STE WILLIAMS

David Holmes contributed to this article.

Cybercrime in general — and most recently, crime perpetrated using IoT devices — has become a serious problem. Legislatures around the world have struggled to write laws to rein things in. The problem has been that governments have issued cybersecurity laws that are either too burdensome or ineffective.

We’ve seen various breach disclosure acts designed to “name and shame” organizations for their security failures in hopes that exposure will lead to better security. There have been presidential directives that seem to only reiterate the importance of security, suggest more study and cooperation, or rearrange government agencies. At the other end of the spectrum, we’ve seen very prescriptive, resource-intensive laws like GDPR and HIPAA mandating large infrastructures of security controls, policies, and reporting.

Now in the US we’re seeing “Goldilocks” proposed IoT legislation that’s not too hard, not too soft, and might be just right. It’s called the Internet of Things (IoT) Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017, proposed by Mark Warner (D-VA), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT).

Let’s take a closer look at its pros and cons.

The Power of the Government Purchase Order
For years, cybersecurity experts have been imploring the US government to clean up its own cybersecurity and use its mammoth buying power to push through new standards in security. A major component of the new proposed legislation does this. Not only would this be a powerful way to raise the bar across the industry, it would also be easier to pull off than larger, more direct legal measures.

The bill would require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to develop standards for all agencies in its purview to develop specific contractual standards for IoT security.

Government-purchased IoT devices would need to:

• Be free of known security vulnerabilities, as defined in the NIST National Vulnerability Database
• Have software or firmware components that accept “properly authenticated and trusted” patches from the vendor
• Use acceptable standards for communication, encryption, and interconnection with other devices or peripherals. This means that feeble old Telnet would not be acceptable as an administrative mechanism.
• Not include any “fixed or hard-coded” credentials (that is, passwords) for remote administration, delivery of updates, or communications
• Have notification and disclosure methods in place for discovered security vulnerabilities
• Be patched or have security vulnerabilities removed in a timely manner

The legislation would also require government agencies to set inventories of IoT devices and update them every 30 days. Agencies would also be required to publicly disclose which IoT devices have gone out of support, and which have liability protections.

Considering that the US government is budgeted to spend nearly $85 billion (yes, that’s billion) in 2017 on IT, this proposed legislation casts a huge shadow across the industry.

Liberty to Do Research on Security Flaws
Another positive of this bill is that it would provide safe harbor for security researchers who have been under the chilling effects of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). To recap, CFAA states a person is committing a crime if he or she accesses a computer without authority and causes harm. Unfortunately, this act, which began with good intentions to ensure that computer crimes not go unpunished, has been used against security researchers who often uncover serious weaknesses in software, systems, and devices. As a result, CFAA has dampened efforts by researchers to find new security vulnerabilities before the bad guys do (and the bad guys just ignore this law, anyway).

Specifically, the bill would set up an exemption both in the CFAA and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (which prohibits tampering with copyright restrictive mechanisms) for security researchers who test “in good faith” the security of any IoT device being used by a federal agency.

Note that the law doesn’t protect security researchers from being sued for libel if they publish false results. There’s already been at least one big dust-up regarding security vulnerability disclosure and libel around medical devices.

What’s Not So Great
One hard nut to crack is defining exactly what an IoT device is. This bill goes a little too gray in that area and scopes in all “Internet-connected devices” which are defined as “a physical object that…”

• is capable of connecting to and is in regular connection with the Internet, and
• has computer processing capabilities that can collect, send, or receive data.

This basically includes any computing device, far beyond IoT. It also calls into question any virtual or cloud-computing system. But do they really qualify?

A law wouldn’t be a law if it didn’t have exceptions, and this proposed law has several. For one, manufacturers can be waived from the requirements if they disclose known vulnerabilities, possible mitigations, and provide “a justification for secure use of the device notwithstanding the persisting vulnerability.”

There are also exceptions for devices of “severely limited functionality” that would be “unfeasible” or “impractical” to secure to the requirements. Of course, any Internet-connected IoT device could still be subverted into a thingbot for DDoS attacks and other mayhem, regardless of its “limited functionality.”

All in all, the proposed legislation is not bad. Let’s hope it passes. If not, manufacturers, without any accountability whatsoever, will continue to build vulnerable IoT devices. And government agencies and consumers will continue to purchase these vulnerable devices, many of which will inevitably become part of worldwide thingbots (like Mirai), used to pull off massive attacks like those seen in late 2016.

Get the latest application threat intelligence from F5 Labs.

Raymond Pompon is a Principal Threat Researcher Evangelist with F5 labs. With over 20 years of experience in Internet security, he has worked closely with Federal law enforcement in cyber-crime investigations. He has recently written IT Security Risk Control Management: An … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/partner-perspectives/f5/goldilocks-legislation-aims-to-clean-up-iot-security-/a/d-id/1330361?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

David Holmes contributed to this article.

Cybercrime in general — and most recently, crime perpetrated using IoT devices — has become a serious problem. Legislatures around the world have struggled to write laws to rein things in. The problem has been that governments have issued cybersecurity laws that are either too burdensome or ineffective.

We’ve seen various breach disclosure acts designed to “name and shame” organizations for their security failures in hopes that exposure will lead to better security. There have been presidential directives that seem to only reiterate the importance of security, suggest more study and cooperation, or rearrange government agencies. At the other end of the spectrum, we’ve seen very prescriptive, resource-intensive laws like GDPR and HIPAA mandating large infrastructures of security controls, policies, and reporting.

Now in the US we’re seeing “Goldilocks” proposed IoT legislation that’s not too hard, not too soft, and might be just right. It’s called the Internet of Things (IoT) Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017, proposed by Mark Warner (D-VA), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT).

Let’s take a closer look at its pros and cons.

The Power of the Government Purchase Order
For years, cybersecurity experts have been imploring the US government to clean up its own cybersecurity and use its mammoth buying power to push through new standards in security. A major component of the new proposed legislation does this. Not only would this be a powerful way to raise the bar across the industry, it would also be easier to pull off than larger, more direct legal measures.

The bill would require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to develop standards for all agencies in its purview to develop specific contractual standards for IoT security.

Government-purchased IoT devices would need to:

• Be free of known security vulnerabilities, as defined in the NIST National Vulnerability Database
• Have software or firmware components that accept “properly authenticated and trusted” patches from the vendor
• Use acceptable standards for communication, encryption, and interconnection with other devices or peripherals. This means that feeble old Telnet would not be acceptable as an administrative mechanism.
• Not include any “fixed or hard-coded” credentials (that is, passwords) for remote administration, delivery of updates, or communications
• Have notification and disclosure methods in place for discovered security vulnerabilities
• Be patched or have security vulnerabilities removed in a timely manner

The legislation would also require government agencies to set inventories of IoT devices and update them every 30 days. Agencies would also be required to publicly disclose which IoT devices have gone out of support, and which have liability protections.

Considering that the US government is budgeted to spend nearly $85 billion (yes, that’s billion) in 2017 on IT, this proposed legislation casts a huge shadow across the industry.

Liberty to Do Research on Security Flaws
Another positive of this bill is that it would provide safe harbor for security researchers who have been under the chilling effects of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). To recap, CFAA states a person is committing a crime if he or she accesses a computer without authority and causes harm. Unfortunately, this act, which began with good intentions to ensure that computer crimes not go unpunished, has been used against security researchers who often uncover serious weaknesses in software, systems, and devices. As a result, CFAA has dampened efforts by researchers to find new security vulnerabilities before the bad guys do (and the bad guys just ignore this law, anyway).

Specifically, the bill would set up an exemption both in the CFAA and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (which prohibits tampering with copyright restrictive mechanisms) for security researchers who test “in good faith” the security of any IoT device being used by a federal agency.

