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Black Arrow Admin 21/02/2020 Black Arrow Admin 21/02/2020

Should firms conduct phishing testing against their own staff? What pitfalls should they look out for?

The vast majority of successful attacks against firms stem from phishing emails. Traditional user training is often largely ineffective at preventing users clicking on these phishing emails, and users are not as good as they think they are at spotting phishing emails - with as many as 1 in 4 staff clicking on phishing emails.

For this reason it is absolutely essential all firms conduct phishing testing against their own users, but it is just as essential to ensure it is done properly if you want it to be effective. There are pitfalls to be avoided if you want this to be successful. Testing should be conducted with the aim of making your organisation more secure, not done just to put a tick in a box to meet a regulatory requirement.

We've partnered with the market leaders for phishing testing and we can provide phishing testing as a fully managed service. Using our relationships with these providers we can provide this service for roughly the same price as buying licences directly a provider. With us managing these campaigns you get access to our specialist expertise, and knowledge of the pitfalls to avoid to actually make these campaigns effective.

Black Arrow Admin 18/02/2020 Black Arrow Admin 18/02/2020

What is MDM? The first of a new series explaining different technical controls, in this episode James explains Mobile Device Management

Welcome to this week's Cyber Tip Tuesday. This week James is doing the first of a series looking at specific technical controls, this week Mobile Device Management, or MDM You may have heard of MDM…but what is it? Mobile Device Management is the technology used to administer mobile devices such as phones, tablets and laptops. Because these devices often run across platforms provided by different vendors, for example, Apple's iOS, Google's Android or Microsoft Windows they must be managed by a product that is compatible with all of them. If your company's confidential data is stored or accessed on any of these devices then it is important that you extend your technical controls to encompass the unique security requirements and vulnerabilities that can be exploited to gain access to it. If you'd like to know more about MDM or other technical controls, please contact us.

Welcome to this week's Cyber Tip Tuesday.

This week James is doing the first of a series looking at specific technical controls, this week Mobile Device Management, or MDM

You may have heard of MDM… but what is it?

Mobile Device Management is the technology used to administer mobile devices such as phones, tablets and laptops. Because these devices often run across platforms provided by different vendors, for example, Apple's iOS, Google's Android or Microsoft Windows they must be managed by a product that is compatible with all of them.

If your company's confidential data is stored or accessed on any of these devices then it is important that you extend your technical controls to encompass the unique security requirements and vulnerabilities that can be exploited to gain access to it.

If you'd like to know more about MDM or other technical controls, please contact us.

Black Arrow Admin 14/02/2020 Black Arrow Admin 14/02/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing for 14 February 2020 – Microsoft patches 99 vulns, Nedbank 1.7m customer breach, PC malware spreads via WiFi, Cybercrime losses triple

Links to articles are for interest and awareness and linking to or reposting external content does not endorse any service or product, likewise we are not responsible for the security of external links.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday fixes IE zero‑day and 98 other flaws

This month’s Patch Tuesday fell this week and it came with fixes for no fewer than 99 security vulnerabilities in Windows and other Microsoft software.

Twelve flaws have received the highest severity ranking of “critical”, while 5 security holes are listed as publicly known at the time of release.

In fact, one vulnerability ticks both boxes – an actively exploited zero-day in Internet Explorer (IE). Microsoft disclosed this flaw, indexed as CVE-2020-0674, three weeks ago but didn’t roll out a patch until now. Successful exploitation of this remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability enables remote attackers to run code of their choice on the vulnerable system.

Another 16 RCE holes are being plugged as part of this month’s bundle of security patches. This includes two severe vulnerabilities in the Windows Remote Desktop Client, CVE-2020-0681 and CVE-2020-0734, where exploitation is seen as likely by Microsoft.

Updates have been released for various flavours of Windows, as well as for Office, Edge, Exchange Server, SQL Server and a few more products. The number of fixes this month is unusually high; for example, last month’s Patch Tuesday rollout fixed 49 vulnerabilities.

Nedbank says 1.7 million customers impacted by breach at third-party provider

Nedbank, one of the biggest banks in the South Africa region, has disclosed a security incident yesterday that impacted the personal details of 1.7 million users.

The bank says the breach occurred at Computer Facilities (Pty) Ltd, a South African company the bank was using to send out marketing and promotional campaigns.

In a security notice posted on its website, Nedbank said there was a vulnerability in the third-party provider's systems that allowed an attacker to infiltrate its systems.

The data of 1.7 million past and current customers is believed to have been affected. Details stored on the contractor's systems included things like names, ID numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

The bank began notifying customers about the breach yesterday

More information here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/nedbank-says-1-7-million-customers-impacted-by-breach-at-third-party-provider/

Why you can’t bank on backups to fight ransomware anymore

Ransomware operators stealing data before they encrypt means backups are not enough.

The belief that no personally identifying information gets breached in ransomware attacks is common among victims of ransomware—and that's partially because ransomware operators had previously avoided claiming they had access to victims' data in order to maintain the "trust" required to extract a payment. Cyber insurance has made paying out an attractive option in cases where there's no need for an organisation to reveal a breach, so the economics had favoured ransomware attackers who provided good "customer service" and gave (usually believable) assurances that no data had been taken off the victims' networks.

Unfortunately, that sort of model is being blown up by the Maze and Sodinokibi (REvil) ransomware rings, which have adopted a model of using stolen data as leverage to ensure customers will make a payment. Even in cases where a victim can relatively quickly recover from a ransomware attack, they still will face demands for payment in order to avoid the publication or sale of information stolen by the attackers before the ransomware was triggered.

Newly discovered PC malware version spreads through Wi-Fi networks

A new version of a highly sophisticated Trojan that can spread via Wifi networks has been discovered. The Emotet Trojan that also acts as a loader for other malware has found to now take advantage of the wlanAPI interface to spread to all PCs on a network through the Wi-fi. The Trojan was previously known to spread only through spam emails and infected networks.

