Two Sudanese nationals have been indicted for allegedly leading Anonymous Sudan, a cybercriminal group responsible for over 35,000 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting critical infrastructure worldwide. more
Most engineers focus on purely technical mechanisms for defending against various kinds of cyber attacks, including "the old magic bullet," the firewall. The game of cannons and walls is over, however, and the cannons have won; those who depend on walls are in for a shocking future. What is the proper response, then? What defenses are there The reality is that just like in physical warfare, the defenses will take some time to develop and articulate. more
The Trump administration today announced that the U.S. will begin a new strategy to deter and respond to cyberattacks with offensive actions against foreign adversaries. more
In a big open office 30 feet from me, a team of US Veterans speak intently on the phone to businesses large and small, issuing urgent warnings of specific cyber security threats. They call to get stubborn, confused people to take down hidden ransomware distribution sites. They call with bad news that a specific computer at the business has malware that steals login credentials. more
According to reports, North Korea has accused the United States for conducting a cyberattack that has disrupted Internet connectivity in the country. "While the details of the cause of the disruption are unknown, we can confirm that in the last two days, North Korea's sole Internet provider has, in fact, suffered from disruptions in connectivity to the global Internet," reports Doug Madory from Renesys. more
US hospitals have been severely affected by a substantial cyberattack, leading to the closure of emergency rooms in multiple states and the redirection of ambulances. more
In a 52 page security report released by Cisco, the company has confirmed what has been consistently been observed through out this year: "the Internet-based attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialized as profit-driven criminals continue to hone their approach to stealing data from businesses, employees and consumers." The 2008 edition of the report has specified the year's top security threats and offers recommendations for protecting networks against attacks that are propagating more rapidly, becoming increasingly difficult to detect, and exploiting technological and human vulnerabilities. more
The source code for the IoT botnet 'Mirai' has been released," warns security expert Brian Krebs whose own website was targeted with the same botnet resulting in the historically large DDoS attack last month. more
The RBNexploit blog states that the website 'president.gov.ge' was under DDoS attack since Thursday. That site is now hosted out of Atlanta, Georgia (don't you love coincidence?) by Tulip Systems who is prominently displaying an AP story... "Speaking via cell phone from Georgia, Doijashvili said the attacks, traced to Moscow and St. Petersburg, are continuing on the U.S. servers." Rusisan military surrogates in the form of the criminal Russian Business Network are engaged in attacks against servers on US soil. This point should be brought up as the Group of 8-1 discusses appropriate responses to Russia's attack on Georgia. more
A new report warns that unless government and private sector decision makers begin developing specific procedures and trust now against cyber-enabled economic warfare (CEEW), the United States will find itself flat-footed during a major cyber event. more
A group of academic researchers have revealed a design weakness in the 4G/5G protocol which can be exploited by an attacker to identify the victim's presence in a particular cell area just from the victim's soft-identity such as phone number and Twitter handle. more
Two factor authentication that uses an uncopyable physical device (such as a cellphone or a security token) as a second factor mitigates most of these threats very effectively. Weaker two factor authentication using digital certificates is a little easier to misuse (as the user can share the certificate with others, or have it copied without them noticing) but still a lot better than a password. Security problems solved, then? more
In the past 24 months, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have changed profoundly. Gone are the days when attackers worked under the radar, when machines were infected by botnet code unknowingly and attacks were disguised leaving very little to trace the exact origin. ... The other game-changer: It's easier than ever to execute attacks. The tools are so widely available that anyone with basic skills and a high-speed connection can become a "hacktivist." more
A hacking incident over the weekend attacked networks in a number of countries including data centers in Iran where they left the image of a U.S. flag on screens along with a warning: "Don't mess with our elections." more
A recent report from Specops Software reveals alarming security vulnerabilities within VPN password systems, highlighting over two million VPN passwords stolen by malware in the past year. more