We are familiar with the problem of ransomware – malicious software that seeks to encrypt user data and demand a ransom in return for the decryption key. There are several defensive measures that help work against crypto-malware. Backups work, in theory, but are not always available or are partial. We need to realize that ransomware does, and will,...

Details of a Virtual Box 0-day privilege escalation bug were disclosed on GitHub earlier this week. This was the work of independent Russian security researcher Sergey Zelenyuk, who revealed the vulnerability without any vendor coordination as a form of protest against the current state of security research and bug bounty programs. From my...

Security researchers are warning that a botnet has been exploiting a five-year-old vulnerability to hijack home routers over the last couple of months. Analysts working at Qihoo 360's Netlab team say that they first identified the new botnet in September 2018. They have dubbed it "BCMUPnP_Hunter" because of its exploitation of a security hole in the...

In Part 1 of this series, I walked through the background of the NERC CIP version 5 controls and outlined what needs to be monitored for NERC CIP software requirements. In this second half of the series, we’ll take what we’ve learned and explore approaches for meeting the requirements while considering security value. NERC CIP is supposed to be for...

Knowing that a tomato is a fruit is knowledge – not adding it to a fruit salad is wisdom. Similarly, having knowledge about privacy and security is good, but true wisdom is knowing that they are vastly different from each other. While both, to some extent, revolve around the protection of your personal, public and corporate data, they are still not...

Tripwire Data Collector has been providing industrial organizations with visibility into their operational technology (OT) environments since its release in mid-2018. Data can be gathered and monitored via multiple avenues – not only native industrial protocols, such as EtherNet/IP CIP and Modbus TCP, but also integrations with management...

A data breach at Bankers Life might have compromised the personally identifiable information of over half a million people. On 25 October 2018, Fortune 1000 company CNO Financial Group, Inc. submitted a report to the Office for Civil Rights' Breach Portal at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The report revealed an instance of...

HSBC Bank sent a letter to an undisclosed number of customers informing them of a data breach that might have exposed their personal information. The California Attorney General's Office recently received a template of a letter that HSBC Bank sent out to customers on 2 November. In the notice, the...

Everyone knows that it’s not a matter of if your private information will be breached. It’s a matter of when. I don’t have much of an expectation of privacy these days. A search in the Amazon application on my iPhone means that I’ll start seeing Facebook ads for that item. Google maintains a timeline of my visits to various locations. Video cameras...

The internet can be as dangerous a place as any. And every so often, it gets shaken up by some new threat that jeopardizes the safety of users across the globe. Thus, one of the latest scares that has come to our attention is that of the so-called “Programmer who cracked your email” Bitcoin scam. Exactly how serious this ‘scare’ is still remains to...

As organizations grappled with NERC CIP version 5, Tripwire learned along the way. In this series, I’ll cover the aspect of CIP that has come up the most in the last year: how to meet the software monitoring requirements. Software Inventory as a Security Control It is a simple question at first, but the more we peel back the layers, the more we...

May 25, 2018 was the deadline for GDPR compliance. The media was abuzz. Businesses were rushing to update their privacy policy page. Companies were emailing newsletter subscribers to approve updated privacy policies. Everybody seemed to be paying attention to this new law, which appeared to be the beginning of a new dawn in data privacy. Or was it?...

As a patient moves down the small, loud tunnel of an MRI tube, CT scan, or other high-powered radiology device, it’s safe to assume they believe the diagnostic benefits outweigh the risk of radiation exposure (and a possible claustrophobic-induced panic attack). In fact, only after understanding – and accepting -- these risks is a patient permitted...

Back in July, I wrote about the sextortion scam that had been circulating for a while. A new wave was spreading, and I’d seen multiple people taking about it on my Facebook, so I figured putting pen to paper (I suppose today that is fingers to keyboard.) made sense. Today, my aunt reached out to share the latest scam email she's received, one that I...

Thanks to a new notification service launched by the United States government in 2018, the President now has the power to issue alerts to every citizen with a working cell phone. The technology for this service, known as the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system, has been around for a number of years and has been implemented for events like Amber...

Tripwire's October 2018 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together the top vulnerabilities from libssh, Microsoft and Oracle. First on the patch priority list this month is an authentication bypass vulnerability in libssh. This vulnerability can be exploited remotely, and exploit code has recently been added to Metasploit. Next are patches for...

The definition of "operational risk" is variable but it generally covers the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events. I, however, want to re-examine this general definition, so that the definition of operational risk takes into account all the cybersecurity-related risks that...

There have been many scams that have utilized the phone system to gain access to funds or personal information from hardworking individuals. One of the most prevalent scams that seems to persist in both Canada and the United States is the tax agency scam. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and the Internal Revenue Agency (IRS) were both victims of...

Kraken ransomware recently added the Fallout exploit kit as another means of reaching users and encrypting their information. Working with the Insikt group from Recorded Future, the McAfee Advanced Threat Research team found evidence that the authors of the ransomware had asked those behind Fallout to be added to the exploit kit. Fallout's...

Mac malware, or macOS malware, exists contrary to the popular belief that Apple’s operating system is immune to online threats. Cybersecurity researchers have been closely observing the threat landscape only to conclude that malware infections targeting Mac devices have increased in 2018. Is Apple Losing Its Grip? According to statistics, Mac...