The ability of this Trojan to brute force its way into networks through Wi-fi from the infected PC has supposedly gone undetected for at least two years. When the malicious software enters into a system, it begins listing and profiling wireless networks using the wlanAPI.dll calls so that it can spread to any networks that are accessible. This is because the wlanAPI.dll calls are used by Native Wi-Fi to manage wireless network profiles and wireless network connections.

Why the ransom is only a fraction of the cost of a ransomware attack

The expense of dealing with a ransomware attack is far in excess of what was previously thought, according to a report published on Tuesday.

Estimate for the total ransom payments demanded in 2019 was $25 billion. But this is only one seventh of the actual cost to the companies affected, which could be as much as $170 billion, according to estimates. Most of these costs arise from downtime and are associated with dealing with the attack, rather than the ransom itself, according to the report.

5 Critical Zero-day Vulnerabilities Affected Tens of Millions of Cisco Switches, Routers, IP Phones and Cameras

Researchers discovered 5 critical zero-day vulnerabilities (dubbed CDPwn) in Cisco Discovery Protocol that are used in multiple Cisco products such as Routers, Switches, IP phones, Cameras and more.

Cisco Discovery Protocol is also known as CDP is the Cisco proprietary Layer 2 (Data Link Layer) network protocol and is virtually implemented in Cisco products including switches, routers, IP phones, and cameras to discover the information about the Cisco equipment.

Four of the five vulnerabilities are remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities that affected 10 of millions of users, and it allows attackers to completely take over the vulnerable devices without any sort of user interaction.

One vulnerability cause Denial of Service in Cisco FXOS, IOS XR and NX-OS Software Cisco Discovery Protocol implemented target routers, and in turn, completely disrupt target networks.

Average tenure of a CISO is just 26 months due to high stress and burnout

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs, or CSOs) across the industry are reporting high levels of stress.

Many say the heightened stress levels has led to mental and physical health issues, relationship problems, medication and alcohol abuse, and in some cases, an eventual burnout, resulting in an average 26-month tenure before CISOs find new employment.

The numbers, reported by Nominet, represent a growing issue that's been commonly acknowledged, but mostly ignored across the information security (infosec) community, but one that is slowly starting to rear its ugly head as once-ignored infosec roles are becoming more prominent inside today's companies.

Today, many companies are adopting CISO roles. The constant threat of hacks, ransomware, phishing, and online scams makes establishing a cyber-security department in any company a unavoidable decision.

However, most companies are not ready to embed CISOs into their company culture and day-to-day operations.

Today, CISO jobs come with low budgets, long working hours, a lack of power on executive boards, a diminishing pool of trained professionals they can hire, but also a constant stress of not having done enough to secure the company's infrastructure against cyber-attacks, continuous pressure due to newly arising threats, and little thanks for the good work done, but all the blame if everything goes wrong.

Across the years, many CISOs have often pointed out the problems with their jobs and the stress and damage they inflict. However, there has been no conclusive study to support broad assertations.

Read the full article here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/average-tenure-of-a-ciso-is-just-26-months-due-to-high-stress-and-burnout/

Ex-GCHQ spy chief says scammers are running rings around Google

Bogus investment and savings adverts banned by Google are reappearing at the top of its search results because con artists can easily circumnavigate the internet giant’s systems, according to a former spy.

Scammers are able to dupe the world’s most powerful search engine simply by making slight alterations to the names of their fake firms.

For example, one website, info.bond-finder.co.uk, appeared at the top of Google’s search results when consumers typed in “best fixed rate Isa”. But the website had the same contact details as another site, bonds-finder.com, which was identified by the financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), as a likely scam in January and deleted by Google.

Google launched an investigation after it was alerted to the matter by this newspaper and, after a connection between the two sites was confirmed, the advert was removed.

The company has been in talks with the FCA for almost a year about how to solve the problem of unregulated investment firms and fraudsters duping consumers by paying to appear first in search results through Google’s Ads service.

FBI: Cybercrime losses tripled over the last 5 years

In 2019, the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) received more than 467,000 cybercrime complaints that caused an estimated US$3.5 billion in losses, according to the Bureau’s annual 2019 Internet Crime Report (IC3). Last year saw both the highest number of complaints and the highest dollar losses on record; in 2015, for example, annual losses totaled ‘only’ US$1.1 billion.

Business Email Compromise (BEC) fraud remains the costliest type of fraud on the list, accounting for more than half of the total losses and costing businesses almost US$1.8 billion. These schemes are constantly evolving, too. Back in 2013, scammers would typically hack or spoof the email account of a CEO or CFO to request a fraudulent transfer of funds to accounts under their control. Over the years the tactics have evolved to also include compromising personal or vendor emails as well as spoofing lawyers’ email accounts.

Payroll diversion emerged as a popular form of BEC fraud last year. Scammers target HR and payroll departments by acting as employees who want to update their direct deposit information for the current payment period. The updated information then usually directs the funds to a pre-paid card account.

Elder fraud is also an increasingly pressing issue. With 68,013 victims, this type of fraud had the highest number of victims; under-twenties claimed “just” 10,724 victims. The number of victims may not reflect the true extent of the problem since providing the age range is voluntary.

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our weekly ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Black Arrow Admin 11/02/2020 Black Arrow Admin 11/02/2020

Welcome to this week's Cyber Tip Tuesday, this week Tony talks about patching

Welcome to this week's Cyber Tuesday and hopefully you've all survived this storm unscathed. This week we're talking about patching. Installing updates as soon as possible after vendors make them available is a very good way to help keep your systems secure, and good patch management remediates, or prevents, a huge number of threats. Having said that Microsoft in particular of late have had issues with some of their updates so make sure you either test the updates on a non production environment first, that is on systems that aren't critical to you running your business, such as a dedicated test environment, or for smaller businesses that don't have the luxury of a test environment maybe wait a few days or a week or so before updating. Contact us for more info.

