During COVID-19, people stuck inside have scoured the internet for content to consume – often searching for free entertainment (movies, TV shows, and music) to avoid any extra costs. As these habits increase, so do the potential cyberthreats associated with free internet content – making our fourteenth Most Dangerous Celebrities study more relevant than ever.
To conduct our Most Dangerous Celebrities 2020 study, McAfee researched famous individuals to reveal which celebrities generate the most “dangerous” results – meaning those whose search results bring potentially malicious content to expose fans’ personal information.
Known for his BAFTA-winning celebrity chat show and BBC radio show, the UK’s national treasure, Graham Norton, has found himself at the top of McAfee’s 2020 Most Dangerous Celebrities list.
Graham Norton is a household name thanks to his hugely popular talk show, The Graham Norton Show, which has seen him interview A-listers including Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Helen Mirren. He is also known for his BBC radio show, as well as his inimitable Eurovision commentary. Not shy of celebrity friends, Norton is joined in the top ten list by fellow national treasures such as Ricky Gervais (No.2), and Idris Elba (No.7) and Mary Berry (no.10). Also included in the top ten list are British actor Tom Hardy (No.3) and Gavin and Stacey star, Ruth Jones (No.4). Rounding out the rest of the top ten are UK’s very own Mick Jagger (No.5), Aussie actress Margot Robbie (No.6) and models Kate Moss (No.8) and Bella Hadid (No.9).
Many consumers don’t realize that simple internet searches of their favorite celebrities could potentially lead to malicious content, as cybercriminals often leverage these popular searches to entice fans to click on dangerous links. This year’s study emphasizes that consumers are increasingly searching for content, especially as they look for new forms of entertainment to stream amidst a global pandemic.
With a greater emphasis on streaming culture, consumers could potentially be led astray to malicious websites while looking for celebrity gossip and new shows or movies to watch. For example, given Graham is strongly associated with malicious search terms, indicates that online criminals are using Britain’s love for celebrity gossip and the Eurovision for personal gain. If an unsuspecting user clicks on a malicious link while searching for their favorite celebrity film, their device could suddenly become plagued with adware or malware.
Whether you and your family are checking out your new favorite actress in her latest film or streaming a popular singer’s new album, it’s important to ensure that your searches aren’t potentially putting your online security at risk. Follow these tips so you can be a proactive fan while safeguarding your digital life:
Users looking for information on their favorite celebrities should be cautious and only click on links to reliable sources for downloads. The safest thing to do is to wait for official releases instead of visiting third-party websites that could contain malware.
Refrain from using illegal streaming sites
When it comes to dangerous online behavior, using illegal streaming sites could wreak havoc on your device. Many illegal streaming sites are riddled with malware or adware disguised as pirated video files. Do yourself a favor and stream the show from a reputable source.
Safeguard yourself from cybercriminals with a comprehensive security solution like McAfee Total Protection. This can help protect you from malware, phishing attacks, and other threats.
Use a website reputation tool such as McAfee WebAdvisor, which alerts users when they are about to visit a malicious site.
Kids are fans of celebrities too, so ensure that limits are set for your child on their devices and use parental control software to help minimize exposure to potentially malicious or inappropriate websites.
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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October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which is led by the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in conjunction with the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA)—a national non-profit focused on cybersecurity education & awareness. McAfee is pleased to announce that we’re a proud participant.
We live in a day and age when even lightbulbs can be hacked.
Perhaps you’ve caught the stories in the news: various devices like home cameras, smart appliances, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices falling prey to hackers and attacks, such as when the Mirai botnet took out large swathes of the internet in 2016. As posted by Statista, estimates project that the world will have nearly 40 billion IoT devices in the next five years and upwards of 50 billion by 2030. That’s in homes and businesses alike, ranging anywhere from digital assistants, smart watches, medical devices, thermostats, vehicle fleet management devices, smart locks, and yes, even the humble lightbulb—and like our computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets, they all need to be protected.
The reason is simple: your network is only as safe as the weakest device that’s on it. And we’re putting so much more on our networks than ever before. In effect, that means our homes have more targets for hackers than ever before as well. In the hands of a dedicated crook, one poorly protected device can open the door to your entire network—much like a thief stealing a bike by prying open the weak link in a chain lock. Therefore, so goes the saying, “If You Connect It, Protect It.”
What’s challenging is that our IoT devices don’t always lend themselves to the same sort of protections like our computers, laptops, and phones do. For example, you can’t actually install security software directly on them. However, there are things you can do to protect those devices, and the network they’re on too.
Just because that new smart device that’s caught your eye can connect to the internet doesn’t mean that it’s secure. Before you purchase, read up on reviews and comments from other customers. Look for news articles about the device manufacturer too. The fact of the matter is that some IoT device manufacturers are much better at baking security protocols into their devices than others, so look into their track record to see if you can uncover any issues with their products or security practices. Information such as this can help you make an even more informed choice.
One issue with many IoT devices is that they often come with a default username and password. This could mean that your device, and thousands of others just like it, all share the same credentials, which makes it painfully easy for a hacker to gain access to them as those default usernames and passwords are often published online.
When you purchase an IoT device, set a fresh password using a strong method of password creation. And keep those passwords safe. Instead of keeping them on a notebook or on sticky notes, consider using a password manager. It acts as a database for all your passwords and stores new codes as you create them. As always, don’t store them in an unprotected file on your computer, which can be subject to a hack or data loss.
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.
Your router acts as the internet’s gateway into your home. From there, it works as a hub that connects all of your devices—computers, tablets, and phones, along with your IoT devices as well. That means it’s vital to keep your router secure. A quick word about routers: you typically access them via a browser window and a specific address that’s usually printed somewhere on your router. If you’re renting your router or you’ve purchased it through your internet provider, they should have help documentation that can guide you through this the process. Likewise, if you purchased your own, your manual should provide the guidance you need.
As we mentioned above, the first thing to do is change the default password and name of your router if you haven’t done so already. Again, use a strong method of password creation. Also, change the name of your router. When you choose a new one, go with name that doesn’t give away your address or identity. Something unique and even fun like “Pizza Lovers” or “The Internet Warehouse” are options that mask your identity and are memorable for you too. While you’re making that change, you can also check that your router is using an encryption method, like WPA2, which will keep your signal secure. If you’re unsure, reach out to your internet provider or check the documentation that came with your router.
Just as you can offer your guests secure access that’s separate from your own devices, creating an additional network on your router allows you to keep your computers and smartphones separate from IoT devices. This way, if an IoT device is compromised, a hacker will still have difficulty accessing your other devices, like computers and smartphones, along with the data and info that you have stored on them. You may also want to consider investing in an advanced internet router that has built-in protection and can secure and monitor any device that connects to your network.
Another line of defense that can hamper hackers is using a 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.
As with our computers, laptops, phones, tablets, and apps, make sure you have the latest software updates for your IoT devices. The reasons here are the same: one, they’ll make sure you’re getting the latest functionality from your device; and two, updates often contain security upgrades. If there’s a setting that lets you receive automatic updates, enable it so that you always have the latest.
You’ve probably seen that you can control a lot of your connected things with your smartphone. We’re using them to set the temperature, turn our lights on and off, and even see who’s at the front door. With that, it seems like we can add the label “universal remote control” our smartphones—so protecting our phones has become yet more important. Whether you’re an Android owner or iOS owner, get security software installed on your phone so you can protect all the things it accesses and controls—in addition to you and the phone as well.
And of course, let’s not forget our computers and laptops. While we’ve been primarily talking about IoT devices here, it’s a good reminder that computers and laptops need protection too. Using a strong 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, and look out for your privacy too.
We’re connecting our homes and ourselves with IoT devices at an tremendous rate—now at an average of 10 connected devices in our homes in the U.S. Gone by are the days when all we had was a computer or phone or two to look after. Now, even when we’re not in front of a laptop or have a smartphone in our hand, we’re still online, nearly all the time. Take this week to make sure that what you’ve connected is protected. Even that little lightbulb.
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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October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which is led by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA)—a national non-profit focused on cybersecurity education & awareness in conjunction with the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). McAfee is pleased to announce that we’re a proud participant.
If there’s ever a year to observe Cybersecurity Awareness Month, this is it.
As millions worked, schooled, and simply entertained themselves at home (and continue to do so) this year, internet usage increased by up to 70%. Not surprisingly, cybercriminals followed. Looking at our threat dashboard statistics for the year so far, you’ll see:
And that doesn’t account for the millions of other online scams, ransomware, malicious sites, and malware out there in general—of which COVID-19-themed attacks are just a small percentage.
With such a high reliance on the internet right now, 2020 is an excellent year to observe Cybersecurity Awareness Month, along with its focus on what we can do collectively to stay safer together in light of today’s threats.
Unified under the hashtag #BeCyberSmart, Cybersecurity Awareness Month calls on individuals and organizations alike to take charge of protecting their slice of cyberspace. The aim, above making ourselves safer, is to make everyone safer by having us do our part to make the internet safer for all. In the words of the organizers, “If everyone does their part – implementing stronger security practices, raising community awareness, educating vulnerable audiences or training employees, our interconnected world will be safer and more resilient for everyone.”
Throughout October, we’re participating as well. Here in our blogs and across our broad and ongoing efforts to boost everyone’s awareness and expertise in cybersecurity and simply staying safe online, we’ll be supporting one key theme each week:
If you’ve kept up with our blogs, this is a theme you’ll know well. The idea behind “If you connect it, protect it” is that the line between our lives online and offline gets blurrier every day. For starters, the average person worldwide spends nearly 7 hours a day online thanks in large part to mobile devices and the time we spend actively connected on our computers. However, we’re also connecting our homes with Internet of Things (IoT) devices—all for an average of 10 connected devices in our homes in the U.S. So even when we don’t have a device in our hand, we’re still connected.
With this increasing number of connections comes an increasing number of opportunities—and challenges. During this weel, we’ll take a look at how internet-connected devices have impacted our lives and how you can take steps that reduce your risk.
As we shared at the open of this article, this year saw a major disruption in the way we work, learn, and socialize online. There’s no question that our reliance on the internet, a safe internet, is greater than before. And that calls for a fresh look at the way people and businesses look at security.
This week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month will focus on steps users and organizations can take to protect internet connected devices for both personal and professional use, all in light of a whole new set of potential vulnerabilities that are taking root.
Earlier this year, one of our articles on telemedicine reported that 39% of North Americans and Europeans consulted a doctor or health care provider online for the first time in 2020. stand as just one example of the many ways that the healthcare industry has embraced connected care. Another noteworthy example comes in the form of internet-connected medical devices, which are found inside care facilities and even worn by patients as they go about their day.
As this trend in medicine has introduced numerous benefits, such as digital health records, patient wellness apps, and more timely care, it’s also exposed the industry to vulnerabilities that cyber criminals regularly attempt to exploit. Here we’ll explore this topic and share what steps both can take do their part and #BeCyberSmart.
The growing trend of homeowners and businesses alike connecting all manner of things across the Internet of Things (IoT) continues. In our homes, we have smart assistants, smart security systems, smart door locks, and numerous other home IoT devices that all need to be protected. Businesses manage their fleets, optimize their supply chain, and run their HVAC systems with IoT devices, which also beg protection too as hackers employ new avenues of attack, such as GPS spoofing. And these are just a fraction of the applications that we can mention as the world races toward a predicted 50 billion IoT devices by 2030.
As part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’ll look at the future of connected devices and how both people and businesses can protect themselves, their operations, and others.
As Cybersecurity Awareness Month ramps up, it presents an opportunity for each of us to take a look at our habits and to get a refresher on things we can do right now to keep ourselves, and our internet, a safer place. This brief list should give you a great start, along with a catalog of articles on identity theft, family safety, mobile & IoT security, and our regularly updated consumer threat notices.
Given the dozens of accounts you need to protect—from your social media accounts to your financial accounts—coming up with strong passwords can take both time and effort. Rather than keeping them on scraps of paper or in a notebook (and absolutely not on an unprotected file on your computer), consider using a password manager. It acts as a database for all your passwords and stores new codes as you create them. With just a single password, you can access all the tools your password manager offers.
Phishing scams like these are an old standard. If you receive an email or text from an unknown person or party that asks you to download software, share personal information, or take some kind of action, don’t click on anything. This will steer you clear of any scams or malicious content.
However, more sophisticated phishing attacks can look like they’re actually coming from a legitimate organization. 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. Also, you can hover over the link and get a link preview. If the URL looks suspicious, delete the message and move on.
Avoid hackers infiltrating your network by using a VPN, which allows you to send and receive data while encrypting – or scrambling – your information so others can’t read it. By helping to protect your network, VPNs also prevent hackers from accessing other devices (work or personal) connected to your Wi-Fi.
In addition, use a robust security software like McAfee® Total Protection, which helps to defend your entire family from the latest threats and malware while providing safe web browsing.
At a time where data breaches occur and our identity is at risk of being stolen, checking your credit is a habit to get into. Aside from checking your existing accounts for false charges, checking your credit can spot if a fraudulent account has been opened in your name.
It’s a relatively straightforward process. In the U.S., the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires credit reporting agencies to provide you with a free credit check at least once every 12 months. Get your free credit report here from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Other nations provide similar services, such as the free credit reports for UK customers.
To track malicious pandemic-related campaigns, McAfee Advanced Programs Group (APG) has published a COVID-19 Threat Dashboard, which includes top threats leveraging the pandemic, most targeted verticals and countries, and most utilized threat types and volume over time. The dashboard is updated daily at 4pm ET.
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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If you’re thinking career change or career shift, there’s a field that has an estimated 4 million jobs open. Cybersecurity.
According to survey and research data from the International Cybersecurity Organization (ICS)2, there’s a cybersecurity workforce gap—a terrifically high volume of jobs left unfilled. Published in 2019, the gap they identified looked like this:
Needless to say, there’s opportunity in the field for both technical and non-technical roles.
Here’s an important thing to keep in mind about cybersecurity:, it’s not solely about understanding technology. It’s about understanding people too and how people and technology interact.
The moment you see cybersecurity through that broader lens, you can see how the field opens widely to encompass a range of roles. Of course, there are analysts and engineers, yet it also includes other roles like digital forensics and cyber investigation, healthcare information security, cryptography, and even cyber law. Additionally, there’s needed expertise in the realms of privacy, governance, ethics, and even digital ethics. And if you take a role with a security company such as ours, the opportunity further extends to positions in account management, marketing, and operations. (In fact, you can drop by our careers page for a look at our current openings and what workday life is like around here.)
There are plenty of reasons. Above that data published in 2019, our unprecedented reliance on the internet to work, learn, and stay connected in 2020, demand for cybersecurity jobs is yet more so on the rise. As so many of us turned increasingly to the internet to get through our day, the same is true for hackers and crooks.
With that, let’s take a quick look at several of the factors working in your favor as you consider a change.
We’ve all seen the news stories of major breaches at big retailers, credit reporting agencies, hotels, and even healthcare providers. It’s not just the private sector that’s been grappling with cybersecurity concerns, there’s need in the public sector as well—like municipalities. In all, every organization needs cybersecurity (just as we all need cybersecurity for our homes), and thus there’s plenty of opportunity out there. Using just one of the many possible cybersecurity roles as an example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 32% increase in demand for information security analysts through 2028—which is far higher than the average of other professions.
In fact, the same (ICS)2 survey discovered that only 42% of current cybersecurity pros said that their first job after higher education was in the field of cybersecurity. In other words, the majority of cybersecurity pros ended up that way by some means of career shift or change. And they got there through certifications and training rather than by way of a degree from a college or university.
Our own Chief Human Resources Officer, Chatelle Lynch, put it quite well in an interview with Business Insider just a few weeks ago: “It’s no secret that the demand for cybersecurity staff has steadily grown over the past decade,” she says. “This means opportunity, so if you don’t have a degree, don’t let that slow you down. You may have unique work experience or relevant certifications, alternative learning, or transferable skills that you need to make sure you highlight when applying and interviewing.”
For example, she goes on to say that prior military service, IT experience, and volunteer or hobbyist activities (even online gaming) are a good foundation for cybersecurity roles.
These skills absolutely apply, and they’re sought after skills as well. The ability to work independently, lead projects, write and document well, and particularly strong people skills are vital for a role where you’ll be interfacing with numerous individuals, departments, and business units. Likewise, as called out above, certain roles focus more on the non-technical side of security solutions.
The beauty of making a career change to cybersecurity is that there are plenty of ways you can get it done at home and on your time.
If you’re just getting started, you can test the waters for free or at relatively low cost with a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) that gives you the basics on cybersecurity. Future Learn’s “Introduction to Cybersecurity” from The Open University is one example of an intro program, as is the University of Michigan’s “Securing Digital Democracy” class that’s offered through Coursera.
If you’re already an IT pro or have a strong technical background, there are similar MOOC courses available that cater to your current level of knowledge and skill. The University of Maryland’s “Cybersecurity Specialization” and “Usable Security” are geared accordingly.
For a list of cybersecurity programs available online, drop by CyberDegrees.org. Their listing is one of many good places to start.
Other free and low-cost avenues out there include subscribing to some security bloggers, grabbing some hands-on work with coding and IT networking fundamentals from online learning companies like Udemy, Codecademy, and Khan Academy, or joining some online cybersecurity groups for a little professional networking. In all, there’s plenty of opportunity to learn from others, both in structured class settings and in more unstructured peer and mentorship relationships.
When you’re ready to start your job search, there’s a good chance that your interview will be conducted online. Online interviews have been part of the job-hunting landscape for a few years now, yet with many employers enacting work from home measures, it’s the way hiring gets done right now. I expect this to continue, as employers have embraced its many benefits, particularly in the early stages of interviews. If the prospect of an online interview is new to you, I put together a pair of articles this spring that can help.
As you make the jump, here’s the most important thing you’ll need: a love of technology and a desire to protect the people who use it. If you can combine a drive to understand both technology and people better with the further drive to see it all through, you’ll be well on your way. Like any career shift or change, there’s work ahead, yet it’s my impression that our field is a welcoming and supportive one—and very much on a keen lookout for new talent.
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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With millions of people continuing to work and study remotely, scammers have followed them home—generating an average of 375 new threats per minute so far this year. In response, our enhanced consumer portfolio directly addresses the new needs and new threats people face.
McAfee Labs found that these new threats via malicious apps, phishing campaigns malware, and more, according to its McAfee COVID-19 Threat Report: July 2020, which amounted to an estimated $130 million in total losses in the U.S. alone.
To help people stay safer and combat these threats, today we announced our latest consumer security portfolio. Our enriched products come with better user experiences such as a native Virtual Private Network (VPN), along with new features, including integrated Social Media and Tech Scam Protection—all of which are pressing security essentials today.
Specifically, our product lineup has been updated to include:
Scams involving tech support and product activation have continued to sneak into people’s inboxes and search results, which require a critical eye to spot. Here are some tips on how to identify these scams. We’re making it easier for people to stay safer with new features such as:
With jobs and things that simply need to get done “right now,” security can be an afterthought. Sometimes that desire for convenience has consequences, leading to situations where people’s devices, data, and personal information get compromised. In response, we’re doing our part to make security more intuitive so that people can get things done quickly and safely:
With people’s newfound reliance on the internet, we’ve made new advances that help them live their increasingly connected lives—looking after security and privacy even more comprehensively than before on security and the apps they use:
McAfee is on a journey to ensure security allows users to be as carefree as possible online, now that more time is spent on devices as consumers navigate a new normal of life from home. For more information on our consumer product lineup, visit https://www.mcafee.com/en-us/antivirus/mcafee-total-protection.html
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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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.
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Introduction Building and maintaining a brand is an important part of a successful business. Having a recognized brand confers recognition, and if done well, provides a way of developing trust between customers and company. Brand trust and loyalty go hand-in-hand. Research has shown that 80% of US customers look at the trustworthiness of a brand […]
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Introduction: An overview of the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework In 2017, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published Special Publication 800-181, the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (or NICE Framework); the document categorizes and describes cybersecurity work as well as the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) needed by professionals to complete tasks in the […]
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Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one of the most popular authentication security solutions available to organizations today. It really comes as no surprise, as the multi-factor authentication benefits of enhanced security go beyond the basic password security measures by forcing the user to authenticate with another method that (presumably) only the legitimate user has access to. […]
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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.
Introduction Confidentiality is a fundamental information security principle. According to ISO 27001, it is defined as ensuring that information is not made available or disclosed to unauthorized individuals, entities or processes. There are several security controls designed specifically to enforce confidentiality requirements, but one of the oldest and best known is the use of passwords. […]
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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.
Introduction CAPTCHA seems to be everywhere we look. These sloppy characters are on blogs, ticket websites, shopping portals — you name it. Those cars you need to spot in a block of images before you can access a website? That’s CAPTCHA too. CAPTCHA was invented to help sites distinguish human users from bots and automated […]
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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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Coronavirus has caused a major shift to our working patterns. In many cases these will long outlast the pandemic. But working from home has its own risks. One is that you may invite ransomware attacks from a new breed of cyber-criminal who has previously confined his efforts to directly targeting the corporate network. Why? Because as a remote worker, you’re increasingly viewed as a soft target—the open doorway to extorting money from your employer.
So how does ransomware land up on your front doorstep? And what can a home worker do to shut that door?
The new ransomware trends
Last year, Trend Micro detected over 61 million ransomware-related threats, a 10% increase from 2018 figures. But things have only gotten worse from there. There has been a 20% spike in ransomware detections globally in the first half of 2020, rising to 109% in the US. And why is that?
At a basic level, ransomware searches for and encrypts most of the files on a targeted computer, so as to make them unusable. Victims are then asked to pay a ransom within a set time frame in order to receive the decryption key they need to unlock their data. If they don’t, and they haven’t backed-up this data, it could be lost forever.
The trend of late, however, has been to focus on public and private sector organizations whose staff are working from home (WFH). The rationale is that remote workers are less likely to be able to defend themselves from ransomware attacks, while they also provide a useful stepping-stone into high-value corporate networks. Moreover, cybercriminals are increasingly looking to steal sensitive data before they encrypt it, even as they’re more likely to fetch a higher ransom for their efforts than they do from a typical consumer, especially if the remote employee’s data is covered by cyber-insurance.
Home workers are also being more targeted for a number of reasons:
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What’s the attack profile of the remote working threat?
In short, the bad guys are now looking to gain entry to the corporate network you may be accessing from home via a VPN, or to the cloud-hosted systems you use for work or sharing files, in order to first steal and then encrypt company data with ransomware as far and wide as possible into your organization. But the methods are familiar. They’ll
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How can I prevent ransomware when working from home?
The good news is that you, the remote worker, can take some relatively straightforward steps up front to help mitigate the cascading risks to your company posed by the new ransomware. Try the following:
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How Trend Micro can help
In short, to close the cyber front door to ransomware, you need to protect your home network and all your endpoints (laptops, PCs, mobile devices) to be safe. Trend Micro can help via
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With these tools, you, the remote worker, can help shut the front door to ransomware, protecting your work, devices, and company from data theft and encryption for ransom.
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When we published our 2020 Predictions report in December, we didn’t realize there was a global pandemic brewing that would give cybercriminals an almost daily news cycle to take advantage of in their attacks against people and organizations around the world. Malicious actors have always taken advantage of big news to use as lures for socially engineered threats, but these events tend to be fairly short news cycles.
When Covid-19 started making headlines in early 2020, we started seeing new threats using this in the attacks. As you see below, April was the peak month for email-based Covid-19 related threats.
The same was true for phishing URLs related to Covid-19, but for files using Covid-19 in their naming convention, the peak month in the first half was June.
Impact on Cybercrime
The constant 24×7 news around cases, cures and vaccines makes this pandemic unique for cybercriminals. Also, the shift to remote working and the challenges posed to supply chains all gave cybercriminals new content they could use as lures to entice victims into infecting themselves.
As we’ve seen for many years now, email-based threats were the most used threat vector by malicious actors, which makes sense as the number one infection vector to penetrate an organization’s network is to use a socially engineered email against an employee.
We even saw malicious mobile apps being developed using Covid-19 as a lure, as you see below.
In this case it was supporting potential cures for the virus, which many people would have wanted.
Other Highlights in 1H 2020
While Covid-19 dominated the threat landscape in the 1H 2020, it wasn’t the only thing that defined it. Ransomware actors continued their attacks against organizations, but as we’ve been seeing over the past year, they’ve become much more selective in their victims. The spray and pray model using spam has been shifted to a more targeted approach, similar to how nation-state actors and APT groups perform their attacks. Two things showcase this trend:
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Home network attacks are another interesting aspect of the threat landscape in the first half of this year. We have millions of home routers around the world that give us threat data on events coming into and out of home networks.
Threat actors are taking advantage of more remote workers by launching more attacks against these home networks. As you see below, the first half of 2020 saw a marked increase in attacks.
Many of these attacks are brute force login attempts as actors try to obtain login credentials for routers and devices within the home network, which can allow them to do further damage.
The above are only a small number of security events and trends we saw in just six months of 2020. Our full roundup of the security landscape so far this year is detailed out in our security roundup report – Securing the Pandemic-Disrupted Workplace. You can read about all we found to help prepare for many of the threats we will continue to see for the rest of the year.
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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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Welcome to the new normal. We’re all now living in a post-COVID-19 world characterized by uncertainty, mass home working and remote learning. The lines demarcating normal life have shifted abruptly – perhaps never to return. That’s not the worst that can happen, as we all know, but it does mean we all need to get used to new ways of living, working and studying from home. This has major implications for the online safety, security and privacy of our families.
To help you adapt to these new conditions while protecting what matters most, Trend Micro has developed a two-part blog series on “The New Normal.” Part 1 identifies the scope and specific cyber-threats of the new normal. Part 2 provides security tips and products to help address those threats.
In April, nearly 300 million Americans were estimated to be in government-mandated lockdown. Even as some businesses, municipalities and states begin to relax these rules, experts have warned of subsequent waves of the virus, which could result in new localized lockdowns. In short, a lot of people will continue to work from home, while their children, also at home, attempt to study remotely from their mobile devices.
This has considerable implications for how we spend our time. Without that morning commute to work or school, more of it than ever will involve sitting in front of a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone screen. Even the smart TV is enlisted. Dangers include
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Unfortunately, the increase in working from home (WFH), especially for those not used to it, may lead to an increase in risky behavior, such as: using non-approved apps for work; visiting non work-related sites on work devices; and using personal devices to access work resources. Recent global Trend Micro research found that:
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This is not about restricting your freedom to visit the sites you want to visit while at home. It’s about reducing the risk of exposing corporate data and systems to possible malware.
Unsurprisingly, there has also been a major uptick in the volume of cyber-threats targeting home users. With a captive audience to aim at, it’s a huge opportunity for cyber-criminals to steal your log-ins and personal data to sell to fraudsters, or even to steal corporate passwords and information for a potentially bigger pay-off. They are helped by the fact that many home workers may be more distracted than they usually would be at the office, especially if they have young children. Your kids may even share the same laptops or PCs as you, potentially visiting risky sites and/or downloading unapproved apps.
There’s also a chance that, unless you have a corporate machine at home, your personal computing equipment is less secure than the kit you had in the office. Add to that the fact that support from the IT department may be less forthcoming than usual, given that stretched teams are overwhelmed with requests, while themselves struggling to WFH. One recent report claimed that nearly half (47%) of IT security pros have been taken off some or all of their typical security tasks to support other IT-related jobs. In another, only 59% of respondents said they believe their cybersecurity team has the right tools and resources at home to perform their job effectively.
It’s time to step up and take security into your own hands. Stay on the lookout for the following threats.
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So what’s a remote worker/concerned parent to do to protect themselves and the family in the midst of the “new normal?”
Read Part 2 in this mini-series, which we’re publishing simultaneously with Part 1, where we share some best practice advice on how to keep your digital lives and work systems safe from online threats during lockdown—and where we provide tools to help you do just that.
The post Top Tips For Home Cybersecurity And Privacy In A Coronavirus-Impacted World (Part 1) appeared first on .
The past few months have seen radical changes to our work and home life under the Coronavirus threat, upending norms and confining millions of American families within just four walls. In this context, it’s not surprising that more of us are spending an increasing portion of our lives online. But this brings with it some familiar cyber-risks. In Part 1 of this mini-series, we explained how cyber-criminals are looking to capitalize on these sweeping changes to society to further their own ends.
Now let’s take a look at what you can do to protect your family, your data, and access to your corporate accounts.
The bad guys are laser-focused on stealing your personal data and log-ins and increasingly see the remote worker as an easy target for leapfrogging into corporate networks. That’s not to mention the potential internet safety risks inherent in bored kids spending more time in front of their screens. To respond, you’ll need to create an equally focused “home security plan” governed by sensible policies and best practices. Here are some of the key areas to consider.
Protect your smart home and router
Increasingly, unprotected smart home devices are being targeted by cyber-criminals to turn into botnets to attack others. They might also provide sophisticated attackers with a stepping-stone into your corporate systems, via the home network. The home router, with its known flaws, is (after the modem) the digital front door to the smart home and the basis for your networking, so it should be first in any security strategy. Consider the following when tackling home network security:
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Secure your home office
Cyber-criminals are primed to take advantage of distracted home workers and potentially less secure PCs/devices. Secure this environment by doing the following:
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Stay safe from phishing
Phishing is the number one tactic used by attackers to trick you into installing malware or handing over your log-ins. Emails, text messages, social media messages and more are spoofed to appear as if sent by a legitimate company or contact. In response:
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Use video conferencing safely
New videoconferencing platforms can introduce risk, especially if you’re not familiar with the default settings. Here’s how to stay safe when video conferencing:
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Stay safe shopping and banking
Next, protect your financial information and stay safe from e-commerce fraud by doing the following:
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Think about online safety for kids
They may be under your roof for more hours of the day than usual, but your children are also likely to be spending more time online. That means you need to have a measured conversation with them about internet safety, backed up with parental controls. Consider the following:
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Mobile security best practices
Finally, sheltering at home has limits, particularly for restless kids. When they go to the store or out to the park, facemasks notwithstanding, they’re likely going to use their mobile devices, just as they’ll continue to do at home. Of course, you’re not exempt either from mobile threats. Ensure mobile security by
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When it comes to protecting the home from security and privacy threats during lockdown, leave no stone unturned. Cyber-criminals will always look for the weak link in the chain and focus their efforts there. Network security is important, but it doesn’t replace the need for protection on each individual device. You’ll need to cover your router, network, smart devices, and all endpoints (PCs, laptops, mobiles and other devices). Here’s how Trend Micro can help:
Trend Micro Home Network Security
Trend Micro Home Network Security provides industry-leading protection against any threats to internet-connected devices in the home. The solution
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Trend Micro Security (PC and Mac)
Trend Micro Security, available in various editions (led by Trend Micro Maximum Security), is Trend’s flagship endpoint security product for consumers. Available for both PCs and Macs, it features AI learning to stop advanced threats. Among a wide range of protections, it includes:
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Trend Micro Mobile Security:
Trend Micro Mobile Security provides endpoint security for all your mobile devices, whether Android or iOS-based.
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Additional Trend Micro Tools:
Network and endpoint security should be supplemented with tools that accomplish specific tasks, such as protecting your internet connections, your passwords, and your identity data. Trend Micro provides
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Maintaining your family’s security and privacy on all their devices during the coronavirus lockdown above all means changing your mindset, to take into account the mix of work and play in the household during the “new normal.” Use these tips and tools during lockdown and you’ll be well on your way to ensuring you and your family’s safety from malicious viruses—both digital and natural.
The post Top Tips For Home Cybersecurity And Privacy In A Coronavirus-Impacted World (Part 2) appeared first on .
Ransomware is Still a Blight on Business
Trends come and go with alarming regularity in cybersecurity. Yet a persistent menace over the past few years has been ransomware. Now mainly targeting organizations rather than consumers, and with increasingly sophisticated tools and tactics at their disposal, the cybercriminals behind these campaigns have been turning up the heat during the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s why we need industry partnerships like No More Ransom.
Celebrating its fourth anniversary this week, the initiative has helped over four million victims fight the scourge of ransomware, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. At Trend Micro, we’re proud to have played a major part, helping to decrypt over 77 million files for victims.
Not going anywhere
Ransomware has been with us for years, but only really hit the mainstream after the global WannaCry and NotPetya incidents of 2017. Unfortunately, that was just the start. Today, no sector is safe. We saw attacks rage across US municipalities, school districts and hospitals in 2019. Most recently, a major outage at a connected technology giant impacted everything from consumer fitness trackers to on-board flight systems.
Such attacks can hit victim organizations hard. There are serious reputational and financial repercussions from major service outages, and the stakes have been raised even further as attackers now often steal data before encrypting victims’ files. A recent incident at a US cloud computing provider has led to data compromise at over 20 universities and charities in the UK and North America, for example. A separate ransomware attack on a managed service provider earlier this year may cost it up to $70m.
The bad guys have shown no sign of slowing down during the pandemic — quite the reverse. Even as hospitals have been battling to save the lives of patients battling COVID-19, they’ve been targeted by ransomware designed to lock mission-critical systems.
No More Ransom
That’s why we need to celebrate public-private partnerships like No More Ransom, which provides helpful advice for victims and a free decryption tool repository. Over the past four years it has helped 4.2 million visitors from 188 countries, preventing an estimated $632 million in ransom demands finding its way into the pockets of cyber-criminals.
At Trend Micro, we’re proud to have been an associate partner from the very start, contributing our own decryption tools to the scores available today to unlock 140 separate ransomware types. Since the start of No More Ransom, Trend Micro tools have been downloaded nearly half a million times, helping over 50,000 victims globally to decrypt more than 77 million files. We simply can’t put a price on this kind of intervention.
https://www.europol.europa.eu/publications-documents/infographic-4th-anniversary-no-more-ransom
Yet while the initiative is a vital response to the continued threat posed by ransomware, it is not all we can do. To truly beat this menace, we need to educate organizations all over the planet to improve their resilience to such malware threats. That means taking simple steps such as:
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I’m also speaking on a panel today hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on NotPetya and general ransomware attack trends related to the pandemic. Join us to learn more about ransomware from law enforcement agencies, policy makers and businesses.
If your organization has been impacted by ransomware, check the resources available on https://www.nomoreransom.org/ for advice and access to the free decryption tool repository.
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Cloud computing has revolutionized the IT world, making it easier for companies to deploy infrastructure and applications and deliver their services to the public. The idea of not spending millions of dollars on equipment and facilities to host an on-premises data center is a very attractive prospect to many. And certainly, moving resources to the cloud just has to be safer, right? The cloud provider is going to keep our data and applications safe for sure. Hackers won’t stand a chance. Wrong. More commonly than anyone should, I often hear this delusion from many customers. The truth of the matter is, without proper configuration and the right skillsets administering the cloud presence, as well as practicing common-sense security practices, cloud services are just (if not more) vulnerable.
The Shared Responsibility Model
Before going any further, we need to discuss the shared responsibility model of the cloud service provider and user.
When planning your migration to the cloud, one needs to be aware of which responsibilities belong to which entity. As the chart above shows, the cloud service provider is responsible for the cloud infrastructure security and physical security of such. By contrast, the customer is responsible for their own data, the security of their workloads (all the way to the OS layer), as well as the internal network within the companies VPC’s.
One more pretty important aspect that remains in the hands of the customer is access control. Who has access to what resources? This is really no different than it’s been in the past, exception being the physical security of the data center is handled by the CSP as opposed to the on-prem security, but the company (specifically IT and IT security) are responsible for locking down those resources efficiently.
Many times, this shared responsibility model is overlooked, and poor assumptions are made the security of a company’s resources. Chaos ensues, and probably a firing or two.
So now that we have established the shared responsibility model and that the customer is responsible for their own resource and data security, let’s take a look at some of the more common security issues that can affect the cloud.
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 is a truly great service from Amazon Web Services. Being able to store data, host static sites or create storage for applications are widely used use cases for this service. S3 buckets are also a prime target for malicious actors, since many times they end up misconfigured.
One such instance occurred in 2017 when Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense contractor for the United States, was pillaged of battlefield imagery as well as administrator credentials to sensitive systems.
Yet another instance occurred in 2017, when due to an insecure Amazon S3 bucket, the records of 198 million American voters were exposed. Chances are if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance this breach got you.
A more recent breach of an Amazon S3 bucket (and I use the word “breach,” however most of these instances were a result of poor configuration and public exposure, not a hacker breaking in using sophisticated techniques) had to do with the cloud storage provider “Data Deposit Box.” Utilizing Amazon S3 buckets for storage, a configuration issue caused the leak of more than 270,000 personal files as well as personal identifiable information (PII) of its users.
One last thing to touch on the subject of cloud file storage has to do with how many organizations are using Amazon S3 to store uploaded data from customers as a place to send for processing by other parts of the application. The problem here is how do we know if what’s being uploaded is malicious or not? This question comes up more and more as I speak to more customers and peers in the IT world.
API
APIs are great. They allow you to interact with programs and services in a programmatic and automated way. When it comes to the cloud, APIs allow administrators to interact with services, an in fact, they are really a cornerstone of all cloud services, as it allows the different services to communicate. As with anything in this world, this also opens a world of danger.
Let’s start with the API gateway, a common construct in the cloud to allow communication to backend applications. The API gateway itself is a target, because it can allow a hacker to manipulate the gateway, and allow unwanted traffic through. API gateways were designed to be integrated into applications. They were not designed for security. This means untrusted connections can come into said gateway and perhaps retrieve data that individual shouldn’t see. Likewise, the API requests to the gateway can come with malicious payloads.
Another attack that can affect your API gateway and likewise the application behind it, is a DDOS attack. The common answer to defend against this is Web Application Firewall (WAF). The problem is WAFs struggle to deal with low, slow DDOS attacks, because the steady stream of requests looks like normal traffic. A really great way to deter DDOS attacks at the API gateway however is to limit the number of requests for each method.
A great way to prevent API attacks lies in the configuration. Denying anonymous access is huge. Likewise, changing tokens, passwords and keys limit the chance effective credentials can be used. Lastly, disabling any type of clear-text authentication. Furthermore, enforcing SSL/TLS encryption and implementing multifactor authentication are great deterrents.
Compute
No cloud service would be complete without compute resources. This is when an organization builds out virtual machines to host applications and services. This also introduces yet another attack surface, and once again, this is not protected by the cloud service provider. This is purely the customers responsibility.
Many times, in discussing my customers’ migration from an on-premises datacenter to the cloud, one of the common methods is the “lift-and-shift” approach. This means customers take the virtual machines they have running in their datacenter and simply migrating those machines to the cloud. Now, the question is, what kind of security assessment was done on those virtual machines prior to migrating? Were those machines patched? Were discovered security flaws fixed? In my personal experience the answer is no. Therefore, these organizations are simply taking their problems from one location to the next. The security holes still exist and could potentially be exploited, especially if the server is public facing or network policies are improperly applied. For this type of process, I think a better way to look at this is “correct-and-lift-and-shift”.
Now once organizations have already established their cloud presence, they will eventually need to deploy new resources, and this can mean developing or building upon a machine image. The most important thing to remember here is that these are computers. They are still vulnerable to malware, so regardless of being in the cloud or not, the same security controls are required including things like anti-malware, host IPS, integrity monitoring and application control just to name a few.
Networking
Cloud services make it incredibly easy to deploy networks and divide them into subnets and even allow cross network communication. They also give you the ability to lock down the types of traffic that are allowed to traverse those networks to reach resources. This is where security groups come in. These security groups are configured by people, so there’s always that chance that a port is open that shouldn’t be, opening a potential vulnerability. It’s incredibly important from this perspective to really have a grasp on what a compute resource is talking to and why, so the proper security measures can be applied.
So is the cloud really safe from hackers? No safer than anything else unless organizations make sure they’re taking security in their hands and understand where their responsibility begins, and the cloud service provider’s ends. The arms war between hackers and security professionals is still the same as it ever was, the battleground just changed.
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Working from home? How do you keep your employees cyber-safe and cyber-secure? How do you protect your reputation, profit, and cash flow when you depend on your IT infrastructure as never before?
The National Cyber Security Alliance is hosting a series of webinars for small business owners, and we’re proud to support this effort with guest speakers to share our threat intelligence and security expertise.
The topics will help small companies deal with the challenges of COVID-19. The agenda is at https://staysafeonline.org/event_category/cybersecure-my-business/.
Here’s a quick overview of each session and why it might benefit your organization to tune in.
Telework Cybersecurity Best Practices – April 7: Many small business owners rely on face-to-face meetings with their teams. But, social distancing and work-from-home directives interrupt that way of doing things. In this session, we’ll discuss how to adjust your business to deal with a remote workforce. For some managers, not seeing every member of the team can be unsettling. We’ll talk about ways to overcome that barrier. For many organizations, using remote tools can put an extra burden on your IT gear and staff. We’ll talk about alternatives to lighten that load. And for most organizations, the new way of working can expose new and different information security vulnerabilities. We’ll offer some good practices to reduce your exposure.
Guest speakers from Trend Micro will be Greg Young and Ed Cabrera.
Spring has Sprung! Time for a Digital Spring Cleaning – April 14: One way to cut down on IT resource use is to get rid of unnecessary stuff. This webcast will suggest tactics to reduce the burden on your infrastructure. You will learn about cleaning up your storage, getting off unnecessary email lists, improving your – and your customers’ – privacy, and lowering your attack profile by getting rid of stale applications and services.
E-Commerce Security During COVID-19 – April 21, 2020: Businesses that rely on foot traffic are pivoting to on-line offerings. Restaurants support demand with delivery or curbside pick-up, which both put a strain on your IT resources. Unfortunately, the bad guys are exploiting weaknesses in on-line ordering and payment systems. We’ll talk about measures small businesses should consider to protect their reputation, cash flow, and profits during this transition.
Guest speakers from Trend Micro will be myself and Mitchel Chang.
How to Avoid COVID-19 Scams – May 5, 2020: Bad guys are trying to make money off Covid-19 worries. In this session, Lesley Fair, a Senior Attorney with the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission talks about different kinds of scams and what to do about them, hopefully before anyone gets conned, and what steps you can take if you think you might have gotten stung. Ths session will be repeated on May 26.
Guest speakers from Trend Micro will be myself and Jon Clay.
What Are Phishing, Vishing and Smishing? How Can I Protect My Small Business From These Threats? – May 12, 2020: This session will discuss attacks that can arrive through email, messages, and video chats. Small businesses are targets as well as big firms and the public at large – the bad guys are going anywhere they can to make a (dishonest) buck. You’ll help your employees and customers protect themselves with some good advice, practices, and tools.
Mitchel Chang will be a guest panelist.
How to Avoid COVID-19 Scams – May 26, 2020: A second session of the May 5 discussion. This time Jon Clay and Myla Pilao will be guest speakers from Trend Micro.
Telework Cybersecurity Best Practices – June 9, 2020: A second session of the April 7 event. Greg and Ed will give a repeat performance attendees.
Each session starts at 2:00 PM Eastern time. NCSA will record each session, but you should register to listen in and ask questions live. While the information is tuned to meet the needs of small businesses, individuals at larger organizations, and the general public, will find good ideas and helpful hints an tips to stay safe and cope with this challenging time. We hope to see you soon.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below or @WilliamMalikTM
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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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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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We continue our three-part series on protecting your home and family. If you missed our first part, you can find it here.
Are your kids at that formative age when they’re beginning to use mobile devices? How about at that inquisitive age when they start to discover the wonders of the Internet? Or that age when they tend to be more carefree and self-indulgent?
The Internet and the digital devices our children use are valuable tools when used the right way. They give them access to a wide range of information, pave the way to explore worthwhile ideas, and keep them socially connected with family, relatives and friends. That said, though there are big advantages to kids’ use of the Internet, there are dangers as well. Part 2 of our 3-part series on home network security discusses those dangers to your children and what you can do to protect them, leveraging Trend Micro Home Network Security’s Parental Controls to help you do so.
Gone are the days when simple malware was the focal point for internet safety. Nowadays, children have so many devices giving them access to the internet, unknown dangerous situations have multiplied. As a parent, the challenges include the following:
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Finding the right balance between parenting and controlling the child’s use or possible misuse of the internet is tricky. Here’s where Trend Micro Home Network’s (HNS) Parental Controls can come in. In addition to protecting your home network from security risks and attacks, HNS also provides a robust and flexible parental control system to keep internet usage safe for your children. Controls include:
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Protecting your family members online starts with Adding a Profile.
You can add a new Profile for each Family Member and assign to them the devices they control. To do this, you can just simply tap Family in the Command Menu and choose the family member by tapping Add Someone. This will let you provide the Profile Name and Profile Picture as well as Assign Devices to the person by tapping the device(s) in the Unassigned panel. The devices you select will then be automatically moved into the ownership panel for that person. Tap Done and you’ll be presented with the Settings screen for that child’s Profile, where you can configure Parental Controls as you see fit.
Website Filtering
Next, let’s proceed with the most common component: Website Filtering.
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Content Filtering
Moving on, you can also set up Content Filtering.
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App Controls
To continue, there are apps that parents disapprove of, but there are always those instances when the children try to use them anyway against their parent’s wishes. That’s when you can choose to be informed of the Inappropriate Apps Used by your children.
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Time Limits and Notifications
Even when you try to teach your kids about being responsible about their online time, it’s easier said than done. Thus, parents or guardians can schedule the hours of screen time their children are allowed each day, along with the hours when screen time is available. HNS’s Parental Controls provide both of these features and more.
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Connection Alerts
Last but not least, since it’s tough to keep monitoring when your child is online, tapping Trend Micro HNS’ Connection Alert to toggle it on makes it easier for parents to get notifications when their kid’s digital devices connect to the home network during a specified time period.
In the end, Trend Micro Home Network Security’s Parental Controls can assist parents in dealing with the online safety challenges all children are exposed to in the 21st century. HNS’ flexible and intuitive feature set comprised of Filtering, Inappropriate App Used, Time Limits and Connection Alerts support every parent or guardian’s goal to ensure a safe and secure internet experience for their kids. Coupled with kind face-to-face conversations, where you let your children know your care for them extends to how they use the Internet, HNS becomes your silent partner when ensuring your family’s safety.
For more information, go to Trend Micro Home Network Security.
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Whether you’re trying to inform purchasing decisions or just want to better understand the cybersecurity market and its players, industry analyst reports can be very helpful. Following our recent accolades by Forrester and IDC in their respective cloud security reports, we want to help customers understand how to use this information.
Our VP of cybersecurity, Greg Young, taps into his past experience at Gartner to explain how to discern the most value from industry analyst reports.
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