STE WILLIAMS

The US Department of Homeland Security has issued a total of three warnings in the last few days encouraging people to be on the alert for physical and cyber attacks from Iran. The announcements follow the US killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force. The warnings directly address IT professionals with advice on how to secure their networks against Iranian attack.

On Monday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is an agency within the DHS, released the latest publication in its CISA Insights series, which provides background information on cybersecurity threats to the US.

Without explicitly mentioning Soleimani’s killing, it referred to “recent Iran-US tensions” creating a heightened risk of retaliatory acts against the US and its global interests. Organizations should be on the lookout for potential threats, especially if they represent strategic targets such as finance, energy, or telecommunications, it said. Iranian attackers could launch attacks targeting intellectual property or mount disinformation campaigns, it said, while also raising the spectre of physical attacks using improvised explosive devices or unmanned drones.

The publication added:

Review your organisation from an outside perspective and ask the tough questions – are you attractive to Iran and its proxies because of your business model, who your customers and competitors are, or what you stand for?

The same day, CISA also issued an alert specifically targeting IT pros that warned of a potential Iranian cyber response to the military strike. It recommended five actions that IT professionals could take to protect themselves, focusing on a mixture of vulnerability mitigation and incident preparation.

IT pros should:

Disable all unnecessary ports and protocols. Reducing the network attack surface, along with monitoring open ports for command and control activity, will help to reduce network vulnerability and spot potential attackers rattling the doors.

Enhance monitoring of network and email traffic. Restricting attachments and reviewing signatures for malware and phishing themes will help to stop attackers reaching users.

Patch externally facing equipment. Focus on critical vulnerabilities, the Agency warned, especially those that enable remote code execution or denial of service on public-facing equipment.

Log and limit PowerShell use. This powerful Microsoft command line tool is a known asset for online attackers who use it to navigate their way around target systems.

Keep backups updated. This means maintaining air-gapped backup files not reachable by ransomware.

The publication and alert follow a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletin released on 4 January that mentioned the Soleimani strike and noted that Iran’s leaders along with affiliated organisations had vowed revenge against the US.

An attack in the homeland may come with little or no warning.

The US killed Qasem Soleimani using a Reaper drone on 3 January. The strike, which congressional leaders condemned, followed mounting rocket attacks against US bases in Iraq over the past two months.

Experts both in and outside the US government have long identified Iran as a source of malicious cyber activity. Last year, an analysis highlighted an increased focus on industrial control systems from the country’s APT33 hacking group. Almost exactly a year before, the US charged Iranian hackers for their role in an attack using the SamSam ransomware.

Over the weekend, hackers claiming Iranian backing defaced the US government’s Federal Depository Library Program website with a picture of a bloodied president Trump. On Tuesday, intruders altered the Texas Department of Agriculture’s website with a message stating “Hacked by Iranian Hacker”.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/jQIIJJ29FVQ/

In September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wrist-slapped Google for flagrantly, illegally sucking up kids’ data so it could target them with ads.

On Monday, as part of its agreement with the FTC and the New York attorney general over violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), YouTube said it was beginning to apply its changes.

The big one: rather than trying to verify that users are over the age of 13, it’s just going to treat all content aimed at kids as if it is watched by kids (which it well may be, particularly when it comes to videos about, say, gaming, animation or toys), regardless of age of the viewer, and it’s going to COPPA-ify that content.

That means that if you’re making content that’s deemed to be aimed at kids, YouTube’s going to treat anybody who watches it as if they’re under the age of 13, regardless of how old a user actually is. As per federal COPPA guidelines, that means that YouTube will limit data collection and use and, hence, the serving up of personalized ads on such videos.

It sounds like a reasonable enough proposition, unless you’re one of the many content creators who’ll suffer the consequences of having their videos shunted to the cobwebby basement that is YouTube’s category of “for kids” – a place where, creators say, content crawls off to die from acute lack of revenue.

One content creator, Chadtronic, believes that flagging a video as “made for kids” will mean it makes significantly less money and will be far harder to find. He didn’t provide a source for his claims, but as Ars Technica reports, they’re being spread by other creators.

(Screenshot is from Chadtronic’s video linked above.)

Actually, his “90% less revenue” claim is the only one that’s questionable. As for the other claims, YouTube itself asserted them in its post on Monday: as YouTube said on its official blog, limiting data collection and use comes with a chokehold on product features such as the ability to comment, live chat, notifications, stories, save to playlist, and more.

So what happens if the creators simply eschew the “for kids” label? They could get their pants sued off by the FTC, that’s what.

Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection:

We […] have strong penalties in future cases against content creators and channel owners …particularly when we would have a situation where the channel owner was specifically asked ‘are you child-directed?,’ and the channel owner said ‘No.’

During a press conference to announce the $170 million fine in September, FTC Chairman Joseph Simons got explicit about the FTC’s willingness to sue content creators:

When we talk about aggressiveness, we are typically talking about civil penalties. Not only can we sue Google and YouTube for compliance with COPPA, but also individual channel owners and content creators.

No wonder content creators are panicking: COPPA fines can run up to a blistering $42,530 per violation. Mind you, the creators who could be personally subject to such fines neither collect, receive, nor have access to children’s user data – but still, they could be on the hook for violating the law if they don’t flag their videos as “made for kids.”

The FTC plainly states – in bold and italic so that you can hear it e-shouting – that…

COPPA applies [to content creators] in the same way it would if the channel owner had its own website or app.

Chairman Simons compared creators who don’t comply with COPPA to “fish in a barrel” – with the FTC holding the gun – at 15:10 during the press conference announcing the fine.

Unfortunately, when it comes to determining what content is made for kids, it’s kind of like the definition of porn – there’s a lot of “we know if when we see it”. But the FTC does provide factors it will consider in determining whether content is aimed at kids, saying that content “isn’t considered ‘directed to children’ just because some children may see it.”

The factors it will consider:

• the subject matter
• visual content
• the use of animated characters or child-oriented activities and incentives
• the kind of music or other audio content
• the age of models
• the presence of child celebrities or celebrities who appeal to children
• language or other characteristics of the site
• whether advertising that promotes or appears on the site is directed to children
• competent and reliable empirical evidence about the age of the audience.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/_7NLfWyE57Q/

In September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wrist-slapped Google for flagrantly, illegally sucking up kids’ data so it could target them with ads.

On Monday, as part of its agreement with the FTC and the New York attorney general over violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), YouTube said it was beginning to apply its changes.

The big one: rather than trying to verify that users are over the age of 13, it’s just going to treat all content aimed at kids as if it is watched by kids (which it well may be, particularly when it comes to videos about, say, gaming, animation or toys), regardless of age of the viewer, and it’s going to COPPA-ify that content.

That means that if you’re making content that’s deemed to be aimed at kids, YouTube’s going to treat anybody who watches it as if they’re under the age of 13, regardless of how old a user actually is. As per federal COPPA guidelines, that means that YouTube will limit data collection and use and, hence, the serving up of personalized ads on such videos.

It sounds like a reasonable enough proposition, unless you’re one of the many content creators who’ll suffer the consequences of having their videos shunted to the cobwebby basement that is YouTube’s category of “for kids” – a place where, creators say, content crawls off to die from acute lack of revenue.

One content creator, Chadtronic, believes that flagging a video as “made for kids” will mean it makes significantly less money and will be far harder to find. He didn’t provide a source for his claims, but as Ars Technica reports, they’re being spread by other creators.

(Screenshot is from Chadtronic’s video linked above.)

Actually, his “90% less revenue” claim is the only one that’s questionable. As for the other claims, YouTube itself asserted them in its post on Monday: as YouTube said on its official blog, limiting data collection and use comes with a chokehold on product features such as the ability to comment, live chat, notifications, stories, save to playlist, and more.

So what happens if the creators simply eschew the “for kids” label? They could get their pants sued off by the FTC, that’s what.

Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection:

We […] have strong penalties in future cases against content creators and channel owners …particularly when we would have a situation where the channel owner was specifically asked ‘are you child-directed?,’ and the channel owner said ‘No.’

During a press conference to announce the $170 million fine in September, FTC Chairman Joseph Simons got explicit about the FTC’s willingness to sue content creators:

When we talk about aggressiveness, we are typically talking about civil penalties. Not only can we sue Google and YouTube for compliance with COPPA, but also individual channel owners and content creators.

No wonder content creators are panicking: COPPA fines can run up to a blistering $42,530 per violation. Mind you, the creators who could be personally subject to such fines neither collect, receive, nor have access to children’s user data – but still, they could be on the hook for violating the law if they don’t flag their videos as “made for kids.”

The FTC plainly states – in bold and italic so that you can hear it e-shouting – that…

COPPA applies [to content creators] in the same way it would if the channel owner had its own website or app.

Chairman Simons compared creators who don’t comply with COPPA to “fish in a barrel” – with the FTC holding the gun – at 15:10 during the press conference announcing the fine.

Unfortunately, when it comes to determining what content is made for kids, it’s kind of like the definition of porn – there’s a lot of “we know if when we see it”. But the FTC does provide factors it will consider in determining whether content is aimed at kids, saying that content “isn’t considered ‘directed to children’ just because some children may see it.”

The factors it will consider:

• the subject matter
• visual content
• the use of animated characters or child-oriented activities and incentives
• the kind of music or other audio content
• the age of models
• the presence of child celebrities or celebrities who appeal to children
• language or other characteristics of the site
• whether advertising that promotes or appears on the site is directed to children
• competent and reliable empirical evidence about the age of the audience.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/_7NLfWyE57Q/

Researchers report flaws, vendors issue patches, organisations apply them – and everyone lives happily ever after. Right?

Not always. Sometimes, the middle element of that chain – the bit where organisations apply patches – can takes months to happen. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.

It’s a relaxed patching cycle that has become security’s unaffordable luxury.

Take, for instance, this week’s revelation by researcher Kevin Beaumont that serious vulnerabilities in Pulse Secure’s Zero Trust business VPN (virtual private network) system are being exploited to break into company networks to install the REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware.

His evidence comprises anecdotal reports from victims mentioning unpatched Pulse Secure VPN systems being used as a way in by REvil. Something he has since seen for himself:

I’ve now seen an incident where they can prove Pulse Secure was used to gain access to the network.

Disaster timeline

As Beaumont points out, the patches for the vulnerabilities in some versions of the Pulse Connect Secure (PCS) and Pulse Policy Secure (PPS) were first made public in an advisory published by the company on 24 April 2019.

This covered 10 CVEs, including one critical rated a maximum 10 on the CVSS scale (CVE-2019-11510), a second (CVE-2019-11508) rated 9.9, plus six additional CVEs affecting the Ghostscript PDF interpreter.

A week before that, as we reported, a more general warning was issued by US-CERT regarding weaknesses in several companies’ VPN clients, including Pulse Secure’s Connect Secure.

So, for up to eight months before the latest REvil attacks, it was public knowledge that Pulse Secure’s VPN systems had severe weaknesses that needed urgent attention.

As Beaumont describes:

It allows people without valid usernames and passwords to remotely connect to the corporate network the device is supposed to protect, turn off multi-factor authentication controls, remotely view logs and cached passwords in plain text (including Active Directory account passwords).

On 14 August, someone posted an exploit for CVE-2019-11510 on OpenSecurity.global, after which it was only days before criminals started scanning for the vulnerability using BinaryEdge.io sensors.

Bad Packets even posted a warning that it had detected a mass scanning for the Pulse Secure flaws. The bad news – according to scans, in late August 2019, 14,528 servers out of 41,850 running the software had not been patched for the vulnerability.

What went wrong?

Logically, the companies caught out in REvil’s latest attacks were on the ‘failed to patch’ list. Or perhaps, as Beaumont mentions, the attackers were able to install backdoors that overcame any subsequent patching.

Somehow, Pulse Secure’s patches were missed, ignored, or not applied for reasons unknown. Whatever the cause, getting to the bottom of why these flaws were left to fester is in everyone’s interest.

The latest count of vulnerable Pulse Secure servers? According to Bad Packets…

On Friday, January 3, 2020, we conducted our nineteenth round of vulnerability scans and found 3,826 Pulse Secure VPN servers worldwide remain vulnerable to compromise.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/FOp5i99FBQk/

Researchers report flaws, vendors issue patches, organisations apply them – and everyone lives happily ever after. Right?

Not always. Sometimes, the middle element of that chain – the bit where organisations apply patches – can takes months to happen. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.

It’s a relaxed patching cycle that has become security’s unaffordable luxury.

Take, for instance, this week’s revelation by researcher Kevin Beaumont that serious vulnerabilities in Pulse Secure’s Zero Trust business VPN (virtual private network) system are being exploited to break into company networks to install the REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware.

His evidence comprises anecdotal reports from victims mentioning unpatched Pulse Secure VPN systems being used as a way in by REvil. Something he has since seen for himself:

I’ve now seen an incident where they can prove Pulse Secure was used to gain access to the network.

Disaster timeline

As Beaumont points out, the patches for the vulnerabilities in some versions of the Pulse Connect Secure (PCS) and Pulse Policy Secure (PPS) were first made public in an advisory published by the company on 24 April 2019.

This covered 10 CVEs, including one critical rated a maximum 10 on the CVSS scale (CVE-2019-11510), a second (CVE-2019-11508) rated 9.9, plus six additional CVEs affecting the Ghostscript PDF interpreter.

A week before that, as we reported, a more general warning was issued by US-CERT regarding weaknesses in several companies’ VPN clients, including Pulse Secure’s Connect Secure.

So, for up to eight months before the latest REvil attacks, it was public knowledge that Pulse Secure’s VPN systems had severe weaknesses that needed urgent attention.

As Beaumont describes:

It allows people without valid usernames and passwords to remotely connect to the corporate network the device is supposed to protect, turn off multi-factor authentication controls, remotely view logs and cached passwords in plain text (including Active Directory account passwords).

On 14 August, someone posted an exploit for CVE-2019-11510 on OpenSecurity.global, after which it was only days before criminals started scanning for the vulnerability using BinaryEdge.io sensors.

Bad Packets even posted a warning that it had detected a mass scanning for the Pulse Secure flaws. The bad news – according to scans, in late August 2019, 14,528 servers out of 41,850 running the software had not been patched for the vulnerability.

What went wrong?

Logically, the companies caught out in REvil’s latest attacks were on the ‘failed to patch’ list. Or perhaps, as Beaumont mentions, the attackers were able to install backdoors that overcame any subsequent patching.

Somehow, Pulse Secure’s patches were missed, ignored, or not applied for reasons unknown. Whatever the cause, getting to the bottom of why these flaws were left to fester is in everyone’s interest.

The latest count of vulnerable Pulse Secure servers? According to Bad Packets…

On Friday, January 3, 2020, we conducted our nineteenth round of vulnerability scans and found 3,826 Pulse Secure VPN servers worldwide remain vulnerable to compromise.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/FOp5i99FBQk/

How business executives’ best intentions may be negatively affecting security and risk mitigation strategies — and exposing weaknesses in organizational defenses.

Those who wish to do your business harm are hearing the famous words by Sun Tzu in the book The Art of War: “Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.” This is the typical philosophy adopted by modern cybercriminals to identify points of weakness and exposure, whether they are in business data centers or in the cloud. But in a move never imagined by Sun Tzu himself, today’s defenses may even be circumvented and damaged by business executives themselves.

Historically, enterprises have used application deployment models that required finance, supply chain, and human resources system owners to work hand in hand with security leaders to ensure they can move past the barriers of the corporate firewall. With the introduction of cloud, these same teams are now able to stand up cloud-based platforms in a matter of days or establish cloud infrastructure services with a credit card. These activities can rapidly serve the growing pressures placed on these business executives to meet key deliverables in a timely manner. So, with all the simplicity cloud brings, including low-lift efforts to onboard new services, what is the risk everyone is worried about?

The “Pace Gap” Issue Created by the Cloud
Oracle’s recent industry report on cloud threats illustrates the fast-paced efforts by business executives that are creating what is called a “pace gap” between organizations’ business-critical services and the security, compliance, and risk programs designed to keep customers and data protected. Pace gaps occur when a key business application is suddenly onboarded and used by the executive without any orchestration from the security operations team. This creates risk around credential/identity management programs, regulatory compliance oversight, data protection programs and organizations’ ability to detect anomalous behaviors and respond accordingly.

The Benefits of a United Security Front
Event and alert information from today’s cloud applications can be very instrumental in identifying threats and attacks. For example, when effectively deployed, an ERP system can provide a plethora of information on suspicious behaviors in user transactions that might correlate with supply chain behaviors or even behaviors on other IT resources. Consolidating, correlating and responding to these events is critical to a modern defense strategy so they all work together for a common cause.

As Sun Tzu said, “If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them.” Even back in 6th century B.C., Sun Tzu saw that a united front with no sunlight between overlapping defenses and infrastructure is the only way to defend against an attack. When there is unsanctioned application use inside any organization (by a business executive or user), this may be the daylight needed for an attacker to strike by exploiting misconfigured services or by taking advantage of limited monitoring and response capabilities.

The Need for Collaboration Between the Business and Security Operations
As this unsanctioned application usage illustrates, there are several reasons organizations may bypass and/or don’t work more effectively with the security operations teams. For one, there is the concern that implementing the appropriate security controls will slow down deployment of a service the business executive wants for its customers. The other is that the security team itself may simply say “no” to rolling out the new service.

Both of these are issues that today’s CISOs are working to overcome by changing the way they — and by extension, their IT and security teams — engage with the business executives. We are seeing CISOs making significant efforts to adopt new management styles to help them move past the old refrain of “no you can’t” to the more inclusive approach of “yes you can… and here is a safe way to do that.”

And what about the delay in service deployment? Eventually, the security operations, compliance, and data protection teams will catch up with services deployed that are misconfigured. In these situations, there is a real risk of suspension of services and a lengthy audit/remediation activity to bring this back in line with corporate policies.

I was once asked, “what is the most important step a business executive can perform to mitigate risk?” Simply put, buy your CISO a cup of coffee every other week. Help yourself by building a relationship and investing in the common goals you both share. Work with your CISO to understand your part of the shared responsibility security model between you and the cloud service provider. Your role as a business executive requires that you work effectively with your IT and security teams to ensure your company’s role in securing data is addressed.

Public Cloud: An Organization’s Closest Ally or Greatest Enemy 
Public cloud can be the most secure environment for your data with effective planning, or it can be your greatest risk without it. Ninety-one percent of security leaders feel that public cloud can provide an as-secure or more secure environment than one they can deliver in their own data center, but this requires organizations to take the advice of Sun Tzu and “be prepared.”

Related Content:

• State of the Cloud
• 7 Biggest Cloud Security Blind Spots
• Assessing Cybersecurity Risk in Today’s Enterprise
• Navigating Security in the Cloud

Check out The Edge, Dark Reading’s new section for features, threat data, and in-depth perspectives. Today’s top story: “Car Hacking Hits the Streets“

Greg Jensen is a Director of Security Strategy at Oracle Corporation addressing the risk and challenges to the hybrid-cloud. He is also the Senior Editor of the Oracle and KPMG Cloud Threat Report and Oracle CISO Report with a key focus on developing cloud security … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/the--art-of-cloud-war--for-business-critical-data/a/d-id/1336697?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

How business executives’ best intentions may be negatively affecting security and risk mitigation strategies — and exposing weaknesses in organizational defenses.

Those who wish to do your business harm are hearing the famous words by Sun Tzu in the book The Art of War: “Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.” This is the typical philosophy adopted by modern cybercriminals to identify points of weakness and exposure, whether they are in business data centers or in the cloud. But in a move never imagined by Sun Tzu himself, today’s defenses may even be circumvented and damaged by business executives themselves.

Historically, enterprises have used application deployment models that required finance, supply chain, and human resources system owners to work hand in hand with security leaders to ensure they can move past the barriers of the corporate firewall. With the introduction of cloud, these same teams are now able to stand up cloud-based platforms in a matter of days or establish cloud infrastructure services with a credit card. These activities can rapidly serve the growing pressures placed on these business executives to meet key deliverables in a timely manner. So, with all the simplicity cloud brings, including low-lift efforts to onboard new services, what is the risk everyone is worried about?

The “Pace Gap” Issue Created by the Cloud
Oracle’s recent industry report on cloud threats illustrates the fast-paced efforts by business executives that are creating what is called a “pace gap” between organizations’ business-critical services and the security, compliance, and risk programs designed to keep customers and data protected. Pace gaps occur when a key business application is suddenly onboarded and used by the executive without any orchestration from the security operations team. This creates risk around credential/identity management programs, regulatory compliance oversight, data protection programs and organizations’ ability to detect anomalous behaviors and respond accordingly.

The Benefits of a United Security Front
Event and alert information from today’s cloud applications can be very instrumental in identifying threats and attacks. For example, when effectively deployed, an ERP system can provide a plethora of information on suspicious behaviors in user transactions that might correlate with supply chain behaviors or even behaviors on other IT resources. Consolidating, correlating and responding to these events is critical to a modern defense strategy so they all work together for a common cause.

As Sun Tzu said, “If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them.” Even back in 6th century B.C., Sun Tzu saw that a united front with no sunlight between overlapping defenses and infrastructure is the only way to defend against an attack. When there is unsanctioned application use inside any organization (by a business executive or user), this may be the daylight needed for an attacker to strike by exploiting misconfigured services or by taking advantage of limited monitoring and response capabilities.

The Need for Collaboration Between the Business and Security Operations
As this unsanctioned application usage illustrates, there are several reasons organizations may bypass and/or don’t work more effectively with the security operations teams. For one, there is the concern that implementing the appropriate security controls will slow down deployment of a service the business executive wants for its customers. The other is that the security team itself may simply say “no” to rolling out the new service.

Both of these are issues that today’s CISOs are working to overcome by changing the way they — and by extension, their IT and security teams — engage with the business executives. We are seeing CISOs making significant efforts to adopt new management styles to help them move past the old refrain of “no you can’t” to the more inclusive approach of “yes you can… and here is a safe way to do that.”

And what about the delay in service deployment? Eventually, the security operations, compliance, and data protection teams will catch up with services deployed that are misconfigured. In these situations, there is a real risk of suspension of services and a lengthy audit/remediation activity to bring this back in line with corporate policies.

I was once asked, “what is the most important step a business executive can perform to mitigate risk?” Simply put, buy your CISO a cup of coffee every other week. Help yourself by building a relationship and investing in the common goals you both share. Work with your CISO to understand your part of the shared responsibility security model between you and the cloud service provider. Your role as a business executive requires that you work effectively with your IT and security teams to ensure your company’s role in securing data is addressed.

Public Cloud: An Organization’s Closest Ally or Greatest Enemy 
Public cloud can be the most secure environment for your data with effective planning, or it can be your greatest risk without it. Ninety-one percent of security leaders feel that public cloud can provide an as-secure or more secure environment than one they can deliver in their own data center, but this requires organizations to take the advice of Sun Tzu and “be prepared.”

Related Content:

• State of the Cloud
• 7 Biggest Cloud Security Blind Spots
• Assessing Cybersecurity Risk in Today’s Enterprise
• Navigating Security in the Cloud

Check out The Edge, Dark Reading’s new section for features, threat data, and in-depth perspectives. Today’s top story: “Car Hacking Hits the Streets“

Greg Jensen is a Director of Security Strategy at Oracle Corporation addressing the risk and challenges to the hybrid-cloud. He is also the Senior Editor of the Oracle and KPMG Cloud Threat Report and Oracle CISO Report with a key focus on developing cloud security … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/the--art-of-cloud-war--for-business-critical-data/a/d-id/1336697?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Symantec’s parent Broadcom has offloaded its Cyber Security Services (CSS) operation to Accenture for an undisclosed sum.

The unit flogs and provides global threat monitoring and analysis – among other things – via six security operation centres based in the US, UK, India, Australia, Singapore and Japan.

The services, which also include real-time adversary and threat intelligence and incident response, are delivered by Accenture’s proprietary cloud platform.

Some 300 staff are employed by the security services division, and presumably most, if not all, will shuffle off to their new employer in March, when the buy clears. It is currently subject to closing conditions.

Cue the canned statement from Accenture Security’s senior MD, Kelly Bissell, who talked about organisations facing an “unprecedented volume of cyber threats that are highly sophisticated and targeted to their businesses, and they can no longer rely solely on generic solutions.”

Symantec’s CSS reckons it has services for sectors including utilities, financial, media, health, comms, media, technology and retail.

For its part, Accenture has snaffled a bunch of security outfits already that comprise the terribly named Deja vu Security, iDefense, Maglan, Redcore, Arismore and FusionX. The new entrant will join the fold if all goes according to plan.

Symantec was itself consumed by Broadcom last August for $10.7bn (£8.82bn) in cash, joining the same stables as CA and Brocade.

Sources in Symantec’s channel have told The Reg that business via resellers has shrunk in recent months and that many of the faces they knew have left the sales, marketing, and channel account management areas. ®

Article source: https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/07/symantec_parent_broadcom_flogs_cyber_security_services_division_to_accenture/

More than a week after its website and online services were taken offline by malware, foreign currency super-exchange Travelex continues to battle through what has become an increasingly damaging outage that may have unpatched VPN servers at its heart.

London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed to El Reg on Tuesday its officers are probing the cyber-break-in. While the capital’s cops declined to name a specific victim, a spokesperson told us: “On Thursday, 2 January the Met’s Cyber Crime Team were contacted with regards to a reported ransomware attack involving a foreign currency exchange. Enquiries into the circumstances are ongoing.”

Earlier, we learned the identity of the software nasty that infected the UK-headquartered biz and encrypted its files: the Sodinokibi Windows ransomware. And its criminal masterminds have demanded $6m (£4.6m) from Travelex to restore the scrambled data, according to the Beeb.

Travelex’s UK website has been offline since New Year’s Eve dealing with the ransomware infection. The exchange is also unable to provide services to British banks and organizations as a result of the IT shutdown.

This page is currency unavailable… Travelex scrubs UK homepage, kills services, knackers other sites amid ‘software virus’ infection

READ MORE

In a statement to the media, Travelex confirmed it had fallen to a Sodikinobi ransomware infection, though claimed no data had been siphoned off and stolen.

“Whilst Travelex does not yet have a complete picture of all the data that has been encrypted, there is still no evidence to date that any data has been exfiltrated,” we’re told.

This, however, is contradicted by claims from the extortionists that the personal data of customers was indeed swiped from the exchange’s systems, though these boasts have yet to be confirmed. Travelex declined to comment beyond its public statements.

It also emerged that Sodinokibi’s entry point may already be known and related to another ongoing security SNAFU.

Bug-hunter Kevin Beaumont, and Troy Mursch of Bad Packets Report, have chronicled a string of cyber-attacks in which miscreants have exploited a well-known security hole in Pulse Secure’s VPN software to compromise and infiltrate enterprise networks.

Beaumont said he has found evidence of the Pulse Secure VPN authentication-bypass flaw being used as an entry point in multiple Sodinokibi ransomware infections. Meanwhile, Mursch, who estimates more than 3,000 such vulnerable servers remain exposed to the public internet, said as recently as September he warned Travelex that it had seven vulnerable internet-facing Pulse Secure VPN servers on its network that it had yet to patch – to no response.

Should this month’s infection indeed have begun with exploitation of a bug that has had a patch available since April 2019, Travelex’s ongoing headache is likely to go from bad to much, much, worse. ®

Article source: https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/08/travelex_update/

Column Sitting quietly in the upper corner of my browser’s address bar, a counter rises as Disconnect thwarts requests to track me. Visiting well-behaved sites (such as El Reg), those numbers tick up more slowly.

On others – I won’t name and shame, except to note that they’re a bit tired – the counter ticks up and over the two digits it can display in the icon. Of this, it’s reported that nine were requests for advertising, while more than ninety tried to send data off to “analytics” sites. You know the type: the profilers, the data harvesters, the location-stealers. Big data empire builders who maintain hundreds of millions of individual profiles – then leave them around for anyone to copy.

Disconnect does what it can, but at best it provides an incomplete shield. So much tracking has been embedded into nearly every connected product and service that Eric Schmidt’s hideous pronouncement “privacy is dead, get over it,” sounds like incitement to malice – and an understatement of what would eventually come. A world without privacy isn’t only a world where it’s hard to find the space to act without fear; it turns out that – paradoxically – it’s also less secure.

Click to enlarge

The smartphone, indispensable and irreplaceable, has also become a massive security risk, because apps collect data, profile their users, then sell those user profiles. Cross-referencing multiple data sets, those profiles identify all of us, precisely. Late last year, the New York Times ran its own analytics – on a leak of mobile location data – de-anonymising it, then identifying government officials. While this seems a very big deal when Secret Service agents and US Defense Department officials pop up under a big data microscope, we’d be foolish to ignore the impact it has on all of us. Everyone in proximity to anyone “of interest” now takes a risk.

At the beginning of January, California’s new Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect. We can all request a copy of our data from the companies that hoover it up, and can even ask nicely that it not be sold on. Hooray. Both CCPA and the EU’s hasn’t-worked-out-as-planned General Data Protection Regulation seek to tame the data once it has been collected. Yet each overlooks a basic fact: collection happens to be where the damage gets done. Passing laws to do something about it after the fact, while well-intentioned, does nothing to prevent the injury.

It all reminds me too much of my favourite Monty Python skit, “How Not To Be Seen,” wherein various individuals (who can not be seen by the camera) are identified – then bombed to bits. Shouting our locations via our apps, we effectively paint huge bullseyes on our backsides, begging to be targets.

Track-me-not

What if we just say no?

This refusal runs counter to an economic model that insists that visiting a website grants it rights to conduct a sort of data mugging, where all one’s valuables get spirited away, to be sold on through a data fence to the highest bidder. If we fight these robbers, and defend our property, well then, we’re told that the economic basis for the web would simply implode. Advertisers would withdraw their ads, and economic catastrophe would result.

Poppycock. Advertisers need eyeballs, and they’ll buy them, even if they can only guess that someone reading El Reg might be into IT. The finer gradations of profiling – beyond common sense – and rule of thumb offer too little value at too high a price.

Knowing everything about a user does not make them a better customer. Offering a better product and better service at a better price – that might. And you don’t need analytics to tell you that. ®

Article source: https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/08/how_not_to_be_seen/