Note that the law doesn’t protect security researchers from being sued for libel if they publish false results. There’s already been at least one big dust-up regarding security vulnerability disclosure and libel around medical devices.

What’s Not So Great
One hard nut to crack is defining exactly what an IoT device is. This bill goes a little too gray in that area and scopes in all “Internet-connected devices” which are defined as “a physical object that…”

• is capable of connecting to and is in regular connection with the Internet, and
• has computer processing capabilities that can collect, send, or receive data.

This basically includes any computing device, far beyond IoT. It also calls into question any virtual or cloud-computing system. But do they really qualify?

A law wouldn’t be a law if it didn’t have exceptions, and this proposed law has several. For one, manufacturers can be waived from the requirements if they disclose known vulnerabilities, possible mitigations, and provide “a justification for secure use of the device notwithstanding the persisting vulnerability.”

There are also exceptions for devices of “severely limited functionality” that would be “unfeasible” or “impractical” to secure to the requirements. Of course, any Internet-connected IoT device could still be subverted into a thingbot for DDoS attacks and other mayhem, regardless of its “limited functionality.”

All in all, the proposed legislation is not bad. Let’s hope it passes. If not, manufacturers, without any accountability whatsoever, will continue to build vulnerable IoT devices. And government agencies and consumers will continue to purchase these vulnerable devices, many of which will inevitably become part of worldwide thingbots (like Mirai), used to pull off massive attacks like those seen in late 2016.

Get the latest application threat intelligence from F5 Labs.

Raymond Pompon is a Principal Threat Researcher Evangelist with F5 labs. With over 20 years of experience in Internet security, he has worked closely with Federal law enforcement in cyber-crime investigations. He has recently written IT Security Risk Control Management: An … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/partner-perspectives/f5/goldilocks-legislation-aims-to-clean-up-iot-security-/a/d-id/1330361?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

OceanLotus, an APT actor that over the past few years has been conducting a sophisticated digital surveillance campaign aligned with Vietnamese state interests, has built out a massive attack infrastructure of compromised websites.

Security vendor Volexity, which has been tracking OceanLotus for sometime, says it has recently observed the group using a network of compromised websites in the region to profile victims and gather intelligence from them. The compromised websites appear to have been chosen specifically because their visitors have a higher likelihood of being people of interest to the Vietnamese government, the company said in an advisory this week.

OceanLotus, aka APT32, has compromised over 100 websites, the vast majority of which belong to organizations and individuals critical of the government in Vietnam. The remaining websites belong to entities in countries that share a land border with Vietnam, Volexity said. Among the list of compromised websites are those that belong to entities with links to government, military, civil society, human rights, and the media.

“This is the first time they have been noted leveraging strategic Web compromises to profile and target website visitors,” says Steven Adair, president of Volexity and one of the authors of the report. “OceanLotus attackers [have] compromised a fairly significant number of websites to pull off a widespread profiling and tracking campaign.” 

The use of compromised websites to lure victims is a new development for OceanLotus and shows how sophisticated threat actors manage to stay a step ahead of defenders by constantly switching tactics.

The group has been operational since at least 2014 and has been associated with a string of attacks on entities of interest to Vietnam including the media, civil and, social rights groups as well as members of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN).

In a report this May, FireEye described the APT32 group’s activities as targeting foreign companies with interests in Vietnam’s consumer goods, manufacturing, and hospital sectors. Also in the group’s crosshairs are organizations in the technology infrastructure and network security segments.  According to FireEye, known victims of the APT32 group include a European company constructing a manufacturing facility in Vietnam, a global hospitality industry developer with plans to develop in Vietnam, and several organizations in the banking and media industries.

In these previous attacks, OceanLotus used spear phishing and other social engineering methods to lure victims into downloading and enabling sophisticated data-stealing malware on their systems. The lures were often multilingual, and tailored to specific victims.

It is only in recent months that OceanLotus has begun using compromised websites as lures to identify potential victims and to plant malware for stealing data on their systems. In most cases, the group has been compromising websites by either gaining direct access to the site’s content management systems (CMS) using legitimate user credentials, or by exploiting outdated plugins on these sites. Volexity said it has not, however, been able to identify how OceanLotus actors are obtaining the credentials for the CMS systems in the first place.

Once a website has been compromised, OceanLotus has used different methods to identify site visitors and drop different payloads on their systems. The attackers have been delivering payloads for snooping and data-stealing only to those they identify as potential targets, not every website visitor. The payloads included custom Google apps designed to gain access to the victim’s Gmail account and steal their contact list. The attackers have also created numerous websites disguised as sites belonging to Facebook Google, Cloudflare, and others for serving malware.

“In the case of targeting specific organizations, we believe they examined the IP address WHOIS information to identify the organization,” Adair says.  “Once they know their IP address space, they place it on a whitelist for targeting.” 

In addition to building out a big network of compromised websites to stage and deliver malware to selected victims, OceanLotus has also managed to build a massive backend infrastructure to facilitate its core data collection activities. Interestingly, a substantial portion of the attack infrastructure that OceanLotus has been using is located in the United States. “A successful large-scale attack of this magnitude takes quite a bit of effort and is nearly unparalleled,” Adair says.

Steve Ginty, senior product manager at threat management firm RiskIQ says his company’s analysis of data associated with OceanLotus’ activities shows that the group has been compromising regional Web pages since at least Feb. 2016. “The group did a good job of mimicking legitimate infrastructure, registering typo-squatting domains of legitimate services and cookies,” he says.

Related Content:

• New Threat Research Shows Vietnam a Rising Force in Cyberespionage
• APT Attack Activity Occurs at ‘Low, Consistent Hum,’ Rapid7 Finds
• Nation-State Hackers Go Open Source
• 8 Active APT Groups To Watch

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/oceanlotus-apt-group-unfolds-new-tactic-in-cyber-espionage-campaign/d/d-id/1330371?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

OceanLotus, an APT actor that over the past few years has been conducting a sophisticated digital surveillance campaign aligned with Vietnamese state interests, has built out a massive attack infrastructure of compromised websites.

Security vendor Volexity, which has been tracking OceanLotus for sometime, says it has recently observed the group using a network of compromised websites in the region to profile victims and gather intelligence from them. The compromised websites appear to have been chosen specifically because their visitors have a higher likelihood of being people of interest to the Vietnamese government, the company said in an advisory this week.

OceanLotus, aka APT32, has compromised over 100 websites, the vast majority of which belong to organizations and individuals critical of the government in Vietnam. The remaining websites belong to entities in countries that share a land border with Vietnam, Volexity said. Among the list of compromised websites are those that belong to entities with links to government, military, civil society, human rights, and the media.

“This is the first time they have been noted leveraging strategic Web compromises to profile and target website visitors,” says Steven Adair, president of Volexity and one of the authors of the report. “OceanLotus attackers [have] compromised a fairly significant number of websites to pull off a widespread profiling and tracking campaign.” 

The use of compromised websites to lure victims is a new development for OceanLotus and shows how sophisticated threat actors manage to stay a step ahead of defenders by constantly switching tactics.

The group has been operational since at least 2014 and has been associated with a string of attacks on entities of interest to Vietnam including the media, civil and, social rights groups as well as members of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN).

In a report this May, FireEye described the APT32 group’s activities as targeting foreign companies with interests in Vietnam’s consumer goods, manufacturing, and hospital sectors. Also in the group’s crosshairs are organizations in the technology infrastructure and network security segments.  According to FireEye, known victims of the APT32 group include a European company constructing a manufacturing facility in Vietnam, a global hospitality industry developer with plans to develop in Vietnam, and several organizations in the banking and media industries.

In these previous attacks, OceanLotus used spear phishing and other social engineering methods to lure victims into downloading and enabling sophisticated data-stealing malware on their systems. The lures were often multilingual, and tailored to specific victims.

It is only in recent months that OceanLotus has begun using compromised websites as lures to identify potential victims and to plant malware for stealing data on their systems. In most cases, the group has been compromising websites by either gaining direct access to the site’s content management systems (CMS) using legitimate user credentials, or by exploiting outdated plugins on these sites. Volexity said it has not, however, been able to identify how OceanLotus actors are obtaining the credentials for the CMS systems in the first place.

Once a website has been compromised, OceanLotus has used different methods to identify site visitors and drop different payloads on their systems. The attackers have been delivering payloads for snooping and data-stealing only to those they identify as potential targets, not every website visitor. The payloads included custom Google apps designed to gain access to the victim’s Gmail account and steal their contact list. The attackers have also created numerous websites disguised as sites belonging to Facebook Google, Cloudflare, and others for serving malware.

“In the case of targeting specific organizations, we believe they examined the IP address WHOIS information to identify the organization,” Adair says.  “Once they know their IP address space, they place it on a whitelist for targeting.” 

In addition to building out a big network of compromised websites to stage and deliver malware to selected victims, OceanLotus has also managed to build a massive backend infrastructure to facilitate its core data collection activities. Interestingly, a substantial portion of the attack infrastructure that OceanLotus has been using is located in the United States. “A successful large-scale attack of this magnitude takes quite a bit of effort and is nearly unparalleled,” Adair says.

Steve Ginty, senior product manager at threat management firm RiskIQ says his company’s analysis of data associated with OceanLotus’ activities shows that the group has been compromising regional Web pages since at least Feb. 2016. “The group did a good job of mimicking legitimate infrastructure, registering typo-squatting domains of legitimate services and cookies,” he says.

Related Content:

• New Threat Research Shows Vietnam a Rising Force in Cyberespionage
• APT Attack Activity Occurs at ‘Low, Consistent Hum,’ Rapid7 Finds
• Nation-State Hackers Go Open Source
• 8 Active APT Groups To Watch

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/oceanlotus-apt-group-unfolds-new-tactic-in-cyber-espionage-campaign/d/d-id/1330371?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Cloud security and data protection firm Barracuda Networks is aiming to improve its cloud archiving, analytics, and management capabilities with the acquisition of Sonian, the company announced today.

Sonian is a provider of cloud archiving and business insights, and its technology aims to help customers store, access, and leverage data in email messages and attachments. Once they have insight into their data, users can apply it to their business and pinpoint potential threats before they turn into bigger problems.

Barracuda intends to add Sonian’s analytics and AI to its security platform. In doing so, it plans to improve on the security and data protection it currently offers customers in Office 365 and cloud environments. Sonian will also bring its customer base of 32,000 users, as well as partnerships with large managed service providers and software companies.

Read more details here.

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two days of practical cyber defense discussions. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the INsecurity agenda here.

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: https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/barracuda-buys-sonian-for-cloud-analytics/d/d-id/1330376?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Cloud security and data protection firm Barracuda Networks is aiming to improve its cloud archiving, analytics, and management capabilities with the acquisition of Sonian, the company announced today.

Sonian is a provider of cloud archiving and business insights, and its technology aims to help customers store, access, and leverage data in email messages and attachments. Once they have insight into their data, users can apply it to their business and pinpoint potential threats before they turn into bigger problems.

Barracuda intends to add Sonian’s analytics and AI to its security platform. In doing so, it plans to improve on the security and data protection it currently offers customers in Office 365 and cloud environments. Sonian will also bring its customer base of 32,000 users, as well as partnerships with large managed service providers and software companies.

Read more details here.

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two days of practical cyber defense discussions. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the INsecurity agenda here.

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: https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/barracuda-buys-sonian-for-cloud-analytics/d/d-id/1330376?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple