Cyberattack

Report Estimates Cybercrime Taking $600 Billion Toll on Global Economy

Cybercrime is costing businesses close to $600 billion, or 0.8 percent of global GDP, according to a report released today by McAfee, in partnership with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). more

Hackers Use Tesla’s Amazon Cloud Account to Mine Cryptocurrency

Tesla's cloud environment has been infiltrated by hackers and used to mine cryptocurrencies, researchers have discovered. Other victims include Aviva and Gemalto. more

Botnets Shift Focus to Credential Abuse, Says Latest Akamai Report

Akamai's Fourth Quarter, 2017 State of the Internet, was released today in which it states that the analysis of more than 7.3 trillion bot requests per month has found a sharp increase in the threat of credential abuse, with more than 40 percent of login attempts being malicious. more

UK’s Government Websites Infected by Cryptocurrency Mining Malware

Thousands of websites are reported to have been infected by malware over the weekend forcing visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency while using the sites. more

Pyeongchang Olympics Organizers Investigating Possible Cyberattack on Opening Day

Reports from various sources indicate Pyeongchang Olympics organizers were looking into a disruption of non-critical systems on the day of the opening ceremony but could not yet confirm if it was a cyberattack. more

Cryptocurrency Mining Attacks for the First Time Detected on Industrial Control Systems

A water utility in Europe was compromised by cryptocurrency malware mining attack; the attack is the first public discovery of an unauthorized cryptocurrency miner impacting industrial controls systems. more

Gold Dragon Helps Olympics Malware Attacks Gain Permanent Presence on Systems, Reports McAfee

A report recently released by McAfee Advanced Threat Research (ATR) revealed a fileless attack targeting organizations involved with the Pyeongchang Olympics. more

Industrial Plant Attack Generates Renewed Concerns Over Critical Infrastructure Hacking Threats

A recent malware attack on the control systems of an industrial plant has renewed concerns about the threat hacking poses to critical infrastructure. more

The Over-Optimization Meltdown

In simple terms, Meltdown and Spectre are simple vulnerabilities to understand. Imagine a gang of thieves waiting for a stage coach carrying a month's worth of payroll. There are two roads the coach could take, and a fork, or a branch, where the driver decides which one to take. The driver could take either one. What is the solution? Station robbers along both sides of the branch, and wait to see which one the driver chooses. more

A Year in Review: 14,000 Routing Incidents In 2017

How was the state of the Internet's routing system in 2017? Let's take a look back using data from BGPStream. Some highlights: 13,935 total incidents (either outages or attacks like route leaks and hijacks); Over 10% of all Autonomous Systems on the Internet were affected; 3,106 Autonomous Systems were a victim of at least one routing incident; 1,546 networks caused at least one incident. more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2017

It is once again time for our annual review of posts that received the most attention on CircleID during the past year. Congratulations to all the 2017 participants for sharing their thoughts and making a difference in the industry. 2017 marked CircleID's 15th year of operation as a medium dedicated to all critical matters related to the Internet infrastructure and services. We are in the midst of historic times, facing rapid technological developments and there is a lot to look forward to in 2018. more

Meltdown and Spectre: Security is a Systems Property

I don't (and probably won't) have anything substantive to say about the technical details of the just-announced Meltdown and Spectre attacks. What I do want to stress is that these show, yet again, that security is a systems property: being secure requires that every component, including ones you've never heard of, be secure. These attacks depend on hardware features... and no, many computer programmers don't know what those are, either. more

Two Romanians Charged for Hacking Washington DC Police Computers Linked to Surveillance Cameras

US prosecutors have charged two Romanians with hacking Washington DC police computers linked to surveillance cameras just days before President Donald Trump's inauguration. more

Cyberattack Causes Operational Disruption to Critical Infrastructure Using New Malware TRITON

A new malware designed to manipulate industrial safety systems was deployed against a critical infrastructure organization that provides emergency shutdown capability for industrial processes, according to a report released today. more

Former Rutgers University Student and Two Other Men Plead Guilty to 2016 Mirai Botnet Attacks

A New Jersey man was one of the three who pled guilty to hacking charges and creating the massive Mirai botnet attacks which spread via vulnerabilities in IoT devices causing massive DDoS attacks. more