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Malware: Three Industry Problems and How to Solve Them

In the last few years, organizations have been subject to extortion through ransomware. Now, hackers are bypassing the nasty business of trying to get people to give them cryptocurrency to simply hijacking your processor to mine for cryptocurrency. As a result, the methods employed are growing in sophistication and creativity, including using...
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Web Hosting Security Best Practices

If you’ve been online recently, you may have read the news about hackers demanding a ransom from Dublin’s tram system. Visitors to the Luas website were greeted by the hackers’ message threatening to publish the stolen information unless they were paid one Bitcoin (approximately 3,300 Euros or US $3,800). While the message itself appeared to be...
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Malvertising Campaign Used Steganography to Distribute Shlayer Trojan

A short-lived malvertising campaign leveraged a steganography-based payload to target Mac users with the Shlayer trojan. Named for its use of veryield-malyst[dot]com as one of its ad-serving domains, the "VeryMal" threat actor conducted its malvertising campaign between 11 January 2019 and 13 January 2019. That's not a long time period to remain...
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Passwords at risk for users who fall for voicemail phishing emails

Security researchers are warning of a new wave of phishing emails which are using an unusual disguise in their attempt to both bypass scanners at email gateways and dupe unsuspecting users. The attack arrives in users' inboxes in the form of an email purporting to be a notification about a voice message using subject lines such as "PBX Message," ...
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Securing Government Data with NIST 800-53

If you have ever heard of the Federal Information Security Management Act, then you are aware of the work done by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The goal of the Act, not to mention the subsequent documents that resulted from strategies designed around implementing it, led NIST to create works designed to bolster security on the...
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Adware Installers Disguised as Cracks Installing STOP Ransomware

STOP ransomware is using adware installers disguised as cracks as a new method of distributing itself to unsuspecting users. According to Bleeping Computer creator and owner Lawrence Abrams, websites known for distributing software cracks, or software which has been modified to remove or disable certain features, commonly use adware bundles to...
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New Phobos Ransomware Using Same Ransom Note as Dharma

A new strain of ransomware known as "Phobos" is using the same ransom note employed by Dharma to demand payment from its victims. Ransomware incident response provider Coveware found that Phobos' ransom message differs from Dharma's only in the branding used for its header and footer. Otherwise, the notes are exactly the same. ...
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IVR – A Response to Automated Calling

The FCC and most consumers are getting annoyed of “illegitimate” automated calling systems from calling. Most automated calling systems are hiding behind a spoofed caller ID, and blocking the number is not possible. Consumers that are really annoyed are looking for practical solutions. Furthermore, the FCC is pushing for caller authentication in 2019 to remove the “illegitimate” uses of caller ID...
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What is Amazon GovCloud?

Amazon GovCloud is an isolated Amazon Web Service (AWS) designed to allow customers and the U.S government agencies to move their confidential data into the cloud to address their compliance and specific regulatory requirements. It runs under ITAR, the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations. With this cloud service, US citizens can run...
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Magecart hits hundreds of websites via ad supply chain hijack

A criminal Magecart gang successfully compromised hundreds of e-commerce websites via a malicious script that silently harvested personal data and payment card information as customers bought goods and services online. Rather than specifically target individual websites, the hackers audaciously hacked a third-party Javascript library from French...
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Nearly 800 Million Email Addresses Exposed in "Collection #1" Data Breach

A data breach known as "Collection #1" exposed approximately 800 million email addresses as well as tens of millions of passwords. In the beginning of January, multiple people reached out to Australian web security expert Troy Hunt about a sizable collection of files hosted on cloud service MEGA. This collection, which is no longer available on MEGA...
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Triton, BlackEnergy, WannaCry – Has Your Behavior Changed?

Hopefully, the title of this blog has gotten your attention. In one of my prior blogs, ICS Cybersecurity: Visibility, Protective Controls, Continuous Monitoring – Wash, Rinse, Repeat, we talked about how the malicious threat landscape for industrial controls systems is constantly evolving and getting more sophisticated, thereby raising the need to...
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Cybersecurity Is Every Leader’s Job

Every organization is led by people who are responsible for setting the overall direction, establishing priorities, maintaining influence over organizational functions and mitigating risks. Given the wide range of organizational types across industry sectors, the titles associated with these roles may vary greatly from CEO to Managing Director to Owner-Operator and beyond, but they share common...