STE WILLIAMS

Fraud in the online world is about to increase dramatically over the next 12 months. With the introduction of Europay, MasterCard, Visa (EMV) chip technology in the United States, card-not-present fraud (CNP) will show a substantial increase, and if the results of EMV adoption in the UK and Australia are any indication, CNP fraud could rise anywhere between 10- to 20%. A recent LexisNexis report outlines how merchants are left liable to online fraudulent activity – with them paying out $3.08 for each dollar lost to fraud.

Think of fraud as water running downhill – it will always follow the path that allows it to flow in the easiest way possible. If you’re still a little skeptical on the proficiency of EMV in combating card present fraud, the facts speak for themselves. Since the United Kingdom introduced EMV technology, counterfeit card losses are at their lowest levels in over 15 years, while card skimming losses in Canada dropped by more than $100 million in three years. Newton’s third law describes the impending results famously: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As more protections are implemented to combat card present fraud, online fraud will increase accordingly.

This perpetual push-and-pull force that drives fraud forward can be seen in the experiences with EMV implementation in other countries. Findings from Smart Card Alliance Payments Council indicate “one indirect consequence of EMV implementation is an increased incidence of fraud for virtual POS purchases, in what are often referred to as “card-not-present” (CNP) transactions.”

The Low-Hanging Fruit

When it comes to fraud, you definitely don’t want to be caught out on the bottom rung. The Address Verification System (AVS) and Card Security Code (CVV/CV2) controls are extremely common in the industry, but aren’t infallible. 3-D Secure is another option offered by most of the major card providers, but has always suffered from the perception of high abandonment rates. Fraudsters will begin to target online platforms that are a healthy balance between the weakest security measures and the highest gains from their efforts, and unfortunately, this puts the complex environment of online marketplaces — platforms where multiple buyers and sellers are transacting — firmly in their sights.

Unlike online retailers, marketplaces often don’t have the luxury of commanding the sale price. Because of this, fraudsters are able to inflate sale prices to vastly offset any cost or effort involved in overwhelming or outmaneuvering a marketplaces’ security features. While online retailers are only at risk of CNP fraud (and to a lesser extent chargebacks), marketplaces face a broader range of fraudulent methods that are much more sophisticated, and much harder to detect, also encompassing BIN washing, identity theft, account takeover, shill bidding, and phishing scams.

Fraudsters will use any of the above methods either singularly, or in conjunction, in order to defraud a platform and its users. One perfect example of multi-channel fraud on an auction based marketplace model, is shill bidding coupled with CNP fraud. A fraudster will create a seller account and advertise a product. They will then create and operate multiple buyer accounts, placing and increasing bids exponentially. Once the auction has completed, they will fund the sale with stolen card details, and receive the funds from their “sale.”

So What Can Marketplaces Do?

Perhaps the most alarming revelation of all is how few marketplaces are currently educated on fraud trends, capabilities, and methods. The reality is that banks simply accept or deny a payment – the rest is up to the marketplace. Here are four steps to minimize risk of being caught in the fraudsters trap: 

Step 1: Education: Knowledge is power. Learning about the latest fraud trends is essential. The Merchant Risk Conference in Las Vegas is a great place to start. 

Step 2: Data verification: This can incorporate IP identification and proxy piercing, device fingerprinting, and more basic level user data such as email/mobile/social media.

Airbnb is an example of a marketplace that’s doing a good job in tackling fraud with minimal friction – principally through email and social media verification. They also employ Jumio as an ID verification tool to compare and detect anomalies and ensure that an ID is legitimate and hasn’t been manipulated. 

Step 3: Rules Engines: The rules engine is a middleware application that allows you to create rules when tracking and managing fraud. You can perform pre- and post-authorization tests and rules, as well as rules to handle the return results from authorization. This is a must-have for any medium- to large-sized merchant. 

Step 4: Chargeback Reporting: The final rung of the ladder against fraud is at the chargebacks layer. It is commonly accepted that up to 1 out of every 100 transactions will result in a chargeback, and 86 percent of these chargebacks are fraudulent. It is also accepted that there is a 1 in 10 chance of the merchant winning the chargebacks – clearly a costly situation for the merchant. Chargeback reporting is so important because they show the merchant what they’ve missed, and allow them to analyze the event, and so better protect against it in the future by implementing risk-based controls. 

Marketplaces have a tough game to play; it’s a fine balance between building a platform that thwarts the efforts of fraudsters while maintaining a pleasant and frictionless experience for good users. Although no single security mechanism will protect against all possible fraud scenarios, marketplaces must get clued up on the risks and aware of the options available to help protect themselves. A new dawn of online fraud is upon us and marketplaces must act now, before they are overwhelmed.

Ben heads up risk management and fraud prevention for PromisePay. His main focus is mitigating risk and protecting customers from fraud. He develops and maintains advanced analytic rule sets, utilizing integrated software and search methods to ensure the highest level of … View Full Bio

Article source: http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/the-fraud-tsunami-heads-to-the-sharing-economy/a/d-id/1323610?_mc=RSS_DR_EDT

As is the case every year in the cybersecurity field, 2015 was full of lessons to be learned. Some brand new, others that it’s absurd we haven’t learned yet.

1. Pay For Your Room In Cash.

Retailers were in hit hard in 2014, but in 2015 point-of-sale hacks really moved over to the hospitality sector. Just Thursday, Hyatt Hotels announced it was the last to be breached (it had discovered the incident Nov. 30). Before that Hilton Worldwide, Mandarin Oriental, and Starwood Hotels Resorts (the owner of Sheraton, Westin, and W Hotels) all suffered breaches due to similar attacks. It isn’t just credit card data that is appetizing to attackers either. Info about loyalty programs is hot on the black market too. 

2. Take The Train Instead.

This was the year when car hacking really got taken seriously. Security researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller conducted a controversial demonstration taking remote control of a Jeep Cherokee and bringing it to a screeching stop. The Virginia State Police showed their cruisers could be compromised and researchers showed SMS messages sent to insurance dongles can kill brakes on cars. The issue got so unavoidable that Chrysler recalled 1.4 million vehicles and Intel founded a Car Security Review Board.

3. Trust Apple, But Not As Much.

Although security researchers agree that the state of Apple security is still far better than Android, but the trusted development environment took some serious hits this year. XCodeGhost snuck Trojanized iOS apps into the official App Store, a variety of proof-of-concept exploits in Gatekeeper allow unsigned code to run on OS X, and malware for iOS and Mac is increasing.

4. The Encryption Backdoor Debate Is Not Going Away.

The U.S. intelligence agencies may have retreated periodically — backing off on demands for encryption backdoors, and focusing its wrath instead on end-to-end encryption — but that doesn’t mean the conversation is over. With every new terrorist act, the threat of having liberties and privacy taken away becomes greater, and the encryption discussion has even become part of Presidential debates.

5. Don’t Get Sick.

Over the past 10 years, more than one-quarter of reported data breaches happened in the healthcare industry, according to Trend Micro. This year, the PHI exposures at medical insurers were of gobsmacking dimensions — 10 million records exposed by Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), 11 million by CareFirst BCBS, 11 million by Premera BCBS, 250,000 by LifeWise, and a stomach-turning 80 million from Anthem Healthcare.

6. Exporting Exploits and Hoarding 0-Days Are Bad…Unless You’re A Government.

Proposed updates to the Wassenaar Arrangement this year (which are getting another look, thanks to the advocacy efforts of security professionals) would put tight restrictions on US companies’ ability to export “intrusion software” internationally. Yet, the breach of Italian surveillance company Hacking Team revealed that many government agencies, including the U.S.’s FBI, purchased surveillance, exploit tools, and zero-day vulnerabilities from the firm. An FBI official recently publicly admitted that the Bureau buys zero-days and the NSA says it discloses 90 percent of the vulnerabilities it finds, but not how quickly it does so.

