George Grachis, CISA, CISSP is the ISSM, Information Systems Security Manager for Satcom Direct, a Global leader in satellite communications for air, land and sea. He is also Board member of ISSA, ISACA, InfraGard and the Space Coast Technology Council's Cyber Committee. His recent article in Computerworld discusses the importance of including users as part of the security perimeter. Mr. Grachis observes: . . . we have new and better technology that keeps getting exploited. Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and now Android are slinging out patch after patch. Attacks still include hacktivism, cyber espionage, cyber-crime, and cyber warfare. Oh, now we [...]

Uroburos There is now an extensive cyberwar taking place between Russia and Ukraine. Cyber security researchers at GData and BEA Systems have discovered a piece of malware which appears to have originated in Russia and is now being used against Ukraine.  The malware has been designed "Uroburos" by GData. Uroburos is a mythical snake or dragon which is eating its own tail. The same code is called "Snake" by BAE Systems. This graphic from BAE Systems shows the targets of Uroburos: GData released its initial report on March 3, 2014.  GData released a follow-up report on March 7, 2014. [...]

Mark Sparshott, Proofpoint's executive director, recently spoke at Computing's IT Leaders' Forum event in London. Sparshott said that cybercriminals use clever psychological tricks to entice users to interact with malicious emails - spearphishing. All these attacks leverage clever techniques to bypass traditional reputation and content-based checking at the time of delivery. Once in the inbox, they leverage an understanding of how humans work to make them click the link, where the payloads that attack the system flaws on the device the user is browsing from occur. . .  At the time the email is delivered, the email, and the sites [...]

The Syrian Electronic Army infiltrated Forbes.com.  According to Re/code, the SEA defaced the Forbes website, issued fake twitter messages and stole a million user account names and passwords. How could the SEA do this?  Forbes answers that question: A hacker, perhaps more than one, gained access to our publishing platform through spear phishing ... Spearphishers deceive people into making bad email decisions that compromise security. IT needs to help employees make better email processing decisions. That is where SP Guard comes into play. Using SP Guard, IT can determine a list of trusted senders and provide this information to staff in a simple and highly [...]

The compromise of credit card and personal data from the Target attack has been widely reported. You might even  be a victim -- some of us at Iconix were victims! The attack has now been traced back to one of Target's vendors -- Fazio Mechanical.  Fazio Mechanical has issued a statement in which it explains that its was “the victim of a sophisticated cyber attack operation.”  "sophisticated cyber attack operation"  -- what could that be?  The mind conjures up images of a James Bond-like infiltration of their systems.  In fact, it was the most reliable trick in the cyber-bad guy book -- [...]

In a further demonstration of the two most important cyber espionage facts: Infiltration Is Easy Detection Is Hard, Kaspersky has uncovered malware it terms "The Mask."  Security Week reports: Powerful and difficult to detect, Careto intercepts all the communication channels and collects the most vital information from the victim’ system. Detection is extremely difficult because of its stealth rootkit capabilities, and in addition to built-in functionalities, the attackers can upload additional modules which can perform virtually any function. So far, attacks have been seeing using multiple vectors, including an Adobe Flash Player exploit that targets CVE-2012-0773, a vulnerability patched by [...]

Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living.  Thus  began a warning from the emergency broadcast system. How could this have happened? Because the TV station never changed the default factory log in credentials . How hard is to find these default log in credentials? The default log in credentials are published on the manufacturer's website. It isn't always this easy to steal credentials -- but almost.  Bad guys have figured out that employees have credentials - -and that it is easy to steal these credentials [...]

The Syrian Electronic Army successfully infiltrated CNN. The SEA  posted fake content on @CNN @NatlSecurityCNN @CNNSitRoom @CNNPolitics CNN's official Facebook page CNN's Security Clearance blog CNN's Political Ticker blog This demonstrated the SEA's ability to infiltrate organizations at will.  Mashable is reporting that soon after seeing CNN reports critical of the Assad regime, the SEA decided to hack CNN. Soon after making this decision, the SEA seized the assets listed above.  How do they do it? Spearphishing.  Mashable quotes Dave Lewis, a security advocate at Akamai Technologies, People are the soft chewy center of the security landscape. If you can't [...]