern what’s fact and what’s fiction as you scroll through your social media feed for news.
When talking about spotting truth from falsehood on social media, it helps to first define two types of falsehood: unintentional and the deliberate.
First off, there’s unintentional misinformation. We’re only human, and sometimes that means we get things wrong. We forget details, recall things incorrectly, or we pass along unverified accounts that we mistakenly take for fact. Thus, misinformation is wrong information that you don’t know is wrong. An innocent everyday example of this is when someone on your neighborhood Facebook group posts that the drug store closes at 8pm on weeknights when in fact it really closes at 7pm. They believe it closes at 8pm, but they’re simply mistaken.
That differs entirely from deliberate disinformation. This is intentionally misleading information or facts that have been manipulated to create a false narrative—typically with an ulterior motive in mind. The readiest example of this is propaganda, yet other examples also extend to deliberate untruths engineered to discredit a person, group, or institution. In other words, disinformation can take forms both large and small. It can apply to a person just as easily as it can to a major news story.
Now, let’s take a look at some habits and tactics designed to help you get a better grasp on the truth in your social media feed.
Some of the oldest advice is the best advice, and that holds true here: consider the source. Take time to examine the information you come across. Look at its source. Does that source have a track record of honesty and dealing plainly with the facts? Likewise, that source has sources too. Consider them in the same way as well.
Now, what’s the best way to go about that? For one, social media platforms are starting to embed information about publications into posts where their content is shared. For example, if a friend shares an article from The Economist, Facebook now includes a small link in the form of an “i” in a circle. Clicking on this presents information about the publication, which can give you a quick overview of its ownership, when it was founded, and so forth.
Another fact-finding trick comes by way of Michael Caufield, the Director of Blended and Networked Learning at Washington State University. He calls it: “Just Add Wikipedia.” It entails doing a search for a Wikipedia page by using the URL of an information source. For example, if you saw an article published on Vox.com, you’d simply search “Wikipedia www.vox.com.” The Wikipedia entry will give you an overview of the information source, its track record, its ownership, and if it has fired reporters or staff for false reporting. Of course, be aware that Wikipedia entries are written by public editors and contributors. These articles will only be as accurate as the source material that they are drawn from, so be sure to reference the footnotes that are cited in the entry. Reading those will let you know if the entry is informed by facts from reputable sources as well. They may open up other avenues of fact-finding as well!
A single information source or story won’t provide a complete picture. It may only cover a topic from a certain angle or narrow focus. Likewise, information sources are helmed by editors and stories are written by people—all of which have their biases, whether overt or subtle. It’s for this reason that expanding your media diet to include a broader range information sources is so important.
So, see what other information sources have to say on the same topic. Consuming news across a spectrum will expose you to thoughts and coverage you might not otherwise get if you keep your consumption to a handful of sources. The result is that you’re more broadly informed and have the ability to compare and contrast different sources and points of view. Using the tips above, you can find other reputable sources to round out your media diet.
Additionally, for a list of reputable information sources, along with the reasons why they’re reputable, check out “10 Journalism Brands Where You Find Real Facts Rather Than Alternative Facts” published by Forbes and authored by an associate professor at The King’s College in New York City. It certainly isn’t the end all, be all of lists, yet it should provide you with a good starting point.
Has a news story you’ve read or watched ever made you shake your fist at the screen or want to clap and cheer? How about something that made you fearful or simply laugh? Bits of content that evoke strong emotional responses tend to spread quickly, whether they’re articles, a post, or even a tweet. That’s a ready sign that a quick fact check could be in order.
There’s a good reason for that. Bad actors who wish to foment unrest, unease, or simply spread disinformation use emotionally driven content to plant a seed. Whether or not their original story gets picked up and viewed firsthand doesn’t matter to these bad actors. Their aim is to actually get some manner of disinformation out into the ecosystem. They rely on others who will re-post, re-tweet, or otherwise pass it along on their behalf—to the point where the original source of the information is completely lost. This is one instance where people readily begin to accept certain information as fact, even if it’s not factual at all.
Certainly, some legitimate articles will generate a response as well, yet it’s a good habit to do a quick fact check and confirm what you’ve read. This leads us right back to our earlier points about considering the source and cross-checking against other sources of information as well.
You’ve probably seen headlines similar to this before: THIS FAT-BURNING TRICK HAS DOCTORS BAFFLED! You’ll usually spot them in big blocks laden with catchy photos and illustrations, almost to the point that they look like they’re links to other news stories. They’re not. They’re ads, which often strike a sensationalistic tone.
The next time you spot one of these, look around the area of the web page where they’re placed. You should find a little graphic or snippet of text that says “Advertisement,” “Paid Sponsor,” or something similar. And there you go. You spotted some sponsored content. These so-called articles aren’t intentionally developed to misinform you. They are likely trying to bait you into buying something.
However, in some less reputable corners of the web ads like these can take you to malicious sites that install malware or expose you to other threats. Always surf with web browser protection. Good browser protection will either identify such links as malicious right away or prevent your browser from proceeding to the malicious site if you click on such a link.
So, let’s say you’ve been following these practices of media literacy for a while. What do you do when you see a friend posting what appears to be misinformation on their social media account? If you’re inclined to step in and comment, try to be helpful, not right.
We can only imagine how many spoiled relationships and “unfriendings” have occurred thanks to moments where one person comments on a post with the best intentions of “setting the record straight,” only to see tempers flare. We’ve all seen it happen. The original poster, instead of being open to the new information, digs in their heels and becomes that much more convinced of being right on the topic.
One way to keep your friendships and good feelings intact is this: instead of entering the conversation with the intention of being “right,” help people discover the facts for themselves. You can present your information as part of a discussion on the topic. So while you shouldn’t expect this to act like a magic wand that whisks away misinformation, what you can do is provide a path toward a reputable source of information that the original poster, and their friends, can follow if they wish.
Wherever your online travels take you as you read and research the news, be sure to go out there with a complete security suite. In addition to providing virus protection, it will also help protect your identity and privacy as you do anything online. Also look for an option that will protect your mobile devices too, as we spend plenty of time scrolling through our social media feeds on our smartphones.
If you’re interested in learning more about savvy media consumption, pop open a tab and give these articles a read—they’ll give you a great start:
Bots in the Twittersphere: Pew Research
How to Spot Fake News: FactCheck.org
Likewise, keep an eye on your own habits. We forward news in our social media feeds too—so follow these same good habits when you feel like it’s time to post. Make sure that what you share is truthful too.
Be safe, be well-read, and be helpful!
To stay updated on all things McAfee and for more resources on staying secure from home, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
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On September 22nd, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory about the potential threat from foreign actors and cybercriminals attempting to spread false information. Their joint public service announcement makes a direct statement regarding how this could affect our election:
“Foreign actors and cybercriminals could create new websites, change existing websites, and create or share corresponding social media content to spread false information in an attempt to discredit the electoral process and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions.”
Their call to action is clear—critically evaluate the content you consume and to seek out reliable and verified information from trusted sources, such as state and local election officials. Not just leading up to Election Day, but during and after as well.
Here’s why: it’s estimated that roughly 75% of American voters will be eligible to vote by mail, potentially leading to some 80 million mail-in ballots being cast. That’s twice the number from the 2016 presidential election, which could prolong the normal certification process. Election results will likely take days, even weeks, to ensure every legally cast ballot is counted accurately so that the election results can ultimately get certified.
That extended stretch of time is where the concerns come in. Per the FBI and CISA:
“Foreign actors and cybercriminals could exploit the time required to certify and announce elections’ results by disseminating disinformation that includes reports of voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud, and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections’ illegitimacy.”
In short, bad actors may attempt to undermine people’s confidence in our election as the results come in.
Our moment to act as smart consumers, and sharers, of online news has never been more immediate.
Before we look at how we can combat the spread of false information this election, let’s see how it cascades across the internet.
It’s been found that false political news traveled deeper and more broadly, reached more people, and was more viral than any other category of false information, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study on the spread of true and false news online, which was published by Science in 2018.
Why’s that so? In a word: people. According to the research findings,
“We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information … Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.”
Thus, bad actors pick their topics, pumps false information about them into social media channels, and then lets people spread it by way of shares, retweets, and the like—thanks to “novel” and click-baity headlines for content people may not even read or watch, let alone fact check.
Done on a large scale, false information thus can hit millions of feeds, which is what the FBI and CISA is warning us about.
The FBI and CISA recommend the following:
If there’s a common theme across our election blogs so far, it’s trustworthiness.
Knowing which sources are deserving of our trust and being able to spot the ones that are not takes effort—such as fact-checking from reputable sources like FactCheck.org, the Associated Press, and Reuters or researching the publisher of the content in question to review their credentials. Yet that effort it worthwhile, even necessary today. The resources listed in my recent blogs can help:
To stay updated on all things McAfee and for more resources on staying secure from home, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
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These days, work and home mean practically the same thing. Our house is now an office space or a classroom, so that means a lot of our day-to-day happens online. We check emails, attend virtual meetings, help our children distance learn, use social media platforms to check in on our friends and family – our entire lives are digital! This increase in connectivity could mean more exposure to threats – but it doesn’t have to. That’s why this National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) you should learn what it means to be cyber smart.
In our third blog for this NCSAM this year, we examine what that entails. Let’s dive in.
Stay Secure While Working Remote
According to Stanford research, almost twice as many employees work from home than at the office in the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And this new work-from-home economy is probably only going to expand in the future. Your pets and children will continue to make surprise guest appearances on work calls, or you may continue your new job hunt from the kitchen table. But as you work on juggling your work life and personal life at home base, this doesn’t mean that you should have to juggle security threats too.
The new WFH landscape has also brought about increased risk from . Unlike corporate offices – which usually have IT staff responsible for making any necessary network security updates and patches – users’ home network security is in their own hands. This means users must ensure that their Wi-Fi connections are private and locked with a complex password or employ the help of a VPN to prevent hackers from infiltrating your work.
Be Cybersmart While Distance Learning
Work isn’t the only element of consumers’ lives that’s recently changed – school is also being conducted out of many students’ homes as they adapt to distance learning. As a result, parents are now both professionals and teachers, coaching students through new online learning obstacles. But as more students continue their curriculum from home and online activity increases, so does the possibility of exposure to inappropriate content or other threats.
For instance, the transition to distance learning has led to an increase in online students to lose valuable time meant to be spent on their education.
To help ensure that learning from home goes as smoothly as possible, parents must stay updated on the threats that could be lurking around the corner of their children’s online classrooms. Take the time to secure all the devices that power your kids’ learning with a comprehensive security solution.
Of course, everyone needs to find a balance between work, school, and play! These days, that means scavenging the internet for new content to help keep entertained at home. In fact, according to Nielson, there was an 85% increase in American streaming rates in the first three weeks of March this year compared to March 2019 reports. However, causing users to turn to other less secure alternatives such as illegal downloads and links to “free” content riddled with malware. This could open consumers up to a whole host of threats.
Users looking to stream the latest TV show or movie should be cautious and only access entertainment content directly from a reliable source. The safest thing to do is to subscribe to a streaming site that offers the content or download the movie from credible websites, instead of downloading a “free” version from a website that could contain malware.
We all need to be cybersmart and aware of the threats that come with our lifestyle changes. By following these pointers, you can block threats from impacting your new day-to-day and ensure security is one less thing to worry about. When looking ahead to the future, incorporate the aforementioned pointers into your digital life so that you are prepared to take on whatever the evolving security landscape brings – now that’s being cybersmart!
Stay Updated
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, look out for our other National Cybersecurity Awareness Month blogs, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
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Election 2020: Make Sure Your Voice is Heard with These Tips & Best Practices
Last year, India exercised one of the greatest feats of democracy, trying to enable over 900 million people to vote in their general election. My mom lives in India, and I remember talking with her about their ambitious plans to reach every voter, no matter how remote their location. They sent poll workers deep into the jungle, and across rivers, to reach just a handful of voters. The result: a record turnout at over 67%.
In the United States, we too have an opportunity to fulfill our civic duties, with various options available to us to make sure our votes are heard. While many people choosing to mail in their votes for the very first time, there’s also a lot of confusion around election rules and security, not to mention a flood of misinformation online to be wary of.
Here at McAfee, we want to help you vote with confidence in this critical election. That’s why we’ve put together a number of tools, resources, and best practices to empower voters. Our hope is that every voice can be heard.
Demystifying Mail-In Voting
Let’s start with some questions you may have around mail-in voting, since twice as many people plan to mail in their ballots this year, compared to 2016. Of course, with the COVID-19 pandemic still active, it’s understandable that many people, especially the vulnerable, would prefer to mail their ballot, rather than go to a polling station. I personally got my mail-in ballot and am ready to mail it this week. If you haven’t decided on how to vote, you still have time to decide.
To get accurate information on mail-in voting, go directly to your state and local websites for guidance, including how to fill out your ballot, and when to turn it in. Rules vary state to state, but one thing we do know is that mail-in voting has proven to be a reliable and secure way to have your voice heard.
It’s great to see long lines to vote in some states already. If you are still concerned about election security and online scams, my colleague Judith Bitterli has written a great guide for locating reliable sources and protecting your vote (Key tip: always look for a .gov domain name).
She also has advice for making sure that your mail-in ballot counts.
Safe Election Surfing
When looking online for election resources, be aware that scammers and cybercriminals are always trying to take advantage of trending topics to misdirect users to dangerous websites and links. In fact, the FBI recently warned that bad actors have been setting up fake election websites, in an attempt to steal voters’ personal information, or get them to download dangerous files.
The Bureau suggests that you visit the U.S. Election Assistance Commission website for accurate information in a variety of languages. If you are concerned about clicking on risky links during the election or year-round, one smart action you can take is to install McAfee WebAdvisor, which warns you of risky sites before you click on them.
Although it can be tempting to believe election information posted on social media, especially by friends and family members, know that business school MIT Sloan says “fake news is at its peak” during online presidential years, and even your loved ones can be fooled.
But whether information is clickbait, or legitimate, it can still be posted to risky websites designed to steal your information, or download malware. That’s why McAfee released a new social media protection tool as part of WebAdvisor. Using color codes, the tool shows you which links are safe or risky right in your social feed, and can be used across all six major social media platforms. This makes it easier to avoid dangerous links posted on social channels. Given the increase in phishing we’ve observed in the last few months across PC and mobile platforms, a comprehensive security solution like McAfee® Total Protection can help keep your personal information and devices safe.
In-Person Voting
If you still plan to vote in person, or even better, volunteer as a poll worker, make sure that you have reliable information on voting times and locations. You’ll probably also want to look into local rules on health and safety precautions, so you are well prepared.
False and misleading information about COVID 19 has been swirling since the start of the pandemic, so it’s important that you seek verified information about the virus. Here again are some great tips from Judith on how to keep COVID misinformation from suppressing your vote.
Exercise Your Right
Now that you know how to sidestep misinformation, find trusted resources, and plan your vote — either through the mail or in person— I hope that you will exercise your right, with confidence.
The post Election 2020: Make Sure Your Voice is Heard with These Tips appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Spooky season is among us, and ghosts and goblins aren’t the only things hiding in the shadows. Online threats are also lurking in the darkness, preparing to haunt devices and cause some hocus pocus for unsuspecting users. This Halloween season, researchers have found virtual zombies and witches among us – a new trojan that rises from the dead no matter how many times it’s deleted and malicious code that casts an evil spell to steal users’ credit card data.
Let’s unlock the mystery of these threats so you can avoid cyber-scares and continue to live your online life free from worry.
Just like zombies, malware can be a challenge to destroy. Oftentimes, it requires a user to completely wipe their device by backing up files, reinstalling the operating system, and starting from scratch. But what if this isn’t enough to stop the digital walking dead from wreaking havoc on your device?
Recently, a new type of Trojan has risen from the dead to haunt users no matter how many times it’s deleted. This zombie-like malware attaches itself to a user’s Windows 10 startup system, making it immune to system wipes since the malware can’t be found on the device’s hard drive. This stealthy malware hides on the device’s motherboard and creates a Trojan file that reinstalls the malware if the user tries to remove it. Once it sets itself up in the darkness, the malware scans for users’ private documents and sends them to an unknown host, leaving the user’s device in a ghoulish state.
A malware misfortune isn’t the only thing that users should beware of this Halloween. Cybercriminals have also managed to inject malicious code into a wireless provider’s web platform, casting an evil spell to steal users’ credit card data. The witches and warlocks allegedly responsible for casting this evil spell are part of a Magecart spin-off group that’s known for its phishing prowess. To pull off this attack, they plated a credit card skimmer onto the wireless provider’s checkout page. This allowed the hackers to exfiltrate users’ credit card data whenever they made a purchase – a spell that’s difficult to break.
While these threats might seem like just another Halloween trick, there are other forces at play. According to McAfee’s Quarterly Threats Report from July 2020, threats like malware phishing and trojans have proven opportunistic for cybercriminals as users spend more and more time online – whether it be working from home, distance learning, or connecting with friends and loved ones. In fact, McAfee Labs observed 375 threats per minute in Q1 2020 alone.
So, as hackers continue to adapt their techniques to take advantage of users spending more time online, it’s important that people educate themselves on emerging threats so they can take necessary precautions and live their digital lives free from worry.
Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take to prevent these threats from haunting your digital life. Follow these tips to keep cybersecurity tricks at bay this spooky season:
Zombie malware is easily spread by phishing, which is when scammers try to trick you out of your private information or money. If you receive an email from an unknown user, it’s best to proceed with caution. Don’t click on any links or open any attachments in the email and delete the message altogether.
Look over your credit card accounts and bank statements often to check whether someone is fraudulently using your financial data – you can even sign up for transaction alerts that your bank or credit card company may provide. If you see any charges that you did not make, report it to the authorities immediately.
Add an extra layer of protection with a security solution like McAfee® Total Protection to help safeguard your digital life from malware and other threats. McAfee Total Protection also includes McAfee® WebAdvisor – web protection that enables users to sidestep attacks before they happen with clear warnings of risky websites, links, and files.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
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If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that our ability to think critically about the information we encounter online is now a fundamental life skill we need to learn, practice, and pass on to our offspring. But the actual task of teaching kids how to discern real and fabricated information online these days is easier said than done.
How did the truth get so hard to pin down? In the documentary The Social Dilemma, the answer to that question comes down to two things: Our growing reliance on social media for both human connection and information and the data-based algorithms social networks use to mine and sell data, nurture device dependence, and influence our behavior.
A 2019 Pew Study reveals that 55 percent of US adults get their news from social media either “often” or “sometimes.” A July 2020 Pew Study shows that people who rely on social media for news are less likely to get the facts right about the coronavirus and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.
The power of algorithms to deliver customized, manipulative content to a person’s screen is alarming, says Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google, who is featured in The Social Dilemma, adding, “Never before in history have 50 designers made decisions that would have an impact on two billion people.”
On the heels of the recent election, Media Literacy skills will make a difference as false reports are likely to surface in our social feeds in the foreseeable future. For many, the willpower to shut down their social feeds altogether isn’t a viable option. So how do we wade through the veiled forms of manipulation and misinformation taking place all around us online?
One approach is to make a personal commitment to stay alert, slow down, and carefully vet the content you consume, create, or share.
One thing you might consider is making 2021 the year your family masters Media Literacy, a topic we’ve written extensively about on this blog. In short, Media Literacy is the ability to identify different types of content and understand the messages each is sending. Content includes texts, social media memes or posts, videos, television, movies, video games, music, and various other digital content. Reminder: Someone creates each piece of content and that person, group, or company has an agenda or message.
Do I understand all the points of view of this story?
What do I think about this topic or idea?
Am I overly emotional and eager to share this?
Am I being manipulated by this content?
What if I’m wrong?
Lastly, consume all media with thoughtful intention — avoid mindless scrolling and liking. A few other practical ways to fight back against the algorithms we drew from The Social Dilemma: Don’t click on video or content recommendations. Fight back against algorithms by choosing your content. Uninstall social media apps that are not useful and waste your time. Turn off notifications or any other alert that interferes with living life. If an issue has you angry or emotional, stop, breathe, and research the facts before sharing.
The post Helping Your Family Combat Digital Misinformation appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Corporate boards have many dimensions of responsibility. Cybersecurity can be one of the most nuanced and important areas of focus for a board, but not all board members are well versed in why and what they need to care about related to cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity is a board level topic for three main reasons:
Security breaches can hurt companies financially, negatively impact brand reputation, and result in data loss (both personal and company intellectual property) just to name a few of the impacts. Unfortunately breaches that impact hundreds of millions or even billions of people are more common that we would like. Some of the more notable cybersecurity breaches you may remember are Equifax back in 2017, Adobe in 2013, and Zynga (the company that makes Words with Friends) in 2019. In July 2020, we saw key high-profile Twitter accounts compromised. You don’t want to see your company name in the news headlines due to a breach!
Besides security breaches, governance in cybersecurity is becoming more important. Governance describes the policies and processes which determine how organizations detect, prevent, and respond to cyber incidents. In many organizations, there is a division between the governance and management activities. Board members should be involved in evaluating security related reporting requirements and overall competence of the cybersecurity program, policies and procedures. If you are a US public company, there are additional board requirements from the Securities and Exchange Commission that you should be familiar with such as requiring written disclosure of how the board administers its risk oversight function.
Government regulations and compliance also needs to be considered. However, just being compliant doesn’t mean you are secure. Cyber legislation has been frequently proposed by Congress over the years. Almost all US states have their own laws about what constitutes a security breach and when to disclose the breach. It is important to understand the local, state and federal laws (including international laws) related to cybersecurity for where you do business.
Everyone on the board is responsible and could potentially be held accountable for a breach both legally and financially. It is not only the CISO, CSO or CIO’s responsibility to care and do the right thing. We all have a role to play to ensure the company is protected and set up for success.
When one person doesn’t do their part, things can fall apart for a company. For instance, in August 2020, a former Uber company executive was criminally prosecuted for not disclosing a data breach back in 2016. Uber’s former Chief Security Officer was charged with obstruction of justice and concealing a felony for allegedly failing to report their 2016 breach to the Federal Trade Commission. This is the first direct example in the US of an executive facing criminal charges and jail time over how they responded to a data breach.
As you discuss cybersecurity on the board, how do you evaluate your company’s stance? Here are some tips you can start doing today. This list is by no way complete, but here are things you can start doing today.
Cybersecurity is a very important topic for the boardroom and should not be taken lightly; however, it doesn’t need to be overwhelming. Utilize these tips to get you on the right path for your company, and if you don’t have a cybersecurity expert on your board, there are experts who can provide guidance.
The post Are You Prepared for Cybersecurity in the Boardroom? appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Change happens – sometimes much faster than expected – like it has in 2020. When the threat landscape shifts suddenly, security professionals must quickly react and change their security posture. This not only means reconfiguring existing security investments but also adding new ones.
But given the number of heterogenous security applications sold by multiple vendors, new security expansions are tough to manage. They not only have to co-exist with the existing security infrastructure, but they must be integrated to avoid leaving security gaps attackers can exploit. User and business experience must be maintained as well. Is it any wonder, then, that CISOs continue to struggle? It’s hard to optimize and manage existing cybersecurity software investments — and expand security capabilities – all the while keeping up with shifting business needs.
It is time you demand more from your security vendors. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect them to do the following:
Here’s where “Composable Security,” a breakthrough architectural extension from McAfee addresses this chronic IT turbulence. In practice, the concept allows MVISION ePO (ePolicy Orchestrator) administrators to add multi-vendor security modules quickly and easily assemble best-in-class solutions that meet your particular needs. Users can compose, and then re-compose, powerful, cloud-based or on-prem security solutions certified to seamlessly plug-and-play. With a few clicks, you can add new capabilities to your existing security infrastructure in minutes.
MVISION ePO now offers Composable Security capabilities. Let’s take a closer look:
The era of monolithic and often disconnected, security solutions has passed. We believe customers want a connected security architecture that can rapidly adopt and implement new tools, sensors and data from a myriad of disparate but innovative solutions. When change occurs seemingly overnight, like we saw with the explosion in the number of people working from home due to Covid-19, executives don’t have the luxury of waiting until the next budget cycle to take action. But with MVISION Marketplace, we are enabling companies to easily scale their security infrastructure.
This new application marketplace enables McAfee and our partners to deliver pre-integrated, best-in-class solutions to customers. The marketplace offers products that expand and extend McAfee solutions. Organized in easy to understand categories, the marketplace features a tile per partner. Each integration is “McAfee Certified” which means that McAfee has certified the integration with that partner.
Clicking on the tile enables you to drill down and understand the value delivered by each integration. When you see something you like, click through and try it out. Here’s where pre-integration makes the combined value proposition easy to understand. The idea is for customers to experience the value quickly before they make a decision.
By utilizing our partners in the MVISION Marketplace, you can not only evolve your security architecture; you also improve your team’s responsiveness to real-time threats—and become less preoccupied with tool integration.
We worked closely with multiple partners to build out this marketplace. These composable solutions are from leaders in their field including Attivo Networks, IBM Security, Seclore, Service Now, Siemplify, and ThreatQ. Their certified solutions extend the capabilities of existing security environments, whether cloud-based or on premise. This new ability to mix and match applications over and over also addresses many pressing business challenges. It helps organizations address technology, time, compliance, and resource constraints in minutes — rather than in hours, days or weeks.
Attivo working with McAfee delivers the best endpoint solution in the industry. Attivo’s blog covers how McAfee + Attivo are better together for customers.
Seclore working with McAfee delivers the best Information security solution in the industry. Read their blog to learn how McAfee + Seclore are better together for customers.
ThreatQuotient, Swimlane, and Siemplify, working with McAfee, deliver one of the best SOC solutions in the industry. Learn more about how ThreatQuotient, Swimlane, and Siemplify are better together with McAfee for our customers.
Our market leading Security Innovation Alliance Program has created the largest integrated security ecosystem in the industry. We’re not done. You can expect us to add new partners quickly. In the meantime, if you find a partner missing that you want us to add to our list, please reach out to me.
We live in an era where more security is automated rather than managed through consoles. MVISION API’s goal is to be the single interface for your non-console interactions with the McAfee portfolio. It’s a powerful capability that delivers a single, web scale, global interface with unparalleled access to your McAfee portfolio. The goal is threefold:
The API, at launch, is tuned towards an Open EDR solution enabling customers to expand and extend MVISION EDR. Top use cases are driven by the need of SOC analysts to build playbooks, manage cases, search for IOCs, synchronize Incidents and build intelligent extensions to the vast amount of control visibility we provide.
We have very ambitious plans. So, watch this space as we make rapid progress.
Opening up the MVISION Developer Portal to all Innovators using the MVISION APIs, application developers and ISVs can build public or private applications. This portal for application developers enables them to build, test, and certify their applications prior to making them available on MVISION Marketplace or for customers to develop and deploy their private apps.
I expect startups will leverage MVISION APIs to build their innovation on top of McAfee products. In fact, we encourage them to do so and deliver their innovations next to McAfee products and deliver them to our customers through the marketplace.
Of course, organizations can also choose to create a variety of custom apps using MVISION APIs from the MVISION Developer Portal. The only limit is your own creativity. You can build new Intelligent apps, automate your current processes, integrate your SIEM, build an OT extension, or just sit back and enjoy a comprehensive dashboard that tracks your security posture.
These capabilities work together to deliver a Composable Security Platform enabling McAfee and its ecosystem to deliver pre-integrated, high-value solutions to customers. This is a big breakthrough that will make your job easier. All it now takes is a few minutes to make a few clicks to add valuable new capability.
Try it out and see for yourself at http://marketplace.mcafee.com/ and https://developer.mcafee.com/. I hope you will find this set of capabilities valuable and welcome your ideas on how to make them even better. And don’t be shy. Drop me a line @ javed_hasan@mcafee.com to tell me what improvements you want to see.
The post Bridge the Gap Between the Security You Have and the Security You Need appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Today’s U.S. government is in a race to modernize its IT infrastructure to support ever more complicated missions, growing workloads and increasingly distributed teams—and do so facing a constantly evolving threat landscape. To support these efforts, McAfee has pursued and received a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Authorization designation for McAfee MVISION for Endpoint at the moderate security impact level.
This FedRAMP Moderate designation is equivalent to DoD Impact Level 2 (IL2) and certifies that the McAfee solution has passed rigorous security requirements for the increasingly complex and expanding cloud environments of the U.S. government. The FedRAMP Moderate authorization validates the McAfee solution’s implementation of the baseline 325 NIST 800-53 controls, allowing users from federal agencies, state and local government, and other industries in regulated environments to manage Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) such as personally identifiable information (PII) and routine covered defense information (CDI).
By achieving FedRAMP Moderate Authorization for MVISION for Endpoint, McAfee can provide the command and control cyber defense capabilities government environments need to enable on-premise and remote security teams, allowing them to maximize time and resources, enhance security efficiency and boost resiliency.
McAfee MVISION for Endpoint consists of three primary components: McAfee MVISION Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), McAfee MVISION ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) and McAfee Endpoint Security Adaptive Threat Protection with Real Protect (ENS ATP):
Together, these solutions provide today’s U.S. government agencies the AI-guided endpoint threat detection, investigation and response capabilities they need to confront today’s ever evolving threats across a wide variety of devices. This important FedRAMP milestone is the latest affirmation of McAfee’s long-standing commitment to providing U.S. government agencies advanced, cloud-based cyber defenses to help them meet whatever mission they may confront today and in the future.
Other recent McAfee public sector achievements include:
Please see the following for more information on McAfee’s efforts in the FedRAMP mission:
The post McAfee MVISION Solutions Meet FedRAMP Cloud Security Requirements appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
You wake up, log in to your Outlook, and find an email waiting in your inbox from support@irs.gov. Much to your confusion, the email claims that you have an outstanding account balance that you must pay immediately, or you will face legal charges.
As it turns out, you’re not the only one to receive this message. According to Bleeping Computer, a phishing campaign was recently discovered impersonating the IRS, with 70,000 spoofed emails reaching users’ inboxes. Let’s unpack how this scheme works.
This scam targets Microsoft 365 users and threatens to press legal charges unless the recipient settles an outstanding account balance. And while some of the telltale signs of a phishing scam are grammar errors and misspellings throughout the body and address of the email, this threat is a little more sophisticated. To make this threat appear more credible, scammers use the email support@irs.gov, causing recipients to believe that the email actually did originate from the IRS. The email also appears to have no spelling errors at first glance, further increasing its legitimacy to an unsuspecting user.
This scam is not foolproof, however. Upon further investigation, a recipient would see that the email’s header reveals the real sending domain: shoesbagsall.com. What’s more, the reply-to field redirects the replies to legal.cc@outlook.com instead of the IRS support mailing address.
To further entice users into falling for this scheme, scammers threaten arrest or other legal charges and tell recipients that they will forward the emails to their employer to withhold the fake outstanding amounts from their wages. Additionally, the emails also instruct the targets to immediately reply with payment details to avoid having their credit affected.
The best way to stay protected from phishing scams? Knowing how to spot them! Follow these security tips and best practices to prevent falling for fraudsters’ tricks:
Be skeptical of emails or text messages claiming to be from organizations with peculiar asks or information that seems too good to be true. Instead of clicking on a link within the email or text, it’s best to go straight to the organization’s website or contact customer service.
If you receive an email or text asking you to download software or pay a certain amount of money, don’t click on anything within the message. Instead, go straight to the organization’s website. This will prevent you from downloading malicious content from phishing links or forking over money unnecessarily.
If someone sends you a message with a link, hover over the link without actually clicking on it. This will allow you to see a link preview. If the URL looks suspicious, don’t interact with it and delete the message altogether.
If you accidentally respond to a phishing email with your personal data, change the passwords to any accounts you suspect may have been impacted. Make sure your new credentials are strong and unique from your other logins. For tips on how to create a more secure password, read our blog on common password habits and how to safeguard your accounts.
A solution like McAfee Identify Theft Protection will help you to monitor your accounts and alert you of any suspicious activity.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post 70,000 Phishing Emails Sent Impersonating the IRS: How to Stay Protected appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
And just like that, the holidays are here! That means it’s time to grab your devices and credit cards for some online holiday shopping. But while you plan to share the merry and shop for gifts, criminals are preparing some not-so-festive tricks of their own.
Let’s unwrap the top four phishing scams that users should beware of while making online purchases this week and through the rest of the year. Remember, there’s still time to shop for cybersecurity protection this holiday season.
It might surprise you to see that a tactic as old as email phishing is still so widely used today. Well, that’s because many people still fall for email phishing scams, as the criminals behind these attacks up the ante every year to make these threats more sophisticated.
Scammers also tend to take advantage of current events to trick unsuspecting consumers into falling for their tricks. Take earlier this year, for example, when many users received phishing emails claiming to be from a government entity regarding financial support due to the global health emergency. Cybercriminals will likely use similar, timely tactics leading up to the holidays, posing as famous retailers and promising fake discounts in the hope that a consumer will divulge their credit card details or click on a malicious link.
Like email phishing, spear phishing has been around for quite some time. With spear phishing attacks, hackers pretend to be an organization or individual that you’re familiar with and include a piece of content—a link, an email attachment, etc.—that they know you’ll want to interact with. For example, cybercriminals might claim to be charitable organizations asking for donations, knowing that many families like to donate during the holidays. The email might even include the recipient’s personal details to make it seem more convincing. But instead of making a generous contribution, users find that they infected their own system with malware by clicking on the fraudulent link.
No, that’s not the sound of Santa coming down the chimney – it’s the sound of voice phishing! “Vishing” attacks can be highly deceiving, as hackers will call a user and trick them into giving up their credentials or sharing other personal information. For example, a scammer could call an individual telling them that they won a large amount of cash as part of a holiday contest. Overjoyed with the thought of winning this so-called contest, the user may hand over their bank information to the criminal on the other end of the phone. But instead of receiving a direct deposit, all they find is that their banking credentials were used to make a fraudulent purchase.
SMS phishing, or “SMiShing,” is another threat users should watch out for this holiday season. This tactic uses misleading text messages claiming to come from a trusted person or organization to trick recipients into taking a certain action that gives the attacker exploitable information or access to their mobile device.
Due to the current global health emergency and the desire to do more digitally, consumers will likely rely on online shopping this holiday season. To take advantage of this trend, scammers will probably send fraudulent text messages disguised as online retailers. These messages will likely contain fake tracking links, shipping notices, and order confirmations. But if an unsuspecting user clicks on one of these links, they will be directed to a fake website prompting them to enter their credentials for the attackers to further exploit.
To prevent cybercriminals from messing with the festive spirit via phishing schemes, follow these tips so you can continue to make merry during the holiday shopping season:
If you receive an email, call, or text asking you to download software or pay a certain amount of money, don’t click on anything or take any direct action from the message. Instead, go straight to the organization’s website. This will prevent you from downloading malicious content from phishing links or forking over money unnecessarily.
If someone sends you a message with a link, hover over the link without actually clicking on it. This will allow you to see a link preview. If the URL looks suspicious, don’t interact with it and delete the message altogether.
Instead of clicking on a link in an email or text message, it’s always best to check directly with the source to verify a holiday shopping offer or track a package’s shipment.
Use a comprehensive security solution, like McAfee Total Protection, which can help protect devices against malware, phishing attacks, and other threats. It includes McAfee WebAdvisor, which can help identify malicious websites.
The post Top Phishing Lures to Look Out for This Holiday Season appeared first on McAfee Blog.
2020 has been a tumultuous and unpredictable year, where we restructured our lives and redefined how we work and interact with each other. In the past nine months, we saw IT security and the digital world challenged and taken to new heights. Although 2020 has undoubtedly been a year of trials and tribulations, I wanted to share some of McAfee’s top highlights.
The list that follows is drawn from some of this year’s greatest accomplishments.
1. |
New Global Managed Detection and Response Platform |
At the RSA Conference in February, we launched our MDR platform and our first strategic partner to leverage our MVISION EDR solution to proactively detect cyber threats faced by customers and resolve security incidents faster. Our MDR service with DXC Technology provides 24/7 critical alert monitoring, managed threat hunting, advanced investigations, and threat disruption 365 days a year.
2. |
Cloud Risk & Adoption Report: Work-from-Home Edition |
With the new work from home environment, we released a report uncovering a correlation between the increased use of cloud services and collaboration tools, such as Cisco WebEx, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with an increase in cyber-attacks targeting the cloud.
3. |
MVISION Cloud Becomes First CASB to Receive U.S. Government’s FedRAMP High JAB P-ATO Designation |
To support today’s U.S. governments race to modernize its IT infrastructure in the constantly evolving threat landscape, McAfee has pursued and received a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Authorization designation for McAfee MVISION for Endpoint at the moderate security impact level. Learn more here.
4. |
Election Website Security Shortcomings |
Ahead of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, we released a survey revealing a severe lack of U.S. government .GOV validation and HTTPS encryption among county election websites in 13 states. The January 2020 survey found that as many as 83.3% of these county websites lacked .GOV validation across these states, and 88.9% and 90.0% of websites lacked such certification. Subsequently, reports emerged from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations and the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, which compelled us to conduct a follow-up survey of county election websites in all 50 U.S. states.
5. |
Industry’s First Proactive Security Solution to Help Organizations Stay Ahead of Emerging Threats |
MVISION Insights provides actionable and preemptive threat intelligence by leveraging our cutting-edge threat research, augmented with sophisticated AI applied to real-time threat telemetry streamed from over 1 billion sensors. The integration of MVISION Insights significantly enhances the capabilities of our award winning endpoint security platform by managing the attack surface, preventing ransomware and aiding security teams to easily investigate and respond to advanced attacks.
6. |
Threat Actor Evolution During the Pandemic |
Our McAfee Labs team released a report examining cybercriminal activity related to COVID-19 and the evolution of cyber threats in Q1 2020. The team saw an average of 375 new threats per minute and a surge of cybercriminals exploiting the pandemic through COVID-19 themed malicious apps, phishing campaigns, malware, and more. Read the full report Q1 2020 here, and feel free to enjoy the bumper edition of the McAfee Labs Threats Report: November 2020, here.
7. |
Introducing MVISION CNAPP |
McAfee announced CNAPP, a new security service that combines solutions from Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and Application Protection into a single solution. Now in beta with a target launch date of Q1, 2021, we built CNAPP to provide InfoSec teams broad visibility into their cloud native applications.
8. |
Taking Threat Detection and Response to a New Level |
At MPOWER 2020, we announced McAfee XDR, a complete platform that provides SOCs visibility into how threats are impacting your key business processes, prioritizes response and delivers a full-integrated platform of security technologies. Our AI and Big Data analytics capabilities supplies SOCs with threat and campaign insights before an attack changes course, to avoid wasting time chasing false positives. Defenders get fewer and more meaningful alerts, making it easier to prioritize their response based on the severity and potential impact of a threat.
9. |
Expansions to McAfee’s MVISION Platform |
Continuing on MPOWER’s momentum, we launched MVISION Marketplace, MVISION API and MVISION Developer Portal, allowing customers to quickly and easily integrate McAfee and trusted SIA partner applications as well as privately developed applications within their current security environment. The launch enables security teams to swiftly address security gaps in their architecture and easily improve security posture.
10. |
McAfee Goes Public |
On October 22, 2020, McAfee rang the bell on NASDAQ and officially became a publicly traded company again. It was a momentous occasion for the company and all our dedicated employees and partners. A huge thank you goes out to our employees for their support and invaluable contributions in helping McAfee reach this milestone We’re excited for the future!
Thank you to our wonderful employees, partners and customers for helping us achieve our goals and we look forward to working with everyone in the new year!
The post 2020 Hindsight – Top 10 Highlights from McAfee appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Everyone deserves a break after surviving this past year and I cannot think of better way to celebrate than to share some of our greatest accomplishments from 2020.
1. |
January 2020 Gartner Peer Insights VOC Customers’ Choice for CASB |
McAfee was the only vendor to be named the January 2020 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ Customers’ Choice for Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs). The recognition is based on customer feedback and ratings for McAfee MVISION Cloud, which we believe provides a cloud-native and frictionless way for organizations to consistently protect their data and defend from threats across the spectrum of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Everyone at McAfee is extremely proud and honored to be named by customers as a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for CASB.
Disclaimer: Gartner, Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: Cloud Access Security Brokers, 13 March 2020
2. |
Coolest Cloud and Coolest Endpoint Security Companies |
CRN, the top news source for solution providers and the IT channel, included McAfee on its Security 100 list and named McAfee one of “The 20 Coolest Cloud Security Companies” and “The 20 Coolest Endpoint Security Companies” of 2020.
3. |
Most Innovative and Scalable Cloud and Endpoint Security Company |
During RSA 2020, Cyber Defense Magazine, the industry’s leading electronic information security magazine, named McAfee the Most Innovative Company in its Cloud Security category for McAfee MVISION Cloud. The magazine also listed McAfee Endpoint Security Most Innovative and McAfee MVISION EDR Most Scalable, both in the Endpoint Security category.
4. |
CASB Category Winner |
Info Security Products Guide, the industry’s leading information security research and advisory guide, named McAfee a winner in the 16th Annual 2020 Info Security PG’s Global Excellence Awards® in its Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category for MVISION Cloud for Container Security.
5. |
2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice VOC for Secure Web Gateways |
We’re thrilled to be named the 2020 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ Customers’ Choice for Secure Web Gateways (SWGs) for the second year in a row. The recognition is based on customer feedback and ratings for the McAfee Web Security portfolio which consists of McAfee Web Protection (MWP), McAfee Web Gateway (MWG) and McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Service (MWGCS). We believe this customer recognition validates our commitment to innovate and invest in technology that aims to reduce the cost and complexity of modern cybersecurity. With the McAfee Web Security portfolio, organizations can enforce their internet policy compliance and extend their perimeter security for a borderless IT environment.” said Ash Kulkarni, executive vice president and chief product officer, McAfee.
Disclaimer: Gartner, Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: Secure Web Gateways, 09 April 2020
6. |
MVISION Cloud Wins 2020 Fortress Cyber Security Award |
McAfee MVISION Cloud took top honors in the 2020 Fortress Cyber Security Awards in the data protection category for its cloud access security broker (CASB) technology. The industry awards program seeks to highlight, discuss and reward the creative thinking, engineering, people and projects that are taking proactive steps to thwart cybersecurity attacks.
7. |
2020 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ for Both Enterprise DLP and SIEM Solutions Report |
We’re excited to be named a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ Customers’ Choice for Enterprise Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ Customers’ Choice for Security Information Event Management (SIEM). The Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Recognition is based on feedback and ratings from end-user professionals who purchase, implement and/or use McAfee’s DLP and SIEM solutions. “We think rigorously validated customer reviews are the true mark of value and quality,” said Anand Ramanathan, vice president of enterprise products, McAfee.
Disclaimer: Gartner, Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: Enterprise Data Loss Prevention, 01 July 2020 & Gartner, Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: Security Information Event Management, 03 July 2020
8. |
Named to the Diversity Best Practices Inclusion Index |
It’s an honor to be recognized as an inclusive workplace by Diversity Best Practices (DBP), a division of Working Mother Media. McAfee was among the 98 organizations that earned a place on the fourth annual Inclusion Index. McAfee’s efforts to create a more inclusive workplace focus on attracting and hiring diverse talent, cultivating an environment where everyone thrives, and igniting change within our industry and community. Read more about McAfee’s strategy and results in the 2019 Impact Report.
9. |
Named a Leader in 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers |
This year, we are positioned as a Leader in the 2020 Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers” (CASB) for every one of the four years the quadrant has been published. The report, which evaluates vendors based on their ability to execute and on their completeness of vision, positioned McAfee highest and furthest, respectively, for these attributes in the entire Magic Quadrant. A complimentary copy is available on the McAfee web site.
Disclaimer: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers, Steve Riley, Craig Lawson, 30 October 2020.
10. |
Ken McCray Named One of CRN’s 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs |
Ken McCray, head of channels sales and operations Americas at McAfee, was named to CRN’s exclusive list of the 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs for 2020. This annual list recognizes the elite vendor executives who lead, influence, innovate, and disrupt the IT channel. We congratulate McCray for his outstanding commitment, ability to lead, and passion for progress within the channel through our partner programs.
The GARTNER PEER INSIGHTS CUSTOMERS’ CHOICE badge is a trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates, and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice constitute the subjective opinions of individual end-user reviews, ratings, and data applied against a documented methodology; they neither represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by, Gartner or its affiliate.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
The post 10 Reasons to Celebrate 2020 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Whether you’re working, banking, shopping, or just streaming a few shows online, these quick tips will make sure you’re more secure from hacks, attacks, and prying eyes.
Start with the basics: get strong protection for your computers and laptops. And that means more than basic antivirus. Using a comprehensive suite of security software like McAfee® Total Protection can help defend your entire family from the latest threats and malware, make it safer to browse, help steer you clear of potential fraud, and look out for your privacy too.
Aside from using it for calls and texting, we use our smartphones for plenty of things. We’re sending money with payment apps. We’re doing our banking. And we’re using them as a “universal remote control” to do things like set the alarm, turn our lights on and off, and even see who’s at the front door. Whether you’re an Android owner or iOS owner, get security software installed on your smartphones and tablets so you can protect all the things they access and control.
Get a fresh start with strong, unique passwords for all your accounts using a strong method of password creation. And keep those passwords safe—don’t store them in an unprotected file on your computer, which can be subject to a hack or data loss. Better yet, instead of keeping them on a notebook or on sticky notes, consider using a password manager. It can actually create strong passwords for you, store them as you create them, and automatically use them as you surf, shop, and bank.
Make sure you have the latest software updates for your computers, laptops, phones, tablets, and apps, and internet of things (IoT) devices like camera and alarm systems. Updates are important for two reasons: one, they’ll make sure you’re getting the latest functionality from your app or device; and two, they often contain security upgrades. If there’s a setting that lets you receive automatic updates, enable it so that you always have the latest.
Hackers love playing the role of imposters to get a hold of sensitive info and account logins—because it’s often so effective. If you get what appears to be a suspicious request from a recruiter, co-worker, vendor, friend, or family member, verify the message with that person directly before opening or responding. Remember that an employer will never request sensitive information such as social security numbers or bank routing numbers over email or text.
When searching, give the results a good look before clicking. Ask yourself if the website you want to click is legitimate—are there any red flags, like a strange URL, an unfamiliar name, a familiar brand name with an unusual addition to it, or a description that simply doesn’t feel right when you read it. If so, don’t click. They could be malware sites. Better yet, use a built-in browser advisor that helps you search and surf safely. It’ll call out any known or suspected bad links clearly before you click.
To ensure that only invited attendees can access your video or audio conference call, make sure your meeting is password protected. For maximum safety, activate passwords for new meetings, instant meetings, personal meetings, and people joining by phone. To keep users (either welcome or unwelcome) from taking control of your screen while you’re video conferencing, select the option to block everyone except the host (you) from screen sharing.
If you receive an email asking to confirm your login credentials or that’s asking for any personal info, go directly to the company’s website or app—even if the email looks legitimate. Phishing attacks are getting more and more sophisticated, meaning that hackers are getting pretty good at making phishing emails look real. Don’t open any attachments or click any links in these emails. Instead, check the status of your account at the site or in your app to determine the legitimacy of the request.
Our banks, many of the online shopping sites we use, and numerous other accounts use two-factor authentication to make sure that we’re logging in we really are who we say we are. In short, a username and password combo is an example of one-factor authentication. The second factor in the mix is something you, and only you, own, like your mobile phone. Thus when you log in and get a prompt to enter a security code that’s sent to your mobile phone, you’re taking advantage of two-factor authentication. If your IoT device supports two-factor authentication as part of the login procedure, put it to use and get that extra layer of security.
Another line of defense you can use to hamper hackers is a virtual private network (VPN), which allows you to send and receive data while encrypting your information so others can’t read it. When your data traffic is scrambled that way, it’s shielded from prying eyes, which helps protect your network and the devices you have connected to it. If you’re working from home, check with your employer to see if they have a corporate VPN that you can use.
Stay even more secure with these free resources
Find out plenty more about working and schooling from home, health and well-being, in addition to articles on healthcare and dating online too. Drop by McAfee’s Safer Together site for a wealth of free articles and resources.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Top Ten Tips for Protecting Your Identity, Finances, and Security Online appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
With 2021 approaching, it is a time to both reflect on the outstanding progress we have each made – personally and professionally, and warmly welcome a new chapter in 2021!
2020 has been one of the most unexpected years in our history. However, despite COVID-19, we had some amazing successes.
January brought McAfee our new CEO – Peter Leav. It’s hard to believe it has only been a year under his leadership. What an impact! And, McAfee is back on the stock exchange.
2020 has also seen the rapid acceleration of cloud adoption. Typically, a move like that involves immense planning to minimize complexity. That didn’t always happen. And, as our Advanced Threat Research team has reported, cybercriminals took full advantage of more ransomware, malware, and general bad behavior. In fact, a recent McAfee report estimates global cybercrime losses will exceed $1 Trillion. Fortunately, McAfee customers benefited from the get-go with a robust, award-winning cloud-native portfolio that became even stronger in 2020.
Shortly after Peter joined, we closed our LightPoint Acquisition, enabling us to add Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) to MVISION Unified Cloud Edge (UCE). In March, we delivered multi-vector data protection for unified and comprehensive data protection across endpoints, web, and cloud. In August, we further enhanced our MVISION UCE offering by announcing pivotal SD-WAN Technology integrations. Finally, at MPOWER, we announced the industry first integration of Remote Browser Isolation into our Unified Cloud Edge solution.
To our award-winning and unmatched MVISION Cloud solution which is natively integrated into UCE, we were the first CASB to map cloud threats to MITRE ATT&CK. Introducing MITRE ATT&CK into the MVISION Cloud workflow helps SOC analysts to investigate cloud threats and security managers defend against future attacks with increased precision. Our new MVISION Cloud Security Advisor (CSA) – provides recommendations – broken into visibility and control metrics – to help prioritize cloud security controls implementation. We also delivered MVISION Cloud for Teams, which provides policy and collaboration controls to enable organizations to safely collaborate with partners without having to worry about exposing confidential data to guest users.
MVISION Cloud received its FedRAMP High JAB P-ATO designation and McAfee MVISION for Endpoint achieved FedRAMP Moderate Authorization. Both of those are important to enable our Federal customers to take advantage of the MVISION portfolio.
All of this helps our customers accelerate the easy adoption of a more complete Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture and better defend against advanced web and cloud-based threats. In fact, our MVISION UCE customers can enjoy a nearly 40% annual TCO savings when they go from on-prem to cloud.
For our customers who want cloud native IaaS security while dealing existing on-prem data center deployments, we rolled out our new McAfee MVISION Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), an integrated hybrid cloud security platform for comprehensive data protection, threat prevention, governance, and compliance for the cloud-native application lifecycle. We also announced native AWS Integrations for MVISION CNAPP.
The team and I are also extremely excited about the progress with our Endpoint portfolio across ENS, EDR and momentum behind MVISION Insights.
The still unfolding SolarWinds supply chain compromise has shown how unprepared SOC teams can be and why it is ever more important to have proactive and actionable threat intelligence at your fingertips. As news of an emerging campaign becomes viral, SOC teams must answer the topical question raised by the C-level or the Board “Are we impacted” which unfortunately till now took weeks if not days of scrambling to answer. We launched MVISION Insights early this summer to solve for exactly this problem. MVISION Insights leverages McAfee’s cutting-edge threat research, augmented with AI applied to real-time telemetry streamed from over a Billion sensors to identify and prioritize threats, before they hit. MVISION Insights can predict the impact on your countermeasures, and then tells you exactly how and where to improve your security posture. In essence, it enables you to “shift left” and anticipate and stop breaches before they happen. As the SolarWinds compromise was unfolding, MVISION Insights delivered actionable threat intelligence to McAfee’s customers within hours. The fact that we now have hundreds of customers who have adopted MVISION Insights as part of their SOC framework within a few months of release is a testament to the real value add they are enjoying. Best part is that it is also free for all our customers who have our integrated EPP+EDR SKUs: MV6 or MV7.
Our latest Endpoint protection product, ENS 10.7, is stronger with the highest quality and customer satisfaction than ever. ENS 10.7 couples all our endpoint protection capabilities with machine learning, behavior monitoring, fileless threat defense and Rollback Remediation. It’s also backed by our Global Threat Intelligence (GTI) to provide adaptable, defense in depth capability against the techniques used in targeted ransomware attacks. ENS 10.7 delivers meaningful value. Rollback Remediation, for instance, can save an average $500 per node in labor and productivity costs by eliminating need to reimage machines. ENS 10.7 became generally available about a year ago and has emerged as our #1 deployed enterprise product worldwide – the fastest ramp of any ENS release.
Equally on the EDR front, we delivered capabilities that make a measurable improvement for the ever tired SOC teams. The included AI Guided investigations can speed threat investigations from greater than 2 hours to as little as 6 minutes per incident. The SolarWinds compromise also showed that Organizations need an integrated platform that delivers complete visibility and control across their infrastructure including their supply chain. The recently announced MVISION XDR builds upon our EDR solution making it easier for our customers to achieve this complete visibility and control. It extends MVISION Insights across endpoints, network and cloud, making it the first proactive XDR platform to manage your risk. MVISION XDR dramatically expands the capabilities of traditional Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) point solutions by delivering a fully integrated, SaaS-based platform to rapidly discover and mitigate the real threats to your users and data across all threat vectors. And, complementing our MVSION XDR solution is a host of partner solutions available via MVISION Marketplace.
Finally, we rolled out the Device-to-Cloud suites, making it easier for our customers to move to a cloud-native architecture. These three SaaS offerings all feature MVISION Insights and endpoint protection to provide right-sized security solutions in a simple-to-acquire package.
I am so proud that our customers and the industry also recognize the McAfee teams’ hard work. We were able to add a long list of awards and accolades to our portfolio in 2020.
Now that we’ve looked back at our successes, let’s take a moment to look forward and set goals for ourselves in the coming year. My team and I are committed to:
Against today’s increasingly sophisticated adversaries, your success is our success.
As we head into 2021, I want to take a moment to wish each of you peace, good health, and prosperity.
Happy holidays to you and yours!
Thanks, Shishir
The post Bring on 2021! appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
The holidays have come and gone, and students returned to the virtual classroom. But according to the FBI, cyberattacks are likely to disrupt online learning in the new year. As of December 2020, the FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and MS-ISAC continue to receive reports from K-12 educational institutions about the disruptions caused by cyberthreats, primarily ransomware and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). To protect their education and digital lives, distance learners will need to stay vigilant when it comes to ransomware and DDoS attacks. Let’s dive into the impact these threats have on the K-12 education system now that more people are plugged in as a result of distance learning.
Of all the attacks plaguing K-12 schools this year, ransomware has been a particularly aggressive threat. Ransomware attacks typically block access to a computer system or files until the victim pays a certain amount of money or “ransom.” The FBI and the CISA issued a warning that showed a nearly 30% increase in ransomware attacks against schools. In August and September, 57% of ransomware incidents involved K-12 schools, compared to 28% of all reported ransomware incidents from January through July. And it’s unlikely that hackers will let up anytime soon. Baltimore County’s school system was recently shut down by a ransomware attack that hit all of its network systems and closed schools for several days for about 111,000 students. It wasn’t until last week that school officials could finally regain access to files they feared were lost forever, including student transcripts, first-quarter grades, and vital records for children in special education programs.
According to to ZDNet, the five most active ransomware groups targeting K-12 schools are Ryuk, Maze, Nefilim, AKO, and Sodinokibi/REvil. Furthermore, all five of these ransomware families are known to run “leak sites,” where they dump data from victims who don’t pay the ransom. This creates a particularly dangerous problem of having student data published online. To prevent distance learning disruption, students and educators need to understand the effects of ransomware on school systems and take steps to prevent the damage caused by this threat.
An increase in ransomware attacks isn’t the only problem that K-12 schools are facing. The CISA and the FBI warned those participating in distance learning to protect themselves against other forms of cyberattacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). DDoS is a method where hackers flood a network with so much traffic that it cannot operate or communicate as it normally would.
According to Dark Reading, Miami-Dade County Public Schools experienced significant disruptions during their first three days of distance learning for the 2020-2021 school year, thanks to a series of DDoS attacks. The school system stated it had already experienced more than a dozen DDoS attacks since the start of the school year. Sandwich Public Schools in Massachusetts were also knocked offline by a DDoS attack. When school systems fall victim to DDoS attacks, students can lose access to essential documents, files, or online platforms that they need to complete assignments. And with many students relying heavily on distance learning systems, losing access could put them behind.
In an effort to create a standardized framework for dealing with ransomware attacks across verticals – including education – McAfee has teamed up with Microsoft to lead the Ransomware Task Force, along with 17 other security firms, tech companies, and non-profits. And while we’re taking critical actions to decrease the threat of ransomware attacks, there are other steps you can take to prevent ransomware and DDoS attacks from interrupting your distance learning experience. Follow these tips to take charge of your education and live your digital life free from worry:
Many ransom notes seem convincing, and many only request small, seemingly doable amounts of money. Nevertheless, you should never pay the ransom. Paying does not promise you’ll get your information back, and many victims often don’t. So, no matter how desperate you are for your files, hold off on paying up.
With ransomware attacks locking away crucial data, it’s important to back up your files on all your machines. If a device becomes infected with ransomware, there’s no promise you’ll get that data back. Ensure you cover all your bases and have your data stored on an external hard drive or in the cloud.
Use decryption tools
No More Ransom – an initiative that teams up security firms, including McAfee, and law enforcement – provides tools to free your data, each tailored for a specific type of ransomware. If your device gets held for ransom, start by researching what type of ransomware it is. Then, check out No More Ransom’s decryption tools and see if one is available for your specific strain.
Your Wi-Fi router is the gateway to your network. Secure it by changing the default password. If you aren’t sure how to do this, consult the internet for instructions on how to do it for your specific make and model, or call the manufacturer. Solutions like McAfee Secure Home Platform, which is embedded within select routers, can help you easily manage and protect your network from DDoS attacks and more.
A lot of internet of things (IoT) devices come with default usernames and passwords. After taking your IoT device out of the box, the first thing you should do is change those default credentials. If you’re unsure of how to change the default setting on your IoT device, refer to setup instructions or do a bit of research online.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post Ransomware and DDoS is on the Rise: Tips for Distance Learning in 2021 appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
Seems like the internet follows us wherever we go nowadays, whether it tags along via a smartphone, laptop, tablet, a wearable, or some combination of them all. Yet there’s something else that follows us around as well—our PII, a growing body of “personally identifiable information” that we create while banking, shopping, and simply browsing the internet. And no doubt about it, our PII is terrifically valuable.
What makes it so valuable? It’s no exaggeration to say that your PII is the key to your digital life, along with your financial and civic life as well. Aside from using it to create accounts and logins, it’s further tied to everything from your bank accounts and credit cards to your driver’s license and your tax refund.
Needless to say, your PII is something that needs protecting, so let’s take a look at several ways you can do just that.
What is PII? It’s information about you that others can use to identify you either directly or indirectly. Thus, that info could identify you on its own, or it could identify you when it’s linked to other identifiers, like the ones associated with the devices, apps, tools, and protocols you use.
A prime example of direct PII is your tax ID number because it’s unique and directly associated with your name. Further instances include your facial image to unlock your smartphone, your medical records, your finances, and your phone number because each of these can be easily linked back to you.
Then there are those indirect pieces of PII that act as helpers. While they may not identify you on their own, a few of them can when they’re added together. These helpers include things like internet protocol addresses, the unique device ID of your smartphone, or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags.
You can also find pieces of your PII in the accounts you use, like your Google to Apple IDs, which can be linked to your name, your email address, and the apps you have. You’ll also find it in the apps you use. For example, there’s PII in the app you use to map your walks and runs, because the combination of your smartphone’s unique device ID and GPS tracking can be used in conjunction with other information to identify who you are, not to mention where you typically like to do your 5k hill days. The same goes for messenger apps, which can collect how you interact with others, how often you use the app and your location information based on your IP address, GPS information, or both.
In all, there’s a cloud of PII that follows us around as we go about our day online. Some wisps of that cloud are more personally identifying than others. Yet gather enough of it and PII can create a high-resolution snapshot of you—who you are, what you’re doing when you’re doing it, and even where you’re doing it too—particularly if it gets into the wrong hands.
Remember Pig-Pen, the character straight from the old funny pages of Charles Schultz’s Charlie Brown? He’s hard to forget with that ever-present cloud of dust following him around. Charlie Brown once said, “He may be carrying the soil that trod upon by Solomon or Nebuchadnezzar or Genghis Khan!” It’s the same with us and our PII, except the cloud surrounding us, isn’t the dust of kings and conquerors, they’re motes of digital information that are of tremendously high value to crooks and bad actors—whether for purposes of identity theft or invasion of privacy.
With all PII we create and share on the internet, that calls for protecting it. Otherwise, our PII could fall into the hands of a hacker or identity thief and end up getting abused, in potentially painful and costly ways.
Here are several things you can do to help ensure that what’s private stays that way:
Square One is to protect your devices with comprehensive online protection software. This will defend you against the latest virus, malware, spyware, and ransomware attacks plus further protect your privacy and identity. In addition to this, it can also provide strong password protection by generating and automatically storing complex passwords to keep your credentials safer from hackers and crooks who may try to force their way into your accounts.
Further, security software can also include a firewall that blocks unwanted traffic from entering your home network, such as an attacker poking around for network vulnerabilities so that they can “break-in” to your computer and steal information.
Also known as a virtual private network, a VPN helps protect your vital PII and other data with bank-grade encryption. The VPN encrypts your internet connection to keep your online activity private on any network, even public networks. Using a public network without a VPN can increase your cybersecurity risk because others on the network can potentially spy on your browsing and activity.
If you’re new to the notion of using a VPN, check out this article on VPNs and how to choose one so that you can get the best protection and privacy possible.
In the U.S., the Social Security Number (SSN) is one of the most prized pieces of PII as it unlocks the door to employment, finances, and much more. First up, keep a close grip on it. Literally. Store your card in a secure location. Not your purse or wallet.
Certain businesses and medical practices may ask you for your SSN for billing purposes and the like. You don’t have to provide it (although some businesses could refuse service if you don’t), and you can always ask if they will accept some alternative form of information. However, there are a handful of instances where an SSN is a requirement. These include:
Be aware that hackers often get a hold of SSNs because the organization holding that information gets hacked or compromised itself. Minimizing how often you provide your SSN can offer an extra degree of protection.
Protecting your files with encryption is a core concept in data and information security, and thus it’s a powerful way to protect your PII. It involves transforming data or information into code that requires a digital key to access it in its original, unencrypted format. For example, McAfee Total Protection includes File Lock, which is our file encryption feature that lets you lock important files in secure digital vaults on your device.
Additionally, you can also delete sensitive files with an application such as McAfee Shredder, which securely deletes files so that thieves can’t access them. (Quick fact: deleting files in your trash doesn’t actually delete them in the truest sense. They’re still there until they’re “shredded” or otherwise overwritten such that they can’t be restored.)
Which Marvel Universe superhero are you? Does it really matter? After all, such quizzes and social media posts are often grifting pieces of your PII in a seemingly playful way. While you’re not giving up your SSN, you may be giving up things like your birthday, your pet’s name, your first car … things that people often use to compose their passwords or use as answers to common security questions on banking and financial sites. The one way to pass this kind of quiz is not to take it!
A far more direct form of separating you from your PII are phishing attacks. Posing as emails from known or trusted brands, financial institutions, or even a friend or family member a cybercrook’s phishing attack will attempt to trick you into sharing important information like your logins, account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on under the guise of providing customer service.
How do you spot such emails? Well, it’s getting a little tougher nowadays because scammers are getting more sophisticated and can make their phishing emails look nearly legitimate. However, there are several ways you can spot a phishing email and phony web pages as outlined here.
Comprehensive security offers another layer of prevention, in this case by offering browser protection like our own Web Advisor, which will alert you in the event you come across suspicious links and downloads that can steal your PII or otherwise expose you to attacks.
With social engineering attacks that deceive victims by posing as people the victim knows and the way we can sometimes overshare a little too much about our lives, you can see why a social media profile is a potential goldmine for cybercriminals.
Two things you can do to help protect your PII from being at risk via social media: one, think twice about what PII you might be sharing in that post or photo—like the location of your child’s school or the license plate on your car; two, set your profile to private so that only friends can see it. Review your privacy settings regularly to keep your profile information out of the public eye. And remember, nothing is 100% private on the internet. Never post anything you wouldn’t want to see shared.
The “S” stands for secure. Any time you are shopping, banking, or sharing any kind of PII, look for “https” at the start of the web address. Some browsers will also indicate HTTP by showing a small “lock” icon. Doing otherwise on plain HTTP sites exposes your PII for anyone who cares to monitor that site for unsecured connections.
By locking your devices, you protect yourself that much better from PII and data theft in the event your device is lost, stolen, or even left unattended for a short stretch. Use your password, PIN, facial recognition, thumbprint ID, what have you. Just lock your stuff. In the case of your smartphones, read up on how you can locate your phone or even wipe it remotely if you need to. Apple provides iOS users with a step-by-step guide for remotely wiping devices, and Google offers up a guide for Android users as well.
Theft of your PII can of course lead to credit cards and other accounts being opened falsely in your name. What’s more, it can sometimes be some time before you even become aware of it, until perhaps your credit score takes a hit or a bill collector comes calling. By checking your credit, you can address any issues that come up, as companies typically have a clear-cut process for contesting any fraud. You can get a free credit report in the U.S. via the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and likewise, other nations like the UK have similar free offerings as well.
Consider identity theft protection as well. A strong identity theft protection package pairs well with keeping track of your credit and offers cyber monitoring that scans the dark web to detect for misuse of your PII. With our identity protection service, we help relieve the burden of identity theft if the unfortunate happens to you with $1M coverage for lawyer fees, travel expenses, lost wages, and more.
The post Take It Personally: Ten Tips for Protecting Your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) appeared first on McAfee Blog.
This blog is part of our SOCwise series where we’ll be digging into all things related to SecOps from a practitioner’s point of view, helping us enable defenders to both build context and confidence in what they do.
Although there’s been a lot of chatter about supply chain attacks, we’re going to bring you a slightly different perspective. Instead of talking about the technique, let’s talk about what it means to a SOC and more importantly focusing on the SUNBURST attack, where the adversary leveraged a trusted application from SolarWinds.
Below you are going to see the riveting discussion between our very own Ismael Valenzuela and Michael Leland where they’ll talk about the supply chain hacks and the premise behind them. More importantly, why this one in particular was so successful. And lastly, they’ll cover best practices, hardening prevention, and early detection.
Michael: Ismael, let’s start by talking a little bit about what the common types of supply chain attacks. We know from past experience that they’ve primarily been software; though, it’s not unheard of to have hardware-based supply chain attacks as well. But really, it’s about hijacking or masquerading as a vendor or a trusted supplier and objecting malicious code into trusted, authorized applications. Sometimes even hijacking the certificate to make it look legitimate. And this last one was about injecting into third party libraries.
In relation to SUNBURST, it was a long game, right? This was an adversary long game attack where they had over 12 months to plan, stage, deploy, weaponize and reap the benefits. And we’re going to talk more about what they did, but more importantly, also how we as practitioners can leverage the sources of telemetry we have for both detection and hopefully future prevention. The first question that most people ask is, is this new and clearly this is not a new technique or tactic, but let’s talk a little bit about why this one was different.
Ismael: Right! The most interesting piece about SolarWinds is not that much of it is a supply chain attack because as you said, it’s true. It’s not new. We’ve seen similar things in the past. I know there’s a lot of controversy around some of them like Supermicro, we and many others over the last few years and it’s difficult to prove these types of attacks. But to me, the most interesting piece is not just how it got into the environment, but we talked about malicious updates into legitimate applications. For example, we’ve seen some of that in the past with modifying code on GitHub, right? Unprotected reports, attackers, threat actors are modifying the code.
We’re going to talk a little bit about what organizations can do to identify these but what I really want to highlight out of this is about the attackers, they have a plan right? They compromise the environment carefully, they stayed dormant for about two weeks, and after that, as we have seen in recent research, they started to deploy second stage payloads. The way they did that was very, very interesting, and its changing the game. It’s not radically new, but there’s always something new that we may have not seen before. And it’s important for defendants to understand these behaviors so they can start trying to detect them. In summary, they have a plan and we should ask ourselves if we have a plan for these type of attacks? Not only the initial vector but also what happens after that.
Michael: Let’s take a look at the timeline (figure 1 below) and talk about the story arc of what took place. I think the important thing is, again the adversary knew long before the attack long before the weaponization of the application, long before the deployment, they had this planned out. They knew they were going after a very specific vendor. In this case, SolarWinds knew as far back as 2018, early 2019, that they had a registration domain registered for it already. And they didn’t even give it a DNS look up until almost a year later. But the code application 2019 was weaponization in 2020. We’re talking about months almost a year of time passed, and they knew very well going into it what their intent was.
Ismael: Yep, absolutely. And as I mentioned before, even once they have the back door in place, the infamous DLL now stays dormant for two weeks. And then they start a careful reconnaissance discovery trying to find out where they are, what type of information they have around them, the users, and identity management. In some cases, we have seen them pivoting and stealing the tokens and credentials then pivoting to the cloud, all of that takes time. right? Which indicates that the attacker has a lot of knowledge on how to do these in a stealthy way. But if we think in terms of attack chains it also helps us to understand where we could have better opportunities to catch these types of activities.
Michael: We’ve set the stage to understand kind of what exactly took place and a lot of people have talked about the methodology and the attack life cycle. But they had a plan, they weren’t specifically advanced in the way they leveraged the tools. They were very specific about leveraging multiple somewhat novice or novel methods to make use of the vulnerability. More importantly, it was the amount of effort they put into planning also the amount of time they spent trying not to get seen, right. We look at telemetry all the time, whether it’s in a SIEM tool or EDR tool, and we need those pieces of telemetry that tell us what’s happening, and they were very stealthy in the way they were leveraging the techniques.
Let’s talk a little bit about what they did that was unique to this specific attack and then we’ll talk more about how we can better define our defenses and prevention around what we learned.
Ismael: Yep, absolutely! And one of the interesting things that we have seen recently is how they disassociated the stage one and stage two to make sure that stage one, the backdoor/DLL wasn’t going to be detected or burnt. So once again, you were talking about the long game. They were planning, they were architecting their attack for the long game. Even if you would find an artifact from a specific machine, it would be harder for you to trace that back to the original backdoor. So they would maintain persistency in the environment for quite some time. I know that this is not new necessarily. We have been telling defenders for a long time: You need to focus on finding persistency, because attackers, they need to stay in the environment.
We need to look at command and control but obviously these techniques are evolving. They went to great lengths to ensure that the artifacts, the indicators of compromise on each of these different systems for stage two, and at this point we know they use colon strike beacons. Each of these beacons were unique, not just for each organization, which would make sense but also for each computer within each organization. What does that mean for a SOC? Well, imagine you’re doing this and in response you find some odd behavior coming out of the machine, you look at the indicators and what are you going to do next…. scoping, right? Let’s see where else in my network. I’m seeing activity going into that domain to those IPS or those registry keys or that, you know, WMI consumer, for example. But the truth is that those indicators were not used anywhere else, not even in your environment. So that was interesting.
Michael: Given that we don’t have specific indicators that we could attribute to something malicious in that stage, what we do know is that they’re leveraging common protocols in an uncommon way. The majority of this tactic took place from a C2 perspective through the partial exfiltration being done using DNS. To the organizations that aren’t successfully or effectively monitoring the types of DNS traffic, the DNS taking place on non-standard ports or more quarterly, the volume of DNS that’s originating from machines that don’t typically have it and volume metric analysis can tell us a lot. If in fact, there’s some heuristic value that we can leverage to detect. What else should we be thinking about in terms of the protection side of things, an abuse of trust?
We trusted an application; we trusted a vendor. This was a clear abuse of that. Zero trust would be one methodology that can incorporate both micro-segmentation as well as explicit verification and more importantly, least trust methodology that we can ensure. I also think about the fact that we’re giving these applications rights and privileges to our environment and administrative privileges. We need to make sure that we’re monitoring both those accounts and service accounts that are being utilized by these applications; specifically, so that we can prescribe a domain, walls and barriers around what they have access to. What else can we do in terms of detection or providing visibility for these types of attacks?
Ismael: When we’re talking about a complicated or advanced attack, I like to think in terms of frameworks like the new cybersecurity framework, for example that talks about prevention, detection, and response but also identifying the risks and assets first. If you look at it from that perspective and look at an attack chain, even though some of the aspects of these attack were very advanced, there’s always limitations from the attacker perspective. There’s no such thing as the perfect attack, so be aware of the perfect attack fallacy. There’s always something the attacker’s going to do that can help you to detect them. With that in mind, think about putting the MITRE attack behaviors, tactics and the techniques on one side of the matrix and on the other side, like NIST cybersecurity framework identify, protect, detect.
Some of the things I would suggest is identifying the assets of risk, and I always talk about BCP. This is continuity planning. Sometimes we work in silos and we don’t leverage some of the information that can be in your organization that can point you to the crown jewel. You can’t protect everything, but you need to know what to protect and know how the information flows. For example, where are your soft spots, where are your vendors located on the network, your/their products, how do they get updated? It will be helpful for you to determine or define a defensible secure architecture that enforces it by trying to protect that…the flow of the data.
When protection fails, it could be a firewall rule that can be any type of protection. The attempts to bypass the firewalls can be turned into detections. Visibility is very important to have across your environment, that doesn’t mean to just manage devices, it also means the network, and endpoints, and servers. Attackers are going to go after the servers, the main controllers, right? Why? Because they want to steal those credentials, those identities used somewhere else and maybe pivot to the cloud. So having enough visibility across the network is important, which means having the camera’s point to the right places. That is when EDR or XDR can come into play, product that keep that telemetry and give you visibility of what’s going on and potentially detect the attack.
Michael: I think it’s important as we conclude our discussion to chat about the fact that telemetry can come in various flavors; more importantly, both real-time and historical telemetry that’s of significant value, not only in the detection side, but in the forensic investigation/scoping side, and understand exactly where an adversary may have landed. It’s not just having the telemetry accessible, it’s also sometimes the lack of telemetry. That’s the indicator that tells us when logging gets disabled on a device and we stop hearing from it then the SIEM starts seeing a gap in its visibility to a specific asset. That’s why combination of both real-time endpoint protection technologies deployed on both endpoints and servers, as well as the historical telemetry that we’re typically consuming in our analytics frameworks, and technologies like SIEM
Ismael: Absolutely, and to reiterate the point of finding those places where attackers are going to be, can be spotted more easily. If you look at the whole attack chain maybe the initial vector is harder to find, but start looking at how they got privileges, their escalation, and their persistence. Michael, you mentioned cleaning logs apparently were disabling the auditing logs by using auditpol on the endpoint or creating new firewall rules on the endpoints. If you consume these events, why would somebody disable the event logging temporarily by turning it off and then back on again after some time? Well, they were doing this for a reason.
Michael: Right. So we’re going to conclude our discussion, hopefully this was informative. Please subscribe to our Securing Tomorrow blog where you can keep up to date with all things SOC related and feel free to visit McAfee.com/SOCwise for more SOC material from our experts.
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