Welcome to this week's Cyber Tuesday and hopefully you've all survived this storm unscathed.

This week we're talking about patching.

Installing updates as soon as possible after vendors make them available is a very good way to help keep your systems secure, and good patch management remediates, or prevents, a huge number of threats.

Having said that Microsoft in particular of late have had issues with some of their updates so make sure you either test the updates on a non production environment first, that is on systems that aren't critical to you running your business, such as a dedicated test environment, or for smaller businesses that don't have the luxury of a test environment maybe wait a few days or a week or so before updating. Contact us for more info.

Black Arrow Admin 08/02/2020 Black Arrow Admin 08/02/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing for 07 February 2020 – Corononavirus phishing, financial malware keylogger trick, remote workers, Cisco critical vulns, Mirai botnet holds up

Coronavirus Scams: Prepare for Phishing Emails, Fake Alerts and Cyberthreats

As new global stories emerge by the hour on the coronavirus, bad actors are (again) trying to confuse online updates with phishing scams and destructive malware. Here’s why action is required now.

Wherever you turn for news coverage online, coronavirus alarm bells are ringing louder.

But users should not trust all of those bells, as fake news, phishing scams and even malicious malware is actively being distributed under the coronavirus umbrella.

Sadly, a perfect storm may be brewing. As government officials and health experts appeal louder for calm, the public is actually getting more worried and searching the Internet for answers.

Read the original article here: https://www.govtech.com/blogs/lohrmann-on-cybersecurity/coronavirus-scams-prepare-for-a-deluge-of-phishing-emails-fake-alerts-and-cyberthreats.html

Metamorfo Returns with Keylogger Trick to Target Financial Firms

The malware uses a tactic to force victims to retype passwords into their systems – which it tracks via a keylogger.

Researchers have discovered a recent spate of phishing emails spreading a new variant of Metamorfo, a financial malware known for targeting Brazilian companies. Now, however, it’s expanding its geographic range and adding a new technique.

Metamorfo was first discovered in April 2018, in various campaigns that share key commonalities (like the use of “spray and pray” spam tactics). These campaigns however have small, “morphing” differences — which is the meaning behind its name.

This newest variant, which targets payment-card data and credentials at financial institutions with Windows platforms, packs a new trick up its sleeve. Once executed, the malware kills the auto-suggest data entry fields in browsers, forcing victims to write out their passwords – which it then tracks via a keylogger.

What's in your network? Shadow IT and shadow IoT challenge technology sensibilities

A couple of years ago, a survey found most CIOs thought they had roughly 30 to 40 apps running within their enterprises, but researchers at Symantec estimated that the average enterprise actually had at least 1,516 applications -- a number that has doubled over a three-year period.

It's not that CIOs are naive. It's just that shadow IT is a difficult thing to measure, since employees pull down apps outside the official channels, and off budget sheets. To some degree, it's even purposely overlooked, condoned, or even encouraged, as employees need the right tools to do their jobs, and IT can't always be there.

Now, it appears CIOs are battling shadow IT on two fronts. There's the user-initiated apps and clouds, and there's something more insidious -- "shadow IoT."

More here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/shadow-it-and-now-shadow-iot-challenge-technology-leaders/

Remote workers prime targets for cyber attacks

According to a study into the future of work, more than half of CIOs expect a rise in employees working remotely, while 97% say that soon their workforce will be widely dispersed across geographies and time zones. Businesses are being forced to adapt to the rising demand for a dynamic working environment, which can manifest as anything from workers bringing their own devices to work to employees using corporate machines at home as part of a flexible work schedule. However, this increases the security burden through the need for better identity management.

Read the full article here: https://www.techradar.com/news/remote-workers-prime-targets-for-cyber-attacks

Critical Cisco vulnerabilities put millions of network devices at risk

Five different critical vulnerabilities, collectively known as CPDwn, have been discovered in Cisco’s Discovery Protocol, potentially putting tens of millions of enterprise network devices such as desk phones, cameras, and network switches, at risk.

Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) is a level 2 protocol that is used to discover information about Cisco equipment that are directly connected nearby.

According to researchers, this flaw could allow hackers to control the products deep within the network without any human intervention. This could be done remotely by just sending a malicious CDP packet to the target device.

This latest phishing scam is spreading fake invoices loaded with malware - campaigns are launched against financial institutions in the US and UK.

A notorious malware campaign is targeting banks and financial institutions in the US and the UK with cyberattacks that are not only destructive in their own right, but could also be used as the basis for future intrusions by other hackers.

Emotet started life as a banking trojan, but has also evolved into a botnet, with its criminal operators leasing out its capabilities to those who want to distribute their own malware to compromise machines.

Such is the power of Emotet that at one point last year it accounted for almost two-thirds of malicious payloads delivered in phishing attacks.

Emotet activity appeared to decline during December, but it sprung back to life in January – and it currently shows no signs of slowing down as researchers have detailed yet another campaign.

90% of UK Data Breaches Due to Human Error in 2019

Human error caused 90% of cyber data breaches in 2019, according to a CybSafe analysis of data from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

According to the cybersecurity awareness and data analysis firm, nine out of 10 of the 2376 cyber-breaches reported to the ICO last year were caused by mistakes made by end-users. This marked an increase from the previous two years, when respectively, 61% and 87% of cyber-breaches were ascribed to user error.

CybSafe cited phishing as the primary cause of breaches in 2019, accounting for 45% of all reports to the ICO. ‘Unauthorized access’ was the next most common cause of cyber-breaches in 2019, with reports relating to malware or ransomware, hardware/software misconfiguration and brute force password attacks also noted.

Read the full article here: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/90-data-breaches-human-error/

Police Warning: Cyber Criminals Are Using Cleaners to Hack Your Business

Criminal gangs are planting “sleepers” in cleaning companies so that they can physically access IT infrastructure, a senior police officer with responsibility for cyber crime has warned, urging businesses to bolster their physical security processes in the face of the growing threat.

Shelton Newsham, who manages the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Cyber Crime Team, told an audience at the SINET security event that he was seeing a “much larger increase in physical breaches” as cyber crime groups diversify how they attack and move laterally inside institutions.

The Mirai IoT botnet holds strong in 2020

The Mirai botnet has been a constant IoT security threat since it emerged in fall 2016. The subsequent release of its source code only extended Mirai's reach and is one of the many reasons it has been labelled the "king of IoT malware."

Mirai continues to be successful for a well-known reason: Its targets are IoT devices with hardcoded credentials found in a simple web search. Such devices listen for inbound telnet access on certain ports and have backdoors through which Mirai can enter. Once a device is subsumed in the botnet it immediately scans for other victims.

Read the original article here: https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/feature/The-Mirai-IoT-botnet-holds-strong-in-2020

Governments Are Soft Targets for Cyber-criminals

New research has found that governments are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks than other organisations.

A report on the security of municipal governments and agencies identified three key factors that made governments particularly soft targets. Researchers found that governments had larger attack surfaces, lower usage rates of even the most basic email authentication schemes, and much higher rates of internal hosting than other organisations.

Government attack surfaces, consisting of open ports and applications, were found to be on average 33% larger than those risked by other organisations.

BYO Hardware Driver: New Ransomware Attacks Kernel Memory and brings its own vulnerability

A ransomware strain dubbed “RobbinHood” is using a vulnerability in a “legitimate” and signed hardware driver to delete security products from targeted computers before encrypting users files, according to security researchers.

The ransomware exploits a known vulnerability in the driver from Taiwan’s GIGABYTE to subvert a setting in kernel memory in Windows 10, 8 and 7, meaning it “brings its own vulnerability” and can attack otherwise patched systems.

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our weekly ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Black Arrow Admin 01/02/2020 Black Arrow Admin 01/02/2020

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing for 01 February 2020 - Users fall for phishing, 68% of firms suffer end point attacks, Cisco WebEx flaws, cost to recover from ransomware doubles, UN hacked via SharePoint

Cyber Weekly Flash Briefing for 01 February 2020 - Users fall for phishing, 68% of firms victims of end point attacks, Cisco WebEx flaws, costs of recovering from ransomware doubles, UN hacked via SharePoint

Phishing: You're not as good at spotting scams as you think you are

Most people say they know about phishing and what it involves yet just 5% were able to correctly identify all types of scams according to a survey of nearly 1,000 people from Security.org.

Nearly everyone (96%) knew about phishing and 88% said they could accurately define it. Yet nearly half (47%) didn't know that phishing can happen through software, 43% thought that advertisements are safe; and nearly one-third (30%) didn't know that social media platforms can be sources of phishing.

Phishing has grown in terms of the number of people affected, expanding by 59% over a four-year period. The FBI counted more than 26,300 victims in 2018. It is in the FBI's top four cybercrimes, which includes extortion, non-delivery and identity theft.

More here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/phishing-is-becoming-more-sophisticated-only-5-can-spot-all-scams/

68% of organizations were victims of endpoint attacks in 2019, 80% as a result of zero-days

Organisations are not making progress in reducing their endpoint security risk, especially against new and unknown threats, a Ponemon Institute study reveals.

68% IT security professionals say their company experienced one or more endpoint attacks that compromised data assets or IT infrastructure in 2019, an increase from 54% of respondents in 2017.

Of those incidents that were successful, researchers say that 80% were new or unknown, they define them as “zero-day attacks.” These attacks either involved the exploitation of undisclosed vulnerabilities or the use of new malware variants that signature-based, detection solutions do not recognise.

Read the full article here: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/01/31/endpoint-security-risk/

Cisco Webex Flaw Lets Unauthenticated Users Join Private Online Meetings

Cisco Systems has fixed a high-severity vulnerability in its popular Webex video conferencing platform, which could let strangers barge in on password-protected meetings – no authentication necessary.

A remote attacker would not need to be authenticated to exploit the flaw, according to Cisco. All an attacker would need is the meeting ID and a Webex mobile application for either iOS or Android.

Read the full article here: https://threatpost.com/cisco-webex-flaw-lets-unauthenticated-users-join-private-online-meetings/152191/

Average cost to Recover from Ransomware Skyrockets to over £64,000

It’s getting more and more expensive for victims of ransomware attacks to recover. The average cost more than doubled in the final quarter of 2019.

According to a new report, a typical total now stands at £63,757. That’s a little over double the previous figure of £31,227.

It’s not just the result of cybercriminals demanding steeper ransoms, though that’s certainly one factor. Others include hardware replacement and repair costs, lost revenues, and, in some incidents, damage to the victim’s brand.

Generally speaking, these costs all increase sharply in relation to the sophistication and duration of the attack.

Read the full article here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2020/01/26/average-cost-to-recover-from-ransomware-skyrockets-to-over-84000/#3c54c7c713a2

CEOs are deleting their social media accounts to protect against hackers

Cyberattacks are the biggest risk to businesses, with the prospect of falling victim to hacking and other cybercrime the threats that the majority of CEOs are most worried about, according to a new report on the views from the boardroom.

A professional services firm surveyed over 1,600 CEOs from around the world and found that cyberattacks have become the most feared threat for large organisations – and that many have taken actions around their personal use of technology to help protect against hackers.

A total of 80% of those surveyed listed cyber threats as the biggest risk to their business, making it the thing that most CEOs are worried about, ranking ahead of skills (79%) and the speed of technological change (75%).

UN hacked via unpatched SharePoint server

The UN suffered a major data breach last year after it failed to patch a Microsoft SharePoint server, it emerged this week. Then it failed to tell anyone, even though it produced a damning internal report.

The news emerged after an anonymous IT employee leaked the information to The New Humanitarian, which is a UN-founded publication that became independent in 2015 to report on the global aid community. According to the outlet, internal UN staffers announced the compromise on 30 August 2019, explaining that the “entire domain” was probably compromised by an attacker who was lurking on the UN’s networks.

UK proposes tougher security for smart home devices

The UK government plans to introduce a new law designed to improve the security standards of household products connected to the Internet of Things (IoT). The legislation stipulates that all consumer smart devices sold in the UK -- such as smart cameras and TVs, wearable health trackers and connected appliances -- adhere to three specific requirements.

Firstly, all IoT device passwords must be unique and unable to be reset to universal factory settings. Secondly, manufacturers must clearly provide a point of contact so anyone can get in touch to report a vulnerability, and finally, manufacturers must make it crystal clear how long their devices will receive security updates for, at the point of sale.

The proposed rules -- which are relatively straightforward from a manufacturers' point of view -- come after a long consultation period, whereby officials explored the potential impact of the growing popularity of connected devices: government research indicates there will be some 75 billion internet connected devices in homes around the world by the end of 2025. It's hoped such legislation will help prevent attacks that have, in the past, had widespread consequences. In 2016, for example, a Mirai botnet hacked into connected home devices and took down large chunks of the internet.

More here: https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/28/uk-proposes-tougher-security-for-smart-home-devices/

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our weekly ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Black Arrow Admin 28/01/2020 Black Arrow Admin 28/01/2020

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday - This week Tony talks about about why it is important to us to be independent, and how our impartiality and objectivity helps our customers.

This week we are talking about why it is important to us to be independent and how our independence helps us and helps our customers. As an independently owned and operated business we are able to be completely impartial and objective, we are not tied to any vendor, product, service provider or supplier, and this means we can objective and transparent in our approach. We offer true independence and can advise on a range of different solutions to meet all budgets. We can work with you whether you have IT in house or whether you outsource your IT to an external third party provider, and remember anyway that information security goes far beyond just being an IT problem. Talk to us to see how we can help you to evaluate the efficacy of the controls you have in place or where you might benefit from new ones.

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday.

This week we are talking about why it is important to us to be independent and how our independence helps us and helps our customers.

As an independently owned and operated business we are able to be completely impartial and objective, we are not tied to any vendor, product, service provider or supplier, and this means we can objective and transparent in our approach.

We offer true independence and can advise on a range of different solutions to meet all budgets.

We can work with you whether you have IT in house or whether you outsource your IT to an external third party provider, and remember anyway that information security goes far beyond just being an IT problem.

Talk to us to see how we can help you to evaluate the efficacy of the controls you have in place or where you might benefit from new ones.

Black Arrow Admin 25/01/2020 Black Arrow Admin 25/01/2020

Week in review 25 January 2020 – Phishing dominates UK, Ransomware payments doubled, 160,000 breaches reported under GDPR, Citrix vulns exploited, Internet Explorer zero-day

Week in review 25 January 2020 – Phishing dominates UK, Ransomware payments doubled, 160,000 breaches reported under GDPR, Citrix vulns exploited, IE 0-day

Phishing dominates UK cybercrime landscape

If there’s one thing General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) did for sure, it gave us a clearer picture of the UK cyber security landscape.

A new report says that more security breaches were reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in 2019 than in any previous year. A total of 2,376 reports were made, compared with 1,854 in 2018, and 540 in 2017.

The report shows that there was a 28 per cent increase in the number of reported incidents between 2018 and 2019.

In particular, reports of phishing skyrocketed, rising from 16 reports in 2017, to 877 in 2018, to 1,080 in 2019. Of all of the incidents reported to the ICO in 2019, 45 per cent were related to phishing.

Other notable methods included unauthorised access (791 reported incidents), malware/ransomware (243), hardware and software misconfiguration (64), and brute force password attacks (34).

Ransomware Payments Doubled and Downtime Grew in Q4

The average ransomware payment more than doubled quarter-on-quarter in the final three months of 2019, while average downtime grew by several days, according to the latest figures from a security firm.

The security vendor analysed anonymised data from cases handled by its incident response team and partners to compile its Q4 Ransomware Marketplace report.

It revealed that the average payment in the quarter was $84,116, up 104% from the previous three months. The belief being the jump highlights the diversity of hackers utilising ransomware today.

Some variants such as Ryuk and Sodinokibi have moved into the large enterprise space and are focusing their attacks on large companies, where they can attempt to extort the organization for a seven-figure payout. Ryuk ransom payments reached a new high of $780,000 for impacted enterprises.

At the other end of the spectrum, smaller ransomware-as-a-service variants such as Dharma, Snatch, and Netwalker continue to blanket the small business space with a high number of attacks, but with demands as low as $1500.

Sodinokibi (29%) and Ryuk (22%) accounted for the majority of cases spotted in Q4 2019. Attackers using the former variant began during the quarter to use data theft to force firms to pay-up, which may have increased the figure for total losses.

During the quarter, the amount of downtime experienced by victim organizations increased from the previous three months — from 12.1 to 16.2 days. This increase was driven by the larger number of attacks targeting major enterprises with more complex network architectures, which can therefore take weeks to restore and remediate.

Phishing, RDP targeting and vulnerability exploitation remain the most popular attack methods, it added. Professional services (20%), healthcare (19%) and software services (12%) were the top three sectors targeted.

According to the data, 98% of organizations that paid a ransom received a decryption key, and those victims successfully decrypted 97% of their data. However, with multi-million-dollar ransoms now commonplace, the official advice is still not to give in to the hackers’ demands, especially as it will lead to continued attacks.

Read the original article here: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ransomware-payments-doubled/

GDPR: 160,000 data breaches reported already, so expect the big fines to follow

Over 160,000 data-breach notifications have been made to authorities in the 18 months since Europe's new digital privacy regulation came into force, and the number of breaches and other security incidents being reported is on the rise.

