Compliance is very important to any organization. Organizations have many standards to choose from including PCI, CIS, NIST and so on. Oftentimes, there are also multiple regulations that are applicable in any country. So, organizations need to commit some time and resources in order to apply security standards and achieve compliance. Even so,...

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...

The number of successful ransomware attacks on the education sector increased 388% in the third quarter of 2020. According to Emsisoft, the education sector reported 31 ransomware incidents in Q3 2020. That's a 388% increase over the 8 incidents that occurred in the previous quarter. Nine of the 31 ransomware attacks disclosed in the third quarter...

An undisclosed number of customers of outdoor clothing retailer The North Face have had their passwords reset by the company, following a credential-stuffing attack. The company has revealed that on October 9, 2020, it became aware that hackers had used usernames and passwords stolen from a third-party website to gain unauthorised access to...

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 CVEs CVE-2020-17087 ...

A Ukrainian citizen received a nine-year prison sentence for a scheme in which he tried to steal $10 million from Microsoft. On November 9, the U.S. District Court in Seattle handed down the sentence to Volodymyr Kvashuk, 26, a Ukrainian citizen who was residing in Renton, Washington. According to...

Policy compliance within the information security space can be an exhausting concept to wrap our heads around. Writing a policy document, publishing it to staff and then staying hands-on to ensure it is followed in perpetuity is easily seen as an arduous, if not an impossible, task. Policies set the basis for every successful information security...

Computer manufacturing company Compal Electronics announced that it had suffered a security incident involving some of its systems. Qingxiong Lu, deputy manager director of Compal, told United News Network on November 9 that the company had experienced a security incident. In his explanation of the event, Qingxiong identified that the incident had...

As I had mentioned previously, this year, I’m going back to school. Not to take classes, but to teach a course at my alma mater, Fanshawe College. I did this about a decade ago and thought it was interesting, so I was excited to give it another go. Additionally, after a friend mentioned that their kid wanted to learn Python, I developed an Intro to...

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...

Security researchers observed that multiple ransomware gangs are not honoring the ransom payments received from victims for their stolen data. In its Quarterly Ransomware Report for Q3 2020, Coveware revealed that almost 50% of crypto-malware cases involved the threat to publish unencrypted data stolen from victims in addition to the use of...

Japanese game developer Capcom has revealed that it suffered a security breach earlier this week which saw malicious hackers access its internal systems. The maker of such well-known video games as "Resident Evil" and "Street Fighter" disclosed in a short press release that in the early hours of Monday some of its networks "experienced issues" that...

As more infrastructure is moved to the cloud, there are many opportunities to reconsider your security stance and relationships to build ever stronger and more secure IT solutions whilst reducing your security costs. In this post, I’m looking to explore some ways that you can build out your alliances to be better prepared and battle-worthy on the...

The operators of REvil ransomware came into possession of the source code for the KPOT 2.0 information-stealing malware variant. ZDNet reported that UNKN, a member of the REvil ransomware gang, acquired the source code for KPOT 2.0 in an auction announced by the malware's author back in mid-October. https://twitter.com/pancak3lullz/status...

According to the Accenture State of Cybersecurity 2020 report, the average cost of a cyber attack for 'non-leaders' stands at $380,000 per incident. The report classifies organizations into ‘leaders’ and ‘non-leaders.’ The ‘leaders’ are those who set the bar for innovation and achieve high-performing cyber resilience. Given the rate of cyber attacks...

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...