Threat Intelligence

Exploits, Curdled Milk and Nukes (Oh my!)

Throughout the second half of 2012 many security folks have been asking "how much is a zero-day vulnerability worth?" and it's often been hard to believe the numbers that have been (and continue to be) thrown around. For the sake of clarity though, I do believe that it's the wrong question... the correct question should be "how much do people pay for working exploits against zero-day vulnerabilities?" more

DDoS Attacks on US Banks This Week Peaked at 60 Gbps

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that targeted U.S. financial institutions this week have reached 60 Gbps, according to researchers from DDoS mitigation provider Arbor Networks. more

SANS Develops Small-Scale City to Train Cyber Warriors

SANS has announced NetWars CyberCity, a small-scale city located close by the New Jersey Turnpike complete with a bank, hospital, water tower, train system, electric power grid, and a coffee shop. NetWars CyberCity was developed to teach cyber warriors from the U.S. Military how online actions can have kinetic effects. more

Latest Makadocs Malware Uses Google Drive Viewer As Proxy to Command and Control Server

Security researchers have found a new variant of the Macadocs malware to be using Google docs as a proxy server and not connecting to a command and control server directly. In a blog post on Friday, Symantec researcher Takashi Katsuki, wrote... more

When Businesses Go Dark: A DDoS Survey

In February 2012, Neustar surveyed IT professionals across North America to better understand their DDoS experiences. Most were network services managers, senior systems engineers, systems administrators and directors of IT operations. In all, 1,000 people from 26 different industries shared responses about attacks, defenses, ongoing concerns, risks and financial losses. more

The Recent DDoS Attacks on Banks: 7 Key Lessons

Starting in mid-September, one of the largest and most sophisticated DDoS attacks ever targeted the titans of American banking. Initially, victims included Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC Bank, and U.S. Bancorp. In the weeks to come, others would also feel the pain. Websites crashed, customers were unable to make transactions and IT professionals and PR gurus went into panic mode. Leon Panetta, U.S. Secretary of Defense, said the attacks foreshadowed a "Cyber Pearl Harbor." more

Persistent Threat Detection on a Budget

If there's one simple - high impact - thing you could do to quickly check whether your network has been taken over by a criminal entity, or uncover whether some nefarious character is rummaging through your organizations most sensitive intellectual property out of business hours, what would it be? In a nutshell, I'd look to my DNS logs. It's staggering to me how few security teams have gotten wise to regularly interrogating the logs from their recursive DNS servers. more

M3AAWG, London Action Plan Release Best Practices to Address Online and Mobile Threats

A cooperative international report was released last week outlining Internet and mobile best practices aimed at curtailing malware, phishing, spyware, bots and other Internet threats. It also provides extensive review of current and emerging threats. "Best Practices to Address Online and Mobile Threats" is a comprehensive assessment of Internet security as it stands today... more

FBI Agent Thomas X. Grasso Receives First J.D. Falk Award for Establishing DNS Changer Working Group

Convincing competitors, disparate business entities and researchers to collaborate - many donating their services and resources - to protect millions of end-users worldwide is no small feat. Yet FBI Supervisory Special Agent Thomas X. Grasso did just that by quietly working behind the scenes to create the DNS Changer Working Group that saved an inestimable number of end-users from losing access to the Web over the last two years. more

Emerging Cyber-Security Threats and Implications for the Private Sector

The new gTLD program will have a profound impact on the private sector's increasing dominance over Internet information resources and ownership of critical registry technical infrastructure assets. It is already anticipated that only the private sector will take full advantage of the commercial possibilities... However, the successful introduction of new gTLDs will also create new challenges of security for the private sector. more

The Tale of Thousands of Hacked Modems in Brazil, Affecting Millions

Kaspersky Lab Expert, Fabio Assolini, has provided detailed description of an attack which as been underway in Brazil since 2011 using 1 firmware vulnerability, 2 malicious scripts and 40 malicious DNS servers, affecting 6 hardware manufacturers, resulting in millions of Brazilian internet users falling victim to a sustained and silent mass attack on DSL modems. more

Nitol and 3322.org Takedown by Microsoft

Reading this morning's blog from Microsoft about "Operation b70" left me wondering a lot of things. Most analysts within the botnet field are more than familiar with 3322.org - a free dynamic DNS provider based in China known to be unresponsive to abuse notifications and a popular home to domain names used extensively for malicious purposes - and its links to several botnets around the world. more

Internet Society Releases Paper on “What Really Matters About the Internet”

Internet Society has released a paper today highlighting the importance of understanding what is important and unchanging about the Internet. more

The ITRs and Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is a top-of-mind issue with calls for individual vigilance, national legislation, and international treaties to address gaps that are exploited causing significant harm and financial loss on a daily basis. The vast majority of these calls are well-intentioned though even among the best-intentioned, some are poorly directed. Such is the case with all of the proposals that would introduce security into the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). more

Researchers Detail Faster Methods to Defeat Botnets Like Conficker and Kraken

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