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
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
In today's world with botnets, viruses and other nefarious applications that use DNS to further their harmful activities, outbound DNS security has been largely overlooked. As a part of multi-layer security architecture, a DNS Firewall should not be ignored. After serving as a consultant for multiple organizations, I have encountered many companies that allow all internal devices to send outbound DNS queries to external DNS servers - a practice that can lead to myriad problems. more
On Tuesday, 2020 U.S. presidential candidate John Delaney announced a plan to create a Department of Cybersecurity. more
Much of the discussion regarding mobile security revolves around the growing "pandemic" of mobile malware. It's not uncommon to see headlines reporting the discovery of large numbers of new malware samples. However, as Google recently pointed out, with quite a bit of data to support them, there's little discussion of real world impact of these discoveries. This raises a number of relevant questions. Is the average user likely to be infected? Where does this malware come from? These are questions that deserve analysis and thoughtful responses. 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
Security experts at RSA Research Lab have reported the discovery of a new type of phishing attack targeted against online banking customers that combines a typical phishing website with a live change session initiated by fraudsters. The technique dubbed "Chat-in-the-Middle" not only attempts to trick customers into entering their usernames and passwords into a phishing site but obtains further sensitive information (such as answers to secret questions used by banks to authenticate customers). According to the report, this attack is currently targeting a single U.S.-based financial institution, however operators of all online banking websites are cautioned. more
Cisco has launched an intent-based networking solution designed to be intuitive and adapt; a new approach claimed to be one of the most significant breakthroughs in enterprise networking. more
EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, Identrust, and researchers at the University of Michigan today announced a new certificate authority (CA) initiative called "Let's Encrypt". 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 report, released today by McAfee, Inc., titled "Security Takes the Offensive," says that traditionally, security technology companies and computer users have taken a defensive posture, putting the cyber equivalent of body armor on computers, networks and in the cloud. The report's authors say it is now time to avoid enemy strikes altogether by taking a more aggressive stance, aligning forces and involving law enforcement. more
The recent heavy news coverage of WannaCry has overshadowed the latest WikiLeaks release of critical CIA malware documentation: user manuals for two hacking tools named AfterMidnight and Assassin. more
The project to sign the DNS root zone with DNSSEC took an additional step toward completion yesterday with the last of the "root server" hosts switching to serving signed DNSSEC data. Now every DNS query to a root server can return DNSSEC-signed data, albeit the "deliberately unvalidatable" data prior to the final launch. Another key piece for a working signed root is the acceptance of trust anchors in the form of DS records from top-level domain operators. These trust anchors are used to form the chain of trust from the root zone to the TLD. more
In part four of this series of posts looking at emerging internet content relating to coronavirus, we explore phishing. In times of crisis, cyber criminals invariably take advantage of the growing concerns of the public. In the case of the coronavirus, they have done so by sending phishing emails that play on the fears surrounding the spread of the illness. A number of reports have emerged of emails purporting to provide advice or assistance relating to COVID-19... more
Michael Cooney reporting in NetworkWorld: "Security researchers this week will detail a prototype system they say can better detect so-called Domain Name Generation- (DGA) based botnets such as Conficker and Kraken without the usual labor- and time-intensive reverse-engineering required to find and defeat such malware. The detection system, called Pleiades, monitors traffic below the local DNS server and analyzes streams of unsuccessful DNS resolutions..." more