What is this Ragnar Locker thing I’ve heard about? Ragnar Locker is a family of ransomware, which first came to prominence in early 2020 when it became notorious for hitting large organisations, attempting to extort large amounts of cryptocurrency from its victims. So just your bunch of cybercriminals then? Yes, although on their underground...

There has been a lot of talk about cyber weapons and the cyber dimension of global politics after the NotPetya and WannaCry attacks of 2017 and the Stuxnet worm, first discovered in 2010, when it was used to attack the control mechanisms of Iran’s uranium enriching centrifuges. Professor Ciaran Martin CB, former CEO of the UK National Cyber...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s March 2022 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-989 on Wednesday, March 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2022-21990 CVE-2022-21990 describes a code execution vulnerability within Remote Desktop Client. The vulnerability requires that...

The benefits of a capable and properly deployed File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) solution are plentiful: If you see unexpected or unexplained file changes, you can investigate immediately and resolve the issue quickly if your system has been compromised. You can reconcile changes against change tickets or a list of approved changes in a text file...

All of us at Tripwire’s Vulnerability Exposure and Research Team (VERT) are constantly looking out for interesting stories and developments in the infosec world. Here’s what cybersecurity news stood out to us during the week of February 28, 2022. I’ve also included some comments on these stories. High-Severity Flaws Discovered in Schneider, GE...

In November 2018, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) released the Prudential Standard CPS 234 in direct response to the escalating attack landscape in the financial sector. APRA has understood these threats to be the direct result of banking services moving to more complex and heavily used digital platforms. The new Standard...

2021 was the year that marked a major cyber-attack against a critical national infrastructure organization whose impact was felt by millions of Americans on the East Coast. However, the attack against the Colonial Pipeline Company was not the only incident that affected the Operational Technology (OT) systems of a critical sector for the U.S....

The US Senate has passed legislation designed to improve the cybersecurity of the Federal Government. The legislation, which consists of three bills, was unanimously passed by the Senate on Tuesday evening, and would - amongst other things - require organisations working in critical industry sectors to alert the US Government about hacks and...

In a previous article, I examined Australia’s proposed Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill 2020. This information security overhaul imposes strict reporting requirements for enterprises as well as affords the Australian government unprecedented and far-reaching powers that enables them to intervene in the operation of an...

We all know how important security awareness training is for an organization. Moreover, we try to enhance our efforts by weaving security into the "culture” of the organization. Yet, from the employee’s perspective, it all gets very stale. It seems like it is always the same message, but if that is the case, why hasn’t this knowledge been adopted...

Perhaps Disaster Recovery (DR) isn’t one of the hot terms like the Internet of Things (IoT) or Hybrid Cloud, but I would argue that re-examining your DR plan now might be one of the most important IT management initiatives on which you can focus your energy. Think about it. How much has the world changed in the past two years? Most people used to...

Cloud adoption has come a long way from its early days where corporate executives questioned the stewardship of their data. The initial suspicions of “where’s my data” have been laid to rest, as administrative tools and contractual obligations have emerged to give better visibility to, and accountability of, data custodianship. Even the capabilities...

All of us at Tripwire’s Vulnerability Exposure and Research Team (VERT) are constantly looking out for interesting stories and developments in the infosec world. Here’s what cybersecurity news stood out to us during the week of February 21, 2022. I’ve also included some comments on these stories. 18 High-Severity Vulnerabilities Patched by Intel ...

Global supply chains are bearing the brunt of ransomware attacks, according to a new report that finds manufacturing was the most targeted industry during 2021. Knocking financial services and insurance off the top of the heap after a long reign, the manufacturing industry was found by IBM to be the most attacked sector - accounting for 23% of...

Tripwire's February 2022 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities for Microsoft. First on the patch priority list this month is a vulnerability for Microsoft Windows LSA (CVE-2021-36942). This vulnerability has been added to Metasploit Exploit Framework and any vulnerable systems should be patched as soon as possible. ...

In the early years of cybersecurity, it was often said that people are the weakest link. This did nothing to encourage support, as it was insulting and demeaning. The new and better way to inspire people towards a cybersecurity mindset is to engage with and treat them as a valuable part of an organization’s overall cybersecurity initiative. As a...

I took note of the recent uptick in discussions about the concept of observation in the IT world and found myself compelled to come back to the topic, which I’ve touched on previously in my blog posts. “Observability” is seemingly synonymous with “monitoring,” covering things such as metrics, traces, and logging. Observation, however, has an...

Part of operating an effective security program is the ability to never rest upon any previous success. When guarding against an adversary, yesterday’s success is quickly eclipsed by the dynamic shift in the attacker’s tactics. Just as a doctor “rules out” a particular diagnosis, an effective attacker first searches for well-known vulnerabilities...

All of us at Tripwire’s Vulnerability Exposure and Research Team (VERT) are constantly looking out for interesting stories and developments in the infosec world. Here’s what cybersecurity news stood out to us during the week of February 14, 2022. I’ve also included some comments on these stories. Microsoft Using New Security Rule to Prevent Windows...

Organizations are under constant threat of cybercrime. While there are many available attack vectors, email is the most obvious path towards a full network compromise. The notion that email security should be prioritized is emphasized during this time where more and more businesses are still working in a remote or hybrid dynamic environment. ...