7. Flash Will Survive The Apocalypse.

Adobe Flash has been riddled with critical vulnerabilities this year, including some zero-days revealed in the Hacking Team leaks. US-CERT released an advisory, Mozilla stopped running Flash by default, and Facebook’s security chief demanded Adobe announce a date of-death for Flash. Yet, the technology persists. So, Flash is in the same category as cockroaches and ticks. Everyone wants them to die, but try as they might, they just can’t kill them. So, really, if you want your manifesto to still be viewable after the collosal supervolcano or sentient robot uprising, build it in Flash.

8. Government Jobs Aren’t Really So ‘Secure’.

The breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management resulted in the exposure of personal data on anyone who’s had a background check via OPM going back to the year 2000. In all, 21.5 million people’s Social Security numbers, residency and employment history, family, health, and financial history as well as fingerprints on 5.6 million people were exposed.

9. Keep Backups. No, Really.

Ransomware was everywhere in 2015, and there’s no reason to expect its growth will stop or slow down. Research found that ransomware use was growing, the malware itself was growing more sophisticated, the business models were becoming more varied, it had an exceptionally high return on investment, and many targets were helpless against it. Even several police departments simply paid up when they couldn’t recover their assets any other way.

10. Extortionists Have More Than Ransomware At Their Disposal.

In addition to the criminals using ransomware to extort mpney from victims, there are bad guys gathering their Bitcoins from DDoS, doxing, or other cyber-enhanced blackmail threats. The Ashley Madison breach gave extortionists, blackmailers, and the average unscrupulous capitalist plenty of opportunities to collect.   

11. Manage Privileged Users Better.

Study, after study, after study this year revealed that privileged accounts need to be better managed. It isn’t just that the credentials themselves are too weak but sometimes they’re poorly monitored, too widely shared, and they’re not efficiently revoked when employees leave an organization.

12. Watch Out For Insiders.

Another reason to manage privileged accounts is that not all who are privileged are trustworthy. 2015 kicked off with news that Morgan Stanley fired a wealth advisor who accessed data on about 10 percent of its client roster and publicly posted details for 900 of them online.

13. Start Making Friends at the FTC.

The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission could move forward with its lawsuit that alleged Wyndam Worldwide hotel chain should be held responsible for leaving its customer data unprotected. The ruling effectively gives the FTC the power to regulate the security practices of businesses.

14. Everyone Could Be A Target Of Cyber-espionage.

Whether it’s the St. Louis Cardinals hacking the Houston Astros, cybercriminals attacking Kaspersky Lab to stay ahead of their threat intelligence, or operators of a shadowy illegal online gambling business hacking their third-party software provider to make sure their work for a competing gambling company wasn’t a threat to their business, the takeaway is, cyber-espionage can happen to anyone.

15. Beware The Thing.

Cars and drones, Fitbits and smart fridges, baby monitors and Hello Barbie, satellites and smart cities…security vulnerabilities were found all over the Internet of Things this year. The coolest hacks this year were all at that intersection between the physical and the virtualm and the FBI even came out with a warning about the cybersecurity risks of IoT devices. Luckily, new organizations are arising to try to fix IoT security before it gets completely out of hand.

Sara Peters is Senior Editor at Dark Reading and formerly the editor-in-chief of Enterprise Efficiency. Prior that she was senior editor for the Computer Security Institute, writing and speaking about virtualization, identity management, cybersecurity law, and a myriad … View Full Bio

Article source: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/15-cybersecurity-lessons-we-should-have-learned-from-2015-but-probably-didnt/d/d-id/1323704?_mc=RSS_DR_EDT

Security has evolved into a game of detection and response, and the greatest weapon in this new world order is timely threat intelligence sharing. This is true primarily because details about an attack campaign provided by a peer organization can accelerate the response time to threats and limit their damage.

The good news is that there is growing support for threat intelligence sharing. In March of 2015, Andrew H. Tannenbaum, Cybersecurity Counsel for IBM, submitted testimony in support of threat information sharing before the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He argued that:

• Cyber threats have become too diverse and too dynamic to completely eliminate cyber risk;
• Businesses need to identify potential risks in their IT systems, prioritize them, and allocate security resources accordingly;
• Cybersecurity is now a data analytics challenge.

In his testimony, Tannenbaum explained that the explosion in technology, data, and access “has created a sea of new risks and hidden vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit. The velocity and volume of this threat requires a comprehensive, risk-based approach to cybersecurity,” he said, adding that “in order to stay ahead of the attackers, companies need timely and actionable information about specific threats to their infrastructure.”

“Malicious actors,” he said, “can move through networks at light speed, so information about the attack needs to be available to potential victims in as close to real time as possible.”

Other calls to action

The NIST Guide to Cyber Threat Information Sharing also recently pointed to the need for organizations to enhance incident response actions and bolster cyber defenses, by harnessing “the collective wisdom of peer organizations through information sharing and coordinated incident response.” Even President Obama espoused the benefits of information sharing at his summit on Cyber Security in Palo Alto. During the summit, Obama announced his executive order directing the creation of new Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (ISAOs).

According to the 2015 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, using shared intelligence for “herd alertness” — just as animals on the plains share warnings when predators are near — requires speed to be effective. That is because 75 percent of attacks spread from Victim 0 to Victim 1 in 24 hours while 40 percent hit the second victim organization in less than an hour!

One recent industry initiative designed to accelerate the exchange of threat intelligence is Facebook ThreatExchange. According to Facebook, there are currently more than 170 ThreatExchange members contributing attack information to this community, among them, RiskIQ, and other security vendors, plus cloud and social media companies the likes of Pinterest, Dropbox, Tumblr, and Yahoo.  ThreatExchange allows security researchers to team up with peers they know and trust, to share information and perform threat analysis. The intelligence shared by members of ThreatExchange connects attacks to attack infrastructure and enables organizations to combat threats like malvertising, ransomware, and other criminal-based attacks that routinely penetrate perimeter controls and scale beyond traditional defensive measures.

The more companies share threat information, the easier it becomes to detect and respond to threats. Whether it’s private sharing of attack campaigns, long-form reports on threat actors, or just public lists of indicators — sharing should occur without friction. The more vendors, service providers, and companies band together to fight security threats, the more difficult it will become for attacks to succeed.

Peter Zavlaris is one of the primary analysts and contributors to the RiskIQ blog, which provides weekly insights on the latest threats and attacks that target companies outside the firewall and put customers at risk. He has held various customer satisfaction positions with … View Full Bio

Article source: http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/the-rise-of-community-based-information-security-/a/d-id/1323603?_mc=RSS_DR_EDT

Security researcher Chris Vickery has discovered a database of 190 million US voters “sitting on the web,” but cannot identify what organization created the database.

The records contain “names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, party affiliations, and logs of whether or not they had voted in primary or general elections,” according to a report at Forbes. Vickery and reporters at CSO and DataBreaches.net have contacted NationBuilder, Catalist, Political Data, Aristotle, L2 Political, and NGP VAN and all disavow the files.

See more at Forbes.

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Article source: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/giant-mystery-database-of-us-voters-leaked/a/d-id/1323702?_mc=RSS_DR_EDT

This weekend, the holiday returns season went into full effect. While most normal people are kicking back and finding creative ways to lose the instruction manuals to their electronics gifts, the typical security pro is busy doing risk assessments on their gifts. Secure or insecure? With IoT gifts flying fast and furious over the holidays, cyber security insiders are probably going to be operating with a “catch-and-release” policy for many insecure devices gifted to them this year.

Ericka Chickowski specializes in coverage of information technology and business innovation. She has focused on information security for the better part of a decade and regularly writes about the security industry as a contributor to Dark Reading.  View Full Bio

Article source: http://www.darkreading.com/tech-gifts-that-security-pros-will-probably-return/d/d-id/1323698?_mc=RSS_DR_EDT