Analysis by a UK law firm found that after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force on 25 May 2018, the first eight months saw an average of 247 breach notifications per day. In the time since, that has risen to an average of 278 notifications a day.

"GDPR has driven the issue of data breach well and truly into the open. The rate of breach notification has increased by over 12% compared to last year's report and regulators have been busy road-testing their new powers to sanction and fine organisations," according to a partner at the firm who specialises in cyber and data protection.

Read the full article on ZDNet here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/gdpr-160000-data-breaches-reported-already-so-expect-the-big-fines-to-follow/

Hackers target unpatched Citrix servers to deploy ransomware

Companies still running unpatched Citrix servers are in danger of having their networks infected with ransomware.

Multiple sources in the infosec community are reporting about hacker groups using the CVE-2019-19781 vulnerability in Citrix appliances to breach corporate networks and then install ransomware.

Ransomware infections traced back to hacked Citrix servers have been confirmed by security researchers at FireEye and Under the Breach.

The REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware gang has been identified as one of the groups attacking Citrix servers to gain a foothold on corporate networks and later install their custom ransomware strain.

Why the Jeff Bezos phone hack is a wake-up call for the powerful

When deeply personal information about one of the world’s most powerful businessmen is exposed through an attack apparently coming from the WhatsApp account of a future head of state, then who can truly feel safe?

This week’s assertion that Jeff Bezos’s iPhone X was probably hacked by the personal account of Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, had plenty of shock value. For anyone operating at a senior level of business or government, it is a clear wake-up call.

Top UK law firms falling victim to human error

Nearly half (48%) of the top 150 law firms have reported data breaches since the GDPR came into force in May 2018. And, of those breaches, 41% were a result of emailing the wrong person.

Regus data breach sees staff performance data published online

A spreadsheet with names, addresses and job performance data was easily found via Google, the media claim.

Personal details, as well as professional performance, of more than 900 employees of Regus have been published online after a mishap following staff review.

The media are reporting that the major office space provider had been recording its staff, with the help of mystery shopping firm Applause, for the sake of training and improving the performance of the employees. The details were subsequently published online.

Reports state that a spreadsheet with names, addresses and job performance data was easily found via Google.

Read the full article here: https://www.itproportal.com/news/regus-data-breach-sees-staff-performance-data-published-online/

Cisco Warns of Critical Network Security Tool Flaw

The critical flaw exists in Cisco’s administrative management tool, used with network security solutions like firewalls.

A critical Cisco vulnerability exists in its administrative management tool for Cisco network security solutions. The flaw could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to gain administrative privileges on impacted devices.

The flaw exists in the web-based management interface of the Cisco Firepower Management Center (FMC), which is its platform for managing Cisco network security solutions, like firewalls or its advanced malware protection service. Cisco has released patches for the vulnerability (CVE-2019-16028), which has a score of 9.8 out of 10 on the CVSS scale, making it critical in severity.

Microsoft Zero-Day Actively Exploited, Patch Forthcoming

An unpatched remote code-execution vulnerability in Internet Explorer is being actively exploited in the wild, Microsoft has announced. It’s working on a patch. In the meantime, workarounds are available.

The bug (CVE-2020-0674) which is listed as critical in severity for IE 11, and moderate for IE 9 and IE 10, exists in the way that the jscript.dll scripting engine handles objects in memory in the browser, according to Microsoft’s advisory, issued Friday.

The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user – meaning that an adversary could gain the same user rights as the current user.

Big Microsoft data breach – 250 million records exposed

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a data breach that affected one of its customer databases.

The blog article, entitled Access Misconfiguration for Customer Support Databases, admits that between 05 December 2019 and 31 December 2019, a database used for “support case analytics” was effectively visible from the cloud to the world.

Microsoft didn’t give details of how big the database was. However, consumer the firm that says it discovered the unsecured data online, claims it was to the order of 250 million records containing:

…logs of conversations between Microsoft support agents and customers from all over the world, spanning a 14-year period from 2005 to December 2019.

According to the company that found the records, that same data was accessible on five different servers.

The company informed Microsoft, and Microsoft quickly secured the data.

Exposed AWS buckets again implicated in multiple data leaks

The lack of care being taken to correctly configure cloud environments has once again been highlighted by two serious data leaks in the UK caused by leaking Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket databases.

As a default setting, Amazon S3 buckets are private and can only be accessed by individuals who have explicitly been granted access to their contents, so their continued exposure points to the concerning fact that consistent messaging around cloud security policy, implementation and configuration is failing to get through to many IT professionals.

Read the full article on ComputerWeekly: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252476870/Exposed-AWS-buckets-again-implicated-in-multiple-data-leaks

What Is Smishing, and How Do You Protect Yourself?

You’re probably familiar with email-based phishing, where a scammer emails you and tries to extract sensitive information like your credit card details or social security number. “Smishing” is SMS-based phishing—scam text messages designed to trick you.

How-To Geek have a useful guide explaining what Smishing is and how best to protect yourselves. Read the guide here: https://www.howtogeek.com/526115/what-is-smishing-and-how-do-you-protect-yourself/

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our weekly ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Black Arrow Admin 21/01/2020 Black Arrow Admin 21/01/2020

Cyber Tip Tuesday for 21 January 2020 - James talks about the dangers of Internet of Things (IoT) and Shadow IT

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday. This week James is talking about dangers from Internet of Things (IoT) and Shadow IT devices that may have crept onto your corporate networks. Do you know all the devices on your network? Do they introduce security risks to your business? In an increasingly connected world, the security umbrella with which you protect your organisation’s information assets is constantly expanding. At the fringes and often overlooked by businesses, are the Internet of Things (or IoT) and Shadow IT.

In an increasingly connected world, the security umbrella with which you protect your organisation’s information assets is constantly expanding. At the fringes and often overlooked by businesses, are the Internet of Things (or IoT) and Shadow IT.

The Internet of Things consists of an ever-increasing number of physical devices with network connectivity features. Often people associate IoT with smart consumer devices. However, there are many IoT devices which also exist in a corporate environment and they’re are often overlooked when a company evaluates its information assets. As such they remain invisible to your Vulnerability Management strategy and can seriously compromise your security posture.

Conversely, Shadow IT refers to software and applications that aren’t sanctioned by your company but have instead been installed by users (often to fulfill a single task and then they’re forgotten). This isn’t always a bad thing, except when these applications have access to company information but lack the controls and governance surrounding sanctioned applications. In which case they pose a significant risk to the security of your data and your business.

Black Arrow Admin 19/01/2020 Black Arrow Admin 19/01/2020

Week in review 19 January 2020 – hacker leaks IoT passwords, WordPress plugin vulns, Oracle record patch haul, 25% of users fall for phishing, quarter of PCs vulnerable now Windows 7 unsupported

Hacker leaks passwords for more than 500,000 servers, routers, and IoT devices

A hacker has published this week a massive list of Telnet credentials for more than 515,000 servers, home routers, and IoT (Internet of Things) "smart" devices.

The list, which was published on a popular hacking forum, includes each device's IP address, along with a username and password for the Telnet service, a remote access protocol that can be used to control devices over the internet.

According to experts, and a statement from the leaker himself, the list was compiled by scanning the entire internet for devices that were exposing their Telnet port. The hacker than tried using (1) factory-set default usernames and passwords, or (2) custom, but easy-to-guess password combinations.

Equifax Breach Settlement Could Cost Firm Billions

Equifax could end up paying as much as $9.5bn following a data breach settlement branded one of the largest in history by its presiding judge.

The credit reporting giant suffered a major cyber-attack in 2017 after hackers exploited an unpatched Apache Struts vulnerability, compromising highly sensitive personal and financial information on around 148 million customers.

Over two-fifths (44%) of the population of the US are thought to have been affected.

This week, a court in Georgia finally approved a settlement in the long-running class action case that followed the breach, which will require Equifax to pay $380.5m, plus potentially an extra $125m, to satisfy claims of out-of-pocket losses.

WordPress plugin vulnerability can be exploited for total website takeover

A WordPress plugin has been found to contain "easily exploitable" security issues that can be exploited to completely take over vulnerable websites.

The plugin at the heart of the matter, WP Database Reset, is used to reset databases -- either fully or based on specific tables -- without the need to go through the standard WordPress installation process.

According to the WordPress library, the plugin is active on over 80,000 websites.

The two severe vulnerabilities were found on January 7 and either of the vulnerabilities can be used to force a full website reset or takeover.

Tracked as CVE-2020-7048, the first critical security flaw has been issued a CVSS score of 9.1. As none of the database reset functions were secured through any checks or security nonces, any user was able to reset any database tables they wished without authentication.

More here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/wordpress-plugin-vulnerability-can-be-exploited-for-full-website-hijacking/

Oracle Issues Record Critical Patch Update cycle with 334 Patches

Oracle has hit an all-time record for number of security fixes issued in a critical patch update (CPU), providing sysadmins with over 330 in its first quarterly release of the decade.

The enterprise software giant issued 334 patches in total across more than 90 products this week. As such, January 2020 easily beats the previous largest CPU, consisting of 308 fixes in July 2017.

Oracle strongly urged firms to apply the patches as soon as possible, claiming that attacks have had success in compromising customers that failed to update their systems promptly.

Among the products affected by this quarter’s CPU are popular platforms including: Oracle Database Server, which featured 12 new patches including three remotely exploitable; Oracle Communications Applications (25 patches, 23 of which are remotely exploitable); Oracle E-Business Suite (23, 21); Oracle Enterprise Manager (50, 10); Fusion Middleware (38, 30); Java SE (12); JD Edwards (9); MySQL (19, 6); Siebel CRM (5); Oracle Virtualization (22, 3); and PeopleSoft (15, 12).

It’s a busy time of the year for IT administrators. Earlier this week, Microsoft released fixes for scores of vulnerabilities in the last regular Patch Tuesday for Windows 7 and Server 2008.

Read the original article here: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/oracle-issues-record-cpu-with-334/

Giant botnet has just sprung back to life pushing a big phishing campaign

One of the world's most prolific botnets has returned and is once again attempting to deliver malware to victims via phishing attacks.

Emotet started life as a banking trojan before evolving into a botnet, which its criminal operators leased out to other hackers as a means of delivering their own malware to previously compromised machines.

Such was the power of the botnet that at one point last year it accounted for almost two-thirds of of malicious payloads delivered in phishing attacks.

But after seemingly disappearing towards the end of 2019, Emotet has now returned with a giant email-spamming campaign, as detailed by researchers at cybersecurity company Proofpoint.

A quarter of users will fall for basic phishing attacks

Slightly more than a quarter of people will fall for a phishing scam that claims to be an urgent message prompting them to change a password, according to statistics gathered by a cyber security testing and training firm.

The security firm studied tens of thousands of email subject lines both from simulated phishing tests and those found in the wild, and found many of the most-clicked emails related either to security or urgent work-related matters.

It revealed its top 10 most effective simulated subject lines to be: Change of Password Required Immediately (26% opened); Microsoft/Office 365: De-activation of Email in Process (14% opened); Password Check Required Immediately (13% opened); HR: Employees Raises (8% opened); Dropbox: Document Shared With You (8% opened); IT: Scheduled Server Maintenance – No Internet Access (7% opened); Office 365: Change Your Password Immediately (6% opened); Avertissement des RH au sujet de l’usage des ordinateurs personnels (6% opened); Airbnb: New device login (6% opened); and Slack: Password Reset for Account (6% opened).

In the wild, subject lines often tended to relate to Microsoft, with emails about SharePoint and Office 365 particularly likely to be opened, as well as notifications about Google and Twitter accounts. People were also likely to fall for emails pretending to be related to problems with a shipping company, with FedEx the most widely impersonated, as well as the US Postal Service.

Read the full article here: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252476845/A-quarter-of-users-will-fall-for-basic-phishing-attacks

Business Disruption Attacks Most Prevalent in Last 12 Months

Business disruption was the main objective of attackers in the last year, with ransomware, DDoS and malware commonly used.

According to the CrowdStrike Services Cyber Front Lines Report, which offers observations from its incident response and proactive services, a third (36%) of incidents often involved ransomware, destructive malware or denial of service attacks. Crowdstrike determined that these three factors to be focused on “business disruption,” and while an adversary’s main goal in a ransomware attack is financial gain, the impact of disruption to a business can often outweigh the loss incurred by paying the ransom.

Also observed in 25% of the investigated incidents was data theft, including the theft of intellectual property, personally identifiable information and personal health information. IP theft has been linked to numerous nation state adversaries that specialize in targeted intrusion attacks, while PII and PHI data theft can enable both espionage and criminally-motivated operations.

Quarter of PCs could now be more at risk from ransomware

Last week saw the day when Windows 7 reached end of life. That means that Microsoft will no longer issue regular patches or updates for the famed operating system. From now on, any flaw or vulnerability discovered will remain unpatched, and the machines running the old system will remain at risk.

Any businesses or individuals running legacy and unsupported operating systems will be at a greater risk of ransomware than before.

WannaCry, one of the most devastating ransomwares of all time, was successful mostly because of unpatched systems. Roughly 200,000 devices in 150 countries around the world will be vulnerable to similar malware, now that Windows 7 is no longer receiving security updates from Microsoft.

From this month, a quarter of all PCs are going to fall into this unsupported category so it is vital that any organisations that rely on Windows 7 are aware of the risks and what they need to mitigate them.

Read the original article here: https://www.itproportal.com/news/quarter-of-pcs-could-now-be-more-at-risk-from-ransomware/

5 tips to avoid spear-phishing attacks

Phishing, very briefly defined, is where a cybercriminal tricks you into revealing something electronically that you ought to have kept to yourself.

The good news is that most of us have learned to spot obvious phishing attacks these days.

The bad news is that you can’t reliably spot phishing attacks just by watching out for obvious mistakes, or by relying on the crooks saying “Dear Customer” rather than using your name.

You need to watch out for targeted phishing, often rather pointedly called spear-phishing, where the crooks make a genuine effort to tailor each phishing email, for example by customising it both to you and to your company.

Spear-phishing, where the fake emails really are believable, isn’t just an issue for high-profile victims such as the Burismas of the world.

Acquiring the specific data needed to come up with personalised phishing emails is easier than you might think, and much of the data gathering can be automated.

So here are Sophos’ 5 tips for dealing with phishing attacks, especially if you’re facing a crook who’s willing to put in the time and effort to win your trust instead of just hammering you with those “Dear Customer” emails:

1. Don’t be swayed just because a correspondent seems to know a lot about you

2. Don’t rush to send out data just because the other person tells you it’s urgent

3. Don’t rely on details provided by the sender when you check up on them

4. Don’t follow instructions on how to view an email that appear inside the email itself

5. Don’t be afraid to get a second opinion

Read the full article here: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/01/17/5-tips-to-avoid-spear-phishing-attacks/

Organized cybercrime -- not your average mafia

Does the common stereotype for "organised crime" hold up for organisations of hackers? Research from a University in US is one of the first to identify common attributes of cybercrime networks, revealing how these groups function and work together to cause an estimated $445-600 billion of harm globally per year.

"It's not the 'Tony Soprano mob boss type' who's ordering cybercrime against financial institutions," said Thomas Holt, MSU professor of criminal justice and co-author of the study. "Certainly, there are different nation states and groups engaging in cybercrime, but the ones causing the most damage are loose groups of individuals who come together to do one thing, do it really well - and even for a period of time - then disappear."

In cases like New York City's "Five Families," organised crime networks have historic validity, and are documented and traceable. In the online space, however, it's a very difficult trail to follow, Holt said.

Cybercrime Statistics in 2019

It doesn’t make for cheery reading but a researcher has compiled a list of statistics for cyber crime, here are few choice headlines:

Cybercrime will cost as much as $6 trillion annually by 2021
Financial losses reached $2.7 billion in 2018
The total cost of cybercrime for each company in 2019 reached US$13M
The total annual cost of all types of cyberattacks is increasing

Read the full article here: https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/96531/cyber-crime/cybercrime-statistics-in-2019.html

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our weekly ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Black Arrow Admin 14/01/2020 Black Arrow Admin 14/01/2020

Cyber Tip Tuesday for 14 January - No Technical Tool or Tools offer 100% Protection

Today we are talking about tools, as no tool, or suite of tools, can offer one hundred percent protection, after all anything man made can be man broken! Even if a tool did offer complete protection today there will be teams of people around the world working around the clock to break it. Anyone who says they rest easy or who says they sleep well at night because they have a particular tool is likely overconfident in that tool's ability to keep them safe. Multiple layers of protection are needed and any technical solution still needs to be backed up with robust people and governance controls.

Today we are talking about tools, as no tool, or suite of tools, can offer one hundred percent protection, after all anything man made can be man broken!

Even if a tool did offer complete protection today there will be teams of people around the world working around the clock to break it.

Anyone who says they rest easy or who says they sleep well at night because they have a particular tool is likely overconfident in that tool's ability to keep them safe.

Multiple layers of protection are needed and any technical solution still needs to be backed up with robust people and governance controls.

We can analyse your protections to see where your weaknesses might exist, and we can help shore up people and governance controls too.

Black Arrow Admin 12/01/2020 Black Arrow Admin 12/01/2020

Week in review 12 January 2020 – Office 365 Phishing, Firms Hit Once Per Minute, Dixons Carphone fined, Travelex hackers threaten to sell data, Firefox zero-day exploit, Citrