Digital attackers are increasingly targeting energy organizations including those that support national electric grids. As reported by Morning Consult, security researchers found that utilities worldwide had suffered a recorded 1,780 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks between June 15 and August 21, 2020. That’s a 595% year-over-year...

Through the lens of the Florida water supply hack, Dale Peterson teaches how events like these remind us to take the necessary steps to maintain our cybersecurity. Founder and chair of S4 Events, Dale has been helping security professionals effectively and efficiently manage risk to their critical assets for over 15 years. https://open.spotify.com...

It’s an unfortunate fact that cybersecurity is rarely the foremost of concerns among small- to medium-sized businesses. However, investing in cybersecurity is becoming even more important as these organizations undergo digital transformation. It may seem like there are more important priorities on which a small business could focus, but putting your...

The United States Department of Justice has charged three North Korean computer programmers with a range of cyber attacks that made headlines around the world. The men - 31-year-old Jon Chang Hyok, Kim Il, 27, and 36-year-old Park Jin Hyok - are alleged to have been part of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), known commonly as the ...

Increased uptime? Check. Better access to outside expertise? Check. Improved first-time-fix rate? Check. These are just some of the benefits of industrial remote access. Yet many customers are reluctant to embrace remote access. Not only that, but incidents such as the breach at the Oldsmar water utility might increase organizations’ reluctance to...

If high-tech gadgets were on your holiday shopping list, it is worth taking a moment to think about the particular risks they may bring. Under the wrong circumstances, even an innocuous gift may introduce unexpected vulnerabilities. In this blog series, VERT will be looking at some of the Internet’s best-selling holiday gifts with an eye toward...

Note: The attack procedure built in this post will not work for every macOS operating system or in every scenario. There are many factors that can block scripts from running at boot time, and you should always test against your target operating system. The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a universally accepted knowledge-base of tactics, techniques and...

While I was teaching, one of my students asked if I had seen Cybergeddon, a film distributed by Yahoo! in 2012. I had not, so I decided it would be fun for VERT to watch the film and review it, since my hobby is writing film reviews for RotundReviews. Cybergeddon is not talked about as much as it should be given some of the background around it. It...

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) released in November 2020 its “Cybersecurity in Railways” report to raise awareness about the cybersecurity challenges facing Europe's railways. The report identifies the current cybersecurity status and challenges as well as proposes cybersecurity measures to combat these challenges and enhance...

When I was a software developer, I never joined any dev communities. I didn’t see the point. I also worked evenings as a professional musician and mostly spent time within the music community and sports groups I was a part of. I spent time with my dev friends at work; I didn’t understand why I would want to know devs with whom I didn’t work. I was a...

Social media is no stranger to scams. However, recent trends show scammers have started to show more aggression toward businesses since the beginning of the pandemic. Being able to recognize these scams can help you prevent injury to your business. Social Media as a Newer Cybercrime Platform for Targeting Businesses Scammers go where the people...

British police have arrested eight men in connection with a series of SIM-swapping attacks which saw criminals hijack the social media accounts of well-known figures and their families. The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) says it made arrests in England and Scotland as part of an international investigation working alongside the FBI, US Secret...

Organizations are overwhelmed by the choice of cyber security tools in the market. They need to balance prioritizing and remediating vulnerabilities with managing their secure configurations. What’s more, many organizations are using hybrid clouds where they need to protect assets that are hosted both on premises and in the cloud. This complexity...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s February 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-928 on Wednesday, February 10th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-1732 A vulnerability in Win32k that allows for privilege escalation has been exploited in the wild. The...

An attacker hacked into a Florida city’s water treatment plant and attempted to leverage that access to poison the municipality’s water supply. According to WTSP-TV, an operator at the water treatment plant in the 15,000-person City of Oldsmar, Florida noticed someone controlling his mouse cursor on February 5 at around 08:00. The operator didn...

On February 9, 2021, the world will celebrate the 18th iteration of Safer Internet Day. The theme of this year’s event is “Together for a better internet.” It’s a reminder that all of us have a responsibility to help make the web a safer place. One of the ways we can do this is by taking the online safety of children and teens to heart. In their...

On February 9, 2021, the world will celebrate the 18th iteration of Safer Internet Day. It’s an opportunity for everyone to recognize the importance of staying safe online. It’s also a reminder that all of us play a part in making the web a safer place. One of the ways we can observe Safer Internet Day is by helping children and teens navigate...

Data breaches are becoming increasingly common, and one factor driving this escalation is the fact that today’s IT systems are integrated and interconnected, requiring login information from multiple parties and services. In response, Amazon Web Services has launched the AWS Secrets Manager, a service designed to help organizations get a handle on...

Picture this: a young person is in a dark room. The only thing visible is their figure, as it is just barely lit by the blinding LEDs of their computer screen. They type furiously on an ergonomic keyboard as thousands of lines of neon green monospace text fly across the screen. Click-clack-click-clack-click-clack. The moving text and the flying...

Security researchers at Google have claimed that a quarter of all zero-day software exploits could have been avoided if more effort had been made by vendors when creating patches for vulnerabilities in their software. In a blog post, Maddie Stone of Google's Project Zero team says that 25% of the zero-day exploits detected in 2020 are closely...