Category Archives: DDoS Vendors

Cequence Security announces application security platform to stop bot attacks

Cequence Security released Cequence ASP, an application security platform that provides a scalable defense against the growing number of bot attacks affecting today’s hyper-connected organizations. These financially-motivated attacks target externally-facing web and mobile apps, as well as API services that provide connections to other applications across their digital ecosystem. Attack objectives can include account takeover, content scraping, distributed denial of service, and much more. “From a bad actor’s perspective, geo-distributed bot attacks are relatively easy … More ? The post Cequence Security announces application security platform to stop bot attacks appeared first on Help Net Security .

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Cequence Security announces application security platform to stop bot attacks

‘DerpTroll’ derps into plea deal, admits DDoS attacks on EA, Steam, Sony game servers

Austin Thompson, 23, cops to $95,000 worth of damage The man accused over DDoS-bombing several online games hosts in 2013 and 2014 has entered a guilty plea under a deal with US authorities.…

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‘DerpTroll’ derps into plea deal, admits DDoS attacks on EA, Steam, Sony game servers

Nastiest malware of 2018: Top attack payloads wreaking havoc

Webroot highlights the top cyberattacks of 2018 in its latest nastiest malware list, which showcases the malware and attack payloads that have been most detrimental to organisations and consumers alike. Three nastiest: Botnets and banking trojans Emotet is this year’s nastiest botnet that delivers banking Trojans. It aspires to increase the number of zombies in its spam botnet, with a concentration on credential gathering. Threat actors have recently developed a universal plug and play (UPnP) … More ? The post Nastiest malware of 2018: Top attack payloads wreaking havoc appeared first on Help Net Security .

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Nastiest malware of 2018: Top attack payloads wreaking havoc

Over third of large Dutch firms hit by cyberattack in 2016 – CBS

Large companies are hit by cyberattacks at an above average rate, according to the Cybersecurity Monitor of Dutch statistics bureau CBS for 2018. Among companies of 250+ employees, 39 percent were hit at least once by a cyberattack in 2016, such as a hack or DDoS attack. By contrast, around 9 percent of small companies (2-10 employees) were confronted with such an ICT incident. Of the larger companies, 23 percent suffered from failure of business processes due to the outside cyberattacks. This compares to 6 percent for the smaller companies. Of all ICT incidents, failures were most common, for all sizes, though again, the larger companies were more affected (55%) than the smaller ones (21%). The incidents led to costs for both groups of companies. Chance of incident bigger at large company CBS noted that ICT incidents can arise from both from an outside attack and from an internal cause, such as incorrectly installed software or hardware or from the unintentional disclosure of data by an employee. The fact that larger companies suffer more from ICT incidents can be related to the fact that more people work with computers; this increases the chance of incidents. In addition, larger companies often have a more complex ICT infrastructure, which can cause more problems. The number of ICT incidents also varies per industry. For example, small businesses in the ICT sector (12%) and industry (10%) often suffer from ICT incidents due to external attacks. Small companies in the hospitality sector (6%) and health and welfare care (5%) were less often confronted with cyberattacks. Internal cause more common at smaller companies Compared to larger companies, ICT incidents at small companies more often have an internal cause: 2 out 3, compared to 2 out of 5 for larger companies. ICT incidents at small companies in health and welfare care most often had an internal cause (84%). In the ICT sector, this share was 60 percent. About 7 percent of companies with an ICT incident report them to one or more authorities, including police, the Dutch Data Protection Authority AP, a security team or their bank. The largest companies report ICT incidents much more often (41%) than the smallest companies (6%). Large companies report these ICT incidents most frequently to the AP, complying with law. After that, most reports are made to the police. The smallest companies report incidents most often to their bank. Smaller: less safe Small businesses are less often confronted with ICT incidents and, in comparison with large companies, take fewer security measures. Around 60 percent of small companies take three or more measures. This goes to 98 percent for larger companies. Source: https://www.telecompaper.com/news/over-third-39-of-large-dutch-firms-hit-by-cyberattack-in-2016-cbs–1265851

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Over third of large Dutch firms hit by cyberattack in 2016 – CBS

The FBI Is Investigating More Cyberattacks in a California Congressional Race

The hacks — first reported by Rolling Stone — targeted a Democratic candidate in one of the country’s most competitive primary races WASHINGTON — The FBI has opened an investigation into cyberattacks that targeted a Democratic candidate in a highly competitive congressional primary in southern California. As Rolling Stone first reported in September, Democrat Bryan Caforio was the victim of what cybersecurity experts believe were distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks. The hacks crashed his campaign website on four separate occasions over a five-week span, including several hours before the biggest debate of the primary race and a week before the election itself, according to emails and other forensic data reviewed by Rolling Stone. They were the first reported instances of DDoS attacks on a congressional candidate in 2018. Caforio was running in the 25th congressional district represented by Republican Rep. Steve Knight, a vulnerable incumbent and a top target of the Democratic Party. Caforio ultimately finished third in the June primary, failing to move on to the general election by several thousand votes. “I’m glad the FBI has now launched an investigation into the hack,” Caforio tells Rolling Stone in a statement. “These attacks put our democracy at risk, and they’ll keep happening until we take them seriously and start to punish those responsible.” It was unclear from the campaign’s data who launched the attacks. But in early October, a few weeks after Rolling Stone’s report, Caforio says an FBI special agent based in southern California contacted one of his former campaign staffers about the DDoS attacks. The FBI has since spoken with several people who worked on the campaign, requested forensic data in connection with the attacks and tasked several specialists with investigating what happened, according to a source close to the campaign. According to the source, the FBI has expressed interest in several details of the DDoS attacks. The bureau asked about data showing that servers run by Amazon Web Services, the tech arm of the online retail giant, appear to have been used to carry out the attacks. The FBI employees also seemed to focus on the last of the four attacks on Caforio’s website, the one that came a week before the primary election. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment for this story. A DDoS attack occurs when a flood of online traffic coming from multiple sources intentionally overwhelms a website and cripples it. The cybersecurity company Cloudflare compares DDoS to “a traffic jam clogging up a highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its desired destination.” Such attacks are becoming more common in American elections and civic life, according to experts who monitor and study cyberattacks. “DDoS attacks are being used to silence political speech and voters’ access to the information they need,” George Conard, a product manager at Jigsaw, a Google spin-off organization, wrote in May. “Political parties, campaigns and organizations are a growing target.” Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, told Rolling Stone last month that his company had noticed an increase in such attacks after 2016 and the successful Russian operations on U.S. soil. “Our thesis is that, prior to 2016, U.S.-style democracy was seen as the shining city on the hill. The same things you could do to undermine a developing democracy wouldn’t work here,” Prince says. “But after 2016, the bloom’s off the rose.” The FBI has since created a foreign influence task force to combat future efforts to interfere and disrupt U.S. elections. Southern California, in particular, has seen multiple cyberattacks on Democratic congressional candidates during the 2018 midterms. Rolling Stone reported that Hans Keirstead, a Democratic candidate who had challenged Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), widely seen as the most pro-Russia and pro-Putin member of Congress, had been the victim of multiple hacking efforts, including a successful spear-phishing attempt on his private email account that resembled the 2016 hack of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Hackers also reportedly broke into the campaign computer of Dave Min, another Democratic challenger in a different southern California district, prompting the FBI to open an investigation. On Friday, the nation’s four top law enforcement and national security agencies — the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — released a joint statement saying there were “ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran” that include interference in the 2018 and 2020 elections. Cybersecurity experts and political consultants say there are many reports of hacking attempts on 2018 campaigns that have not been publicized. But the proximity of the attacks is significant because Democrats have a greater chance of taking back the House of Representatives if they can flip multiple seats in Southern California. Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/california-congressional-race-hack-745519/

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The FBI Is Investigating More Cyberattacks in a California Congressional Race

Six Lessons From Boston Children’s ‘Hacktivist’ Attack

CIO Daniel Nigrin, M.D., says hospitals must prepare for DDoS and ransomware Most health system CIOs have heard about the 2014 attack on Boston Children’s Hospital by a member or members of the activist hacker group Anonymous. The hospital was forced to deal with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack as well as a spear phishing campaign. Yesterday, as part of the Harvard Medical School Clinical Informatics Lecture Series, the hospital’s senior vice president and CIO Daniel Nigrin, M.D., discussed six lessons learned from the attack. Although the cyber-attack took place four years ago, there have been some recent developments. The attack was undertaken to protest the treatment of a teenager, Justina Pelletier, in a dispute over her diagnosis and custody between her parents and the hospital. In August 2018 Martin Gottesfeld, 32, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers and one count of damaging protected computers. U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel Gorton scheduled sentencing for Nov. 14, 2018. Gottesfeld was charged in February 2016. According the U.S. Department of Justice, Gottesfeld launched a massive DDOS attack against the computer network of the Boston Children’s Hospital. He customized malicious software that he installed on 40,000 network routers that he was then able to control from his home computer. After spending more than a week preparing his methods, on April 19, 2014, he unleashed a DDOS attack that directed so much hostile traffic at the Children’s Hospital computer network that he temporarily knocked Boston Children’s Hospital off the Internet. In his Oct. 17 talk, Nigrin said cyber criminals still see healthcare as a soft target compared to other industries. “The bottom line is that in healthcare, we have not paid attention to cybersecurity,” he said. “In the years since this attack, we have seen ransomware attacks that have brought hospital systems to their knees. We have to pay more attention and invest more in terms of dollars and technical people, but it really does extend to entire organizations — educating people about what a phishing attack is, what a social engineering attack is. These need to be made a priority.” He offered six lessons learned from Boston Children’s experience: 1. DDoS countermeasures are critical. No longer can healthcare organizations assume that a DDoS attacks are things that only occur against corporate entities, he said. “Prior to this event, I had never thought about the need to protect our organization against a DDoS attack,” he said. “I will submit that the vast majority of my CIO colleagues were in the same boat. And that was wrong. I think now we have gotten this understanding.” 2. Know what depends on the internet. Having a really detailed understanding of what systems and processes in your organization depend on internet access is critical, Nigrin stressed. You also mush have good mitigation strategies in place to know what to do if you lose internet access — whether it is because you have a network outage due to a technical issue or a malicious issue. “As healthcare has become more automated and dependent on technology, these things are crippling events. You have got to know how you are going to deal with it ahead of time. Figuring it out on the fly is not going to work.” 3. Recognize the importance of email. Email may be seen as old-school, Nigrin noted, but it is still the primary method to communicate, so you have to think about how you can communicate and get the word out in scenarios where you don’t have email or lose voice communication. “In our case, we were super-lucky because we had just deployed a secure texting platform, so we could do HIPAA-compliant texting, and when our email was down, that was how we communicated, and it was very effective,” he explained. 4. Push through security initiatives – no excuses anymore. Because he is a doctor himself, Nigrin feels OK picking on doctors about security. Historically they have always pushed back on security measures such as dual-factor authentication. He paraphrases them saying “Come on, Dan, that is an extra 10 seconds; I have to carry a secure ID, or you have to send me a text message on my phone. It is a pain. I don’t want to do it. I am the highest-paid employee in your organization and that is time better spend on something else.” But Nigrin argues that we can’t afford to think like that anymore. He used the Anonymous attack as an opportunity to push through four or five security initiatives within the next two to three months when he had everyone’s attention. “The platform was burning, and the board of trustees was willing to expend the money to pay for it all. They all of a sudden recognized the risk.” 5. Securing audio- and teleconference meetings. Nigrin said this topic wouldn’t have occurred to Boston Children’s until they were warned by the FBI. “The FBI told us about an attack that affected them when they were dealing with Anonymous. When Anonymous was attacking the FBI, the FBI convened internal conference calls on how to deal with it. Anonymous had already breached their messaging platform and intercepted the calendar invites that invited everyone to dial in. Anonymous basically was called into the meeting. Within 30 minutes of one of those meetings, the entire audio transcript of the conference call was posted to YouTube. “So we took heed of that and made sure that when we had conference calls, we sent out PINs over our secure texting platform,” he said. 6. Separating signal from noise. During the attack, Boston Children’s set up a command center and told employees: if you see something, say something. “We didn’t know what attack was coming next. We were flying blind,” Nigrin said. “We started to get lots of calls into our command center with reports of things that seemed somewhat suspicious,” he remembers. People got calls on their cell phone with a recorded message saying your bank account has been compromised. Press 1 to talk to someone to deal with it. “Today we would recognize this as some type of phishing scam and hang up,” he said, “but at the time it was sort of new. People started calling us and we didn’t know if this was Anonymous trying to get into the bank accounts of our senior clinicians. Was it part of the attack? It was tough for us to detect signal from noise.” In the Q&A after his presentation, listeners were curious about how much the incident cost the hospital. Nigrin said there two big costs incurred: One was the technology it had to deploy in an emergent way to do DDOS protection and penetration testing. The other was revenue lost from philanthropic donations. Together they were close to $1 million. Another person asked if the hospital had cyber insurance. Nigrin said they did, but when they read the fine print it said they were covered only if they were breached and technically they were never breached, so the insurance company was reluctant to pay. Although they eventually got compensated for a good share of it, the hospital also made sure to update its policy. Still another attendee asked Nigrin if ransomware attacks were still targeting hospitals. He said they definitely were. “Think about community hospitals just squeaking by on their budgets,” he said. “They don’t have millions to spend, yet their data is valuable on the black market. Attackers recognize we are dead in the water as entities if we don’t have these systems. We have important data and will do anything to get our systems back up and running.” Nigrin said even large health systems can be vulnerable because some technology they deploy is run by third-party vendors who haven’t upgraded their systems. An example, he said, might be technology to record videos in the operating room setting. Some vendors, he said, are not accustomed to thinking about security. They are unable to update their software so it works on more modern operating systems. That leaves CIOs with a tough choice. “We can shut off the functionality or take the risk of continuing to use outdated and unpatched operating systems. Those vendors now have woken up and realize they have to pay more attention.” Source: https://www.healthcare-informatics.com/article/cybersecurity/six-lessons-boston-children-s-hacktivist-attack

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Six Lessons From Boston Children’s ‘Hacktivist’ Attack

Ireland vulnerable to cybersecurity attack, says industry leader

The Government has been urged to appoint a cybersecurity “tsar” to ensure the State is adequately prepared to deal with potential attacks. The call by one of the State’s leading IT security experts comes amid growing concern Ireland could be caught off-guard by a cybersecurity attack, due to a lack of joined-up thinking on the issue and a failure to take threats seriously. Currently the response to cyber threats lies across a number of bodies, with the Department of Communications, An Garda Síochána, the Defence Forces and the Department of Defence among those involved. Brian Honan, an independent security consultant who has also served as a special adviser to Europol’s Cybercrime Centre (EC3), said a tsar with the authority and autonomy to ensure an effective cybersecurity strategy should be appointed as a matter of urgency. “We need a coherent and centralised approach to protecting our nation rather than having responsibilities for various aspects of cybersecurity spread throughout different departments and agencies,” he said. Mr Honan warned that cybersecurity was becoming more of an issue globally with data breaches, DDoS and ransomware attacks, financial scams and state-sponsored hacking incidents all on the rise. As well as domestic considerations, the State is also responsible for the security of services provided across the EU by multinational companies who have their European headquarters located here. Mr Honan said that, given this, a cybersecurity attack could not only cause widespread disruption for businesses and public agencies, but would also lead to serious reputational damage. “It is too critical for us as a nation, both from an economic and national security point of view, for [cybersecurity] to be left to individual government departments or businesses to look after,” said Mr Honan. Funding review Mr Honan’s comments come just weeks after a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General revealed that a dedicated cybersecurity unit established to protect government and industry networks has no strategic plan and requires a review of its funding. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), based in UCD, was established in 2011 with a view to “securing critical national infrastructure”. However, the C&AG report into its operations found an oversight body set up to monitor its performance had not met since 2015. Fianna Fáil has also recently urged the Government to take a more proactive approach to cybersecurity. Its defence spokesman, Jack Chambers, recently called for responsibility for the NCSC to be reassigned away from the Department of Communications. “The Department of Defence should take ownership and control of this so it can develop a proper whole-of-government response to the area of cybersecurity as it becomes a serious national threat. It would compromise foreign direct investment if our national infrastructure were to be seriously undermined and there were to be an attack,” Mr Chambers. Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/ireland-vulnerable-to-cybersecurity-attack-says-industry-leader-1.3666946

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Ireland vulnerable to cybersecurity attack, says industry leader

Cybercrime-as-a-Service: No End in Sight

Cybercrime is easy and rewarding, making it a perfect arena for criminals everywhere. Over the past 20 years, cybercrime has become a mature industry estimated to produce more than $1 trillion in annual revenues. From products like exploit kits and custom malware to services like botnet rentals and ransomware distribution, the breadth of cybercrime offerings has never been greater. The result: more, and more serious, forms of cybercrime. New tools and platforms are more accessible than ever before to those who lack advanced technical skills, enabling scores of new actors to hop aboard the cybercrime bandwagon. Meanwhile, more experienced criminals can develop more specialized skills in the knowledge that they can locate others on the darknet who can complement their services and work together with them to come up with new and better criminal tools and techniques. Line Between Illicit and Legitimate E-Commerce Is Blurring The cybercrime ecosystem has evolved to welcome both new actors and new scrutiny. The threat of prosecution has pushed most cybercrime activities onto the darknet, where the anonymity of Tor and Bitcoin protects the bad guys from being easily identified. Trust is rare in these communities, so some markets are implementing escrow payments to make high-risk transactions easier; some sellers even offer support services and money-back guarantees on their work and products. The markets have also become fractured, as the pro criminals restrict themselves to highly selective discussion boards to limit the threat from police and fraudsters. Nevertheless, a burgeoning cybercrime market has sprung from these hidden places to offer everything from product development to technical support, distribution, quality assurance, and even help desks. Many cybercriminals rely on the Tor network to stay hidden. Tor — The Onion Router — allows users to cruise the Internet anonymously by encrypting their activities and then routing it through multiple random relays on its way to its destination. This circuitous process renders it nearly impossible for law enforcement to track users or determine the identities of visitors to certain black-market sites. From Niche to Mass Market In 2015, the UK National Cyber Crime Unit’s deputy director stated during a panel discussion that investigators believed that the bulk of the cybercrime-as-a-service economy was based on the efforts of only 100 to 200 people who profit handsomely from their involvement. Carbon Black’s research discovered that the darknet’s marketplace for ransomware is growing at a staggering 2,500% per annum, and that some of the criminals can generate over $100,000 a year selling ransomware kits alone. That’s more than twice the annual salary of a software developer in Eastern Europe, where many of these criminals operate. There are plenty of ways for a cybercriminal to rake in the cash without ever perpetrating “traditional” cybercrime like financial fraud or identity theft. The first way is something called research-as-a-service, where individuals work to provide the “raw materials” — such as selling knowledge of system vulnerabilities to malware developers — for future criminal activities. The sale of software exploits has captured much attention recently, as the ShadowBrokers and other groups have introduced controversial subscription programs that give clients access to unpatched system vulnerabilities. Zero-Day Exploits, Ransomware, and DDoS Extortion Are Bestsellers The number of discovered zero-day exploits — weaknesses in code that had been previously undetected by the product’s vendor — has dropped steadily since 2014, according to Symantec’s 2018 Internet Security Threat Report, thanks in part to an increase in “bug bounty” programs that encourage and incentivize the legal disclosure of vulnerabilities. In turn, this has led to an increase in price for the vulnerabilities that do get discovered, with some of the most valuable being sold for more than $100,000 in one of the many darknet marketplaces catering to exploit sales, as highlighted in related a blog post on TechRepublic. Other cybercrime actors sell email databases to simplify future cybercrime campaigns, as was the case in 2016 when 3 billion Yahoo accounts were sold to a handful of spammers for $300,000 each. Exploit kits are another popular product on the darknet. They provide inexperienced cybercriminals with the tools they need to break into a wide range of systems. However, Europol suggests that the popularity of exploit kits has fallen over the past 12 months as the top products have been eliminated and their replacements have failed to offer a comparable sophistication or popularity. Europol also notes that theft through malware was generally becoming less of a threat; instead, today’s cybercriminals prefer ransomware and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) extortion, which are easier to monetize. Cybercrime Infrastructure-as-a-Service The third way hackers can profit from more sophisticated cybercrime is by providing cybercrime infrastructure-as-a-service. Those in this field are provide the services and infrastructure — including bulletproof hosting and botnet rentals — on which other bad actors rely to do their dirty work. The former helps cybercriminals to put web pages and servers on the Internet without having to worry about takedowns by law enforcement. And cybercriminals can pay for botnet rentals that give them temporary access to a network of infected computers they can use for spam distribution or DDoS attacks, for example. Researchers estimate that a $60-a-day botnet can cause up to $720,000 in damages on victim organizations. The numbers for hackers who control the botnets are also big: the bad guys can produce significant profit margins when they rent their services out to other criminals, as highlighted in a related post. The New Reality Digital services are often the backbone of small and large organizations alike. Whether it’s a small online shop or a behemoth operating a global digital platform, if services are slow or down for hours, the company’s revenue and reputation may be on the line. In the old days, word of mouth circulated slowly, but today bad news can reach millions of people instantly. Using botnets for DDoS attacks is a moneymaker for cybercriminals who extort money from website proprietors by threatening an attack that would destroy their services. The danger posed by Internet of Things (IoT) botnets was shown in 2016 when the massive Mirai IoT botnet attacked the domain name provider Dyn and took down websites like Twitter, Netflix, and CNN in the largest such attack ever seen. Botnet use will probably expand in the coming years as cybercriminals continue to exploit vulnerabilities in IoT devices to create even larger networks. Get used to it: Cybercrime is here to stay. Source: https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/cybercrime-as-a-service-no-end-in-sight/a/d-id/1333033

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Cybercrime-as-a-Service: No End in Sight

Has a BOT Network Compromised Your Systems?

BOT networks have surprisingly penetrated many corporate networks around the world. Yet many of the information technology and security operations teams often have difficulty identifying their activity and eliminating them from the network. The term botnet is derived from the combination of the words robot and network. A cybercriminal creates a network of these robots connected together for the purposes of coordinating some large-scale activity, most often to function as a cyberattack tool for cybercriminals. These activities often include the propagation of attacker malware tools, economic gain, or perhaps targeting a debilitating attack upon one or more websites on the internet, effectively harming revenue and reputation for enterprise organizations and online e-tailers. The larger the botnet, the more effective it can be in achieving the desired goal. Botnets spread via malware, often distributed through malicious email, and may also be self-propagating so that they move laterally from your laptop to other workstations and network devices within the network. Alternately, they can infect your laptop when you visit a compromised website, setting in motion a series of malicious events that result in a compromised system (drive-by download) and automatically installing the botnet software unbeknownst to the owner of that system. Very typically, due to a lack of effective cyber defense for both detection and remediation, cybercriminals find undefended internet of things (IoT) devices to be ideal hosts to harbor and hide their botnet malware. These IoT hosts can include the new generation of IoT enabled devices such as smart refrigerators, security cameras, digital video records, network connected access management systems, thermostats, and much more. Enterprise security departments are often surprised to find that their access management systems and security cameras are completely compromised by such botnets. The most common indicator is users complaining that computer programs are running much more slowly. This is an often key warning sign that hidden botnets or other malware are using your computing resources. More subtly, you may notice that your cooling fans are running when you are not actively using your computers or servers. This may be symptomatic of the considerable computational overhead created by botnets heating up the processor boards. Finally, on your Windows endpoint platforms, failure to shut down properly, or at all, or failure to download updates are other key indicators, any of which by themselves may not confirm the presence of a botnet, but together raise the suspicions to a high level. Some of your employees might also see unknown posts placed on their Facebook accounts. This might also be directly related to botnet activity. Cybercriminals can use social media accounts to easily disseminate malicious content. Conceptually, this social media botnet attack is very different than infecting your computer. By infecting your social media account, the botnet can propagate more rapidly across your entire social media account and never has to physically sit on your laptop or other home computers. Botnets usually work through automation set up, of course, by cybercriminals you don’t know. Key symptoms are almost always technology related – not related to insider activity or insider malicious threats. Beyond the symptoms already mentioned above, there are also technical indicators, such as strange processes running under windows, but these are very hard to detect. As quickly as cyber defense automation and tools evolve, so do the tactics, techniques, and procedures of the botnet cyberthieves. Most botnets don’t damage the host computers – most of what they do is degrade your performance and effectively “steal” your computer resources. More dangerous is the damage the cyberattackers can cause by using the botnet to maliciously target other websites. For example, when they launch a denial of service (DDOS) attack. Several best practices can help cut down or eliminate botnet infections and the secondary attacks that may be launched once an attacker has access to your networks through a botnet. These include: Utilize software that filters or cuts down on suspicious email attachments and don’t click on any links which are suspicious; Make sure your operating systems have all patches and updates installed; Keep your antivirus protection up to date – these often have the signatures of known and recent botnet malware components; and Encrypt your data end-to-end (at rest, in use, and in transit) so that an attacker in your network will be unable to make use of it. Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2018/10/has-a-bot-network-compromised-your-systems/

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Has a BOT Network Compromised Your Systems?

In Blockchain, There is no Checkmate

During my time as a Chairman of NATO’s Intelligence Committee and advising government and private companies on cybersecurity, I have noticed the same hacker-shaped hole in the industry. For the past 35 years, huge companies, organizations, charities and nation states have succumbed to cyber-criminals. Let me explain why. In a game of chess, you can win by either taking out all of your opponent’s pieces one-by-one, or by trapping the opposing side’s king in a checkmate. This is true of today’s cybersecurity model. One piece, in the wrong place at the wrong time could cost the entire game. Not just that, but any device in a network, whether it be a phone or a smart fridge, is a “king” that can be trapped and cost the integrity of an entire network. In this way, the “king” is a weakness. A weakness that costs companies and countries millions, a weakness that could mean loss of life in the healthcare industry or military systems – indeed, cybersecurity is not a game. Fighting cyber-criminals whilst being constrained by the rules of this chess match means we’ll never win. The centralized model where the hacking of a single device could compromise a network is categorically flawed. This needs to change: we don’t need to play a better game against cyber-criminals, we need to play a different game. Blockchain technology is arguably one of the most significant innovations for decades, and it extends beyond the vestiges of crypto currencies. At its core, the Blockchain is immutable, transparent, encrypted and fragmented (decentralized). As such, Blockchain and cybersecurity seem like a match made in heaven and for the most part, they are. For instance, right now, all the data of our personal or business devices – passwords, applications, files etc. – are stored on a centralized data server. Blockchain decentralizes the systems by distributing ledger data on many systems rather than storing them on one single network. There is no single point of failure, one central database or middleman that could potentially serve as a source of leaks or compromised data. The underpinnings of Blockchain architecture are based on time-stamped cryptographic nodes (the computer and servers that create blocks on a chain). Every time our data is stored or inserted into Blockchain ledgers, a new block is created. Each block has a specific summary of the previous block in the form of a secure digital signature. More sophisticated systems combine Blockchain and AI technologies to confirm each other based on previous signatures. If there is a discrepancy, threat, or a device steps outside of a set of pre-determined rules, the surrounding nodes will flag it for action. Since these blocks are linked in the form of a chain sequence, the timing, order and content of transactions cannot be manipulated. Just like crypto transactions, the Blockchain operates upon a democratic consensus. Any transfer of data would require a majority approval of the network participants; therefore, attackers can only impact a network by getting control of most of the network nodes. However, the nodes are random and the number of them stored on a given network can be in the millions. In the metaphorical game of chess, “the collective” Blockchain has an advantage. Imagine if team hackers could not eliminate a single piece, not a pawn nor rook, unless they could eliminate all million pieces on the entire board at once. If they fail to do that, all of the pieces remain untouchable – including the “king”. There is no checkmate, and no hope for hackers. Even still, since domain editing rights are only verified through nodes, hackers won’t get the right to edit and manipulate the data even after hacking a million of systems. As all transactions are cryptographically linked, the modification or tampering of the data at any given time would alert all those with access to the ledger, exposing the infected dataset near-instantaneously. The Blockchain does not linger or rely on any central point of failure to command changes; that allows for fixes to occur before attacks have time to spread. In other words, hacking a Blockchain with any scale is virtually impossible. For instance, in the case of DDoS attacks that crash large data servers, Blockchain technology would disrupt this completely by decentralizing the DNS (Domain Name Systems) and distributing the content to a greater number of nodes. The idea is clearly an attractive one. It can help save the billions that are being spent on developing arenas in which cybersecurity firms are fighting the hacker’s fight, especially in hard to defend environments. We have already seen a number of companies utilize Blockchain technology to safeguard networks. Companies such as Naoris bring this consensual Blockchain technology and link devices as blocks on a chain so that no single end-point or terminal exists in a silo. Current structures with multiple devices each act as a point of entry for a hacker into the network, however, as we know, the more nodes a network possesses on the Blockchain, the harder it becomes to infiltrate. Therefore, as the network expands and more devices are connected, the network becomes increasingly more resilient. This is only the beginning for Blockchain. As it develops, it’s only going to get smarter and better. New technologies have the potential to provide a robust and effective alternative way of ensuring that we evolve to compete with concerns surrounding our security. With the Blockchain, such concerns can be a thing of the past. Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/opinions/blockchain-no-checkmate/

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In Blockchain, There is no Checkmate