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Scattered Canary Behind Hundreds of Fraudulent Unemployment Claims

Security researchers discovered that the Scattered Canary group had filed hundreds of fraudulent unemployment claims in the wake of COVID-19. According to Agari Cyber Intelligence Division, at least some of the threat actors who took part in a large-scale fraud campaign targeting dozens of states' unemployment insurance programs belonged to a...
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Verizon DBIR 2020: Cloud Apps, Stolen Credentials, and Errors

It’s DBIR season! Put down your pens, stop watching “The Last Dance” and get to reading the key findings of the 13th edition of the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report! If “experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes,” as Oscar Wilde puts it in The Picture of Dorian Gray, then the more we know about the threats we face and...
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The MITRE ATT&CK Framework: Collection

The Collection tactic outlines techniques an attacker will undertake in order to find and gather the data they need to meet their actions on objectives. I see most of these techniques as being useful for describing what a piece of malware or threat actor is up to rather than looking to them for guidance on how to mitigate and detect their actions....
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Attacks Targeting ICS & OT Assets Grew 2000% Since 2018, Report Reveals

The digital threat landscape is always changing. This year is an excellent (albeit extreme) example. With the help of Dimensional Research, Tripwire found out that 58% of IT security professionals were more concerned about the security of their employees’ home networks than they were before the outbreak of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). Slightly fewer...
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Winning with Cyber Threat Intelligence: Taking a More Personal View

In this final article of our trilogy, we investigate how a cyber threat intelligence (CTI) analyst and associated programmes provide insight about physical and cyber threats to your organisation. The value of these insights is reflected in the wins, which come as a result of context building, holistic understanding, and enhanced awareness in order...
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The Perimeter Really Is Gone - CIS Controls and COVID-19 with Tony Sager

Tony Sager, Senior Vice President and Chief Evangelist at CIS (Center for Internet Security) joins us to discuss the best approaches to the changing security landscape in the wake of COVID-19. Tony is a lifelong defender, with more than 44 years of experience. He spent most of his career at the NSA and now leads the development of the CIS Controls,...
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'Glitch' in Illinois' PUA System Blamed for Exposing SSNs, Private Data

Government officials said that a glitch in the State of Illinois' Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program exposed thousands of people's Social Security Numbers (SSNs) and other private data. Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzer, sent a statement to WBEZ on May 16. In it, she revealed that the Illinois...
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A Look at Trump’s Executive Order to Secure the Bulk Power System

On May 1st President Trump signed an Executive Order on “Securing the United States Bulk-Power System.” The order cites foreign adversaries and their increased creation and usage of vulnerabilities against the power grid as the primary driver. In my opinion, perhaps more interesting is the inherent ties to the NERC standards, namely CIP-010 R4 and...
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Understanding Single Sign On as a Means of Identity Access Management

I usually spend my mornings doing some reading and enjoying my coffee. On this one particular morning, I noticed that I had received an email from a gaming company I had created an account with around 10 years ago for my kids. They had sent me a code to confirm a login that was being done from Thailand. I had forgotten that I had even created the...
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CISSP vs. Master’s Degree – Please Take a Neutral Corner!

The UK’s designated national agency responsible for providing information and expert guidance on qualifications (UK NARIC) recently announced that the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) credential offered by (ISC)2 is rated RQF Level 7, thereby placing it equal to a particular level of a Master’s Degree. This declaration is...
Blog

The MITRE ATT&CK Framework: Lateral Movement

It will be rare that an attacker exploits a single system and does not attempt any lateral movement within the network. Even ransomware that typically targets a single system at a time has attempted to spread across the network looking for other victims. More often than not, an attacker will gain an initial foothold and start to pivot across systems...
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VERT Threat Alert: May 2020 Patch Tuesday Analysis

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s May 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-884 on Wednesday, May 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs None of the vulnerabilities resolved this month have been publicly disclosed or exploited according to Microsoft. CVE Breakdown by Tag ...
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Best Practices for Scoring Your Environment’s Security Measures

For most practical uses today, a combination of hardening and vulnerability detection is required to secure even the most basic digital environment. In each area it is important to see the progress you’re making in these competencies so that you can improve and build on the work you and your team have done over time. But with so many assets in your...
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U.S. Marshals Announced Data Breach of Prisoners' Information

The United States Marshals Service announced a data breach involving the personal information of its former and current prisoners. In a data breach notification letter obtained by ZDNet, the U.S. Marshals Service revealed that it had first learned of the security incident in late 2019. A redacted...
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COVID-19 Scam Roundup – May 11, 2020

Digital attacks continue to exploit coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as part of their malicious operations. On May 5, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) along with the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) published a joint alert in which they revealed that they had...