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Cyber Breaches: The Game of Shifting Liabilities

Let’s face it: it is a matter of when your company is going to get hit by digital attackers and how hard, not if. This causes a lot of pain and overall damage, both of which are not good for business. Cyber attacks are at the forefront of news headlines and are plaguing C-Level executives' thoughts; unfortunately, these attacks are going to get more...
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Tips for Staying Secure When Using Dating Apps

Mobile online dating apps are popular among adults looking to find their ideal partner. According to the Pew Research Center, 15 percent of U.S. adults said they had used matchmaking sites in 2015. Following Valentine’s Day, many dating sites may offer promotions, coupons, and discounts to encourage new users to enroll, meaning new users will be...
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Attackers Abused Indian Bank's SWIFT System to Try to Steal $2M

Digital attackers abused the SWIFT system of an Indian bank in an attempt to make off with approximately $2 million in stolen funds. On 18 February, City Union Bank disclosed the attempted heist in a statement (PDF): During our reconciliation process on 7th February 2018, it was found that 3 fraudulent transactions were initiated by the cyber...
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The Financial Fallout of a Cyber Attack on a Business

There were 978 million victims of cybercrime last year and these people lost a combined $172 billion, according to Norton. Those numbers alone should be enough to make businesses sit up and take notice. It’s important, too, to stress that it isn’t just the large corporations that suffer at the hands of online criminals. About half of small...
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Cybersecurity in 2028: Looking a Decade Ahead

It's mid-February, which means IT security executives' and industry analysts' plans for 2018 are really starting to gather momentum. Every year, this personnel faces the difficult task of deciding what security investments they should make given current developments in the cyber threat landscape. Google Trends and other services can help...
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Criminals Abused SWIFT to Steal $6M from Central Bank of Russia

Unknown criminals abused the SWIFT network to steal 339.5 million rubles ($6 million) from the Central Bank of Russia in 2017. The bank's Financial Sector Computer Emergency Response Team (FinCERT) revealed the attack in its report on illegal transactions that occurred in 2017. As quoted by Sputnik International: Bank of Russia has been informed...
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UK Government Publicly Attributes NotPetya Outbreak to Russia

UK government officials have publicly attributed the NotPetya malware attacks of June 2017 to actors in the Russian government. Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad made his thoughts known in a statement released on 15 February: The UK Government judges that the Russian Government, specifically the Russian military, was responsible for the...
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Don’t Get BuckHacked: What Are You Doing to Keep Your AWS S3 Data Private?

Leaky AWS S3 buckets have been spilling confidential information onto the public internet for years, and now anonymous hackers have created a search engine to make finding those exposed secrets even easier. New on the scene is “BuckHacker.” The name is a portmanteau, stemming from the fact that it allows the hacking of “buckets,” which is the name for containers of data within Amazon Web Services...
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Overcoming the Blame Game – Improving Security without Destroying Careers

Today, I was sitting in an awesome class being held at @BSidesHSV, and it got me thinking. The class entitled “Fundamentals of Routing and Switching for Blue and Red Teams” put on by Paul Coggin was a deep dive into layer two and layer three configurations, and possible means of compromise. The content was outstanding, and Paul did a great job communicating a very difficult topic. Throughout the...
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Top 10 Mobile App Security Best Practices for Developers

App security isn’t a feature or a benefit – it is a bare necessity. One breach could cost your company not just millions of dollars but a lifetime of trust. That is why security should be a priority from the moment you start writing the first line of code. While you were busy developing the most intuitive, innovative and exciting apps, security...
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6 Top Cloud Security Threats in 2018

2018 is set to be a very exciting year for cloud computing. In the fourth financial quarter of 2017, Amazon, SAP, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, Oracle, and Google combined had over $22 billion in their revenue from cloud services. Cloud services will only get bigger in 2018. It’s easy to understand why businesses love the cloud. It’s easier and more...
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VERT Threat Alert: February 2018 Patch Tuesday Analysis

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s February 2018 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-765 on Wednesday, February 14th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2018-0771 This vulnerability describes a Same-Origin Policy (SOP) bypass in Microsoft Edge. The SOP is designed to...
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AndroRAT Exploiting Vulnerability to Escalate Privileges on Android Devices

A new variant of the Android Remote Access Tool (AndroRAT) is exploiting a vulnerability to escalate privileges on unpatched Android devices. The malware disguises itself as a utility app called "TrashCleaner" and waits for users to download it from a malicious URL. Upon running for the first time, the malicious app forces the device to install what...
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Security at the Speed of DevOps

DevOps and traditional security seem to be at odds with one other. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can make security a part of your DevOps process without sacrificing agility or security. First, let's define what DevOps is. Let's then look at how it combines with security to create DevSecOps. DevOps: A Working Definition So, what do we...
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4K+ Websites Infected with Crypto-Miner after Tech Provider Hacked

Bad actors secretly infected more than 4,000 websites with the script for a crypto-miner after hacking a single technology provider. The trouble started on 11 February when Ian Thornton-Trump encountered something concerning while visiting the website for the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). https://twitter.com/phat_hobbit/status...
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Security Mindset: Balancing Firmness and Flexibility

Navigating the noise, complexity and uncertainties of the cybersecurity landscape demands clear thinking. But that’s no easy task. The security professional today has to be knowledgeable about the organization’s own environment, business needs and risks, compliance requirements, best practice frameworks, internal policies and procedures, and the...