Organisations are still underestimating the risks created by insufficiently secured operational technology (OT). One current example comes from Germany. According to a report by heise.de, external security testers consider it “likely” that a successful serious cyberattack against the publicly owned water company Berliner Wasserbetriebe could lead to a...

The Lazarus Group (also known as Guardians of Peace or Whois) is a notorious cybercrime gang made up of unknown individuals. According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations, the group is a North Korean “state-sponsored hacking organization.” However, some believe that their connections to North Korea might be a false flag intending...

U.S. Federal Cybersecurity Today Computer security regulations have come a long way from their early beginnings. Even before the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), there was the Computer Security Act of 1987 (CSA). The Computer Security Act was enacted by the 100th United States Congress in response to a lack of computer security...

In October, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released its “2020 Staff Report Lessons Learned from Commission-Led CIP Reliability Audits.” The report summarizes the Commission’s observations from Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) audits performed in conjunction with staff from Regional Entities and the North American Electric...

The outbreak of COVID-19 has led many businesses to transition a large number of employees to remote work. The shift could end up becoming a long-term trend; it’s expected to continue after the pandemic ends. Therefore, it is more important than ever to develop strategies for managing and responding to risks within your organization. Internal risk...

If high-tech gadgets are 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 their...

Hacked air conditioning and plummeting elevators? Imagine that you are in an elevator in a high rise building when suddenly the elevator starts to plummet with no apparent stopping mechanism other than the concrete foundation below. While this may sound like something from a Hollywood movie, consider the idea that a securely tethered, fully...

Chloe Messdaghi, VP of Strategy at Point3, advocate and activist joins the show to explain common misconceptions about the hacking community and how we can do better to combat those stigmas. She also unpacks the diversity challenges specifically in the infosec industry. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7G9cXfVFeFxCfoEdhZlHOk?si...

Malicious actors are targeting Apple. Although Apple introduced a notarization mechanism to scan and prevent malicious code from running on Apple devices, attackers have found ways to circumvent this process. Such Apple-notarized malware constitutes a threat to macOS users. Let us start by exploring what Apple notarization is. We will then discuss...

The notion that the time we are living in now is “unprecedented” is a common one, but historians and philosophers alike will happily note that things are rarely so different that we can’t learn a lot from the past. Despite IT often being dominated by forward-thinking individuals developing novel and innovative new designs, a lot of the problems and...

Digital attack attempts in industrial environments are on the rise. In February 2020, IBM X-Force reported that it had observed a 2,000% increase in the attempts by threat actors to target Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Operational Technology (OT) assets between 2018 and 2020. This surge eclipsed the total number of attacks against organizations...

One significant negative implication of technology's continual evolution is proportional advancement in nefarious internet activities, particularly cyber attacks. The past few years have seen a rising sophistication in cyber attacks at levels never experienced before. The worst fact is that attacks will likely only continue to get more advanced. To...

Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s exam division issued a Risk Alert (the “Alert”) where it carried out several targeted cybersecurity investigations. The agency is now concerned with how there’s been an increase in a specific type of hack known as “credential stuffing.“ This cyberattack involves using stolen credentials to log into...

One of the major improvements that the avionics industry is undergoing is an Internet of Things (IoT) upgrade. And this is inevitably affecting how airlines approach aircraft safety. From the beginning, safety has been paramount to the aviation industry. But while it is a welcome innovation, the incorporation of IoT devices in aircraft comes with...

For those that have been in the industry for more than a couple of years, you will remember when Microsoft retired the very powerful and well-documented security bulletins back in 2017. At the time, we felt that it was a severe reduction in the availability of information; Microsoft was suddenly communicating much less information. Yesterday, they...

The cybersecurity industry is more well-informed than most, but even so, misconceptions arise and spread, helped along by the fact that the rise in cybersecurity incidents has led to substantial “pop culture” intrigue with all things cybersecurity. One of the more harmful of these misconceptions is the conflation of “hacker” and “attacker,” terms...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s November 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-915 on Wednesday, November 11th. Note: Microsoft has changed their advisory format and no longer provides basic vulnerability descriptions.In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2020-17087This CVE...

In August 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its strategy to ensure the security and resilience of 5G infrastructure in the United States. Roughly every 10 years, the next generation of mobile communication networks is released, bringing faster speeds and increased capabilities. The fifth generation (5G) of...

Tripwire's October 2020 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Oracle. First on the patch priority list this month is a very high priority vulnerability in Oracle WebLogic Server. The vulnerability is within the Console component of Oracle WebLogic Server, and it can be exploited...

In the last quarter of 2019, researchers at ClearSky uncovered an attack operation that they dubbed the “Fox Kitten Campaign.” Iranian actors used this offensive to gain persistent access into the networks of dozens of companies operating in Israel and around the world across the IT, telecommunication, oil and gas, aviation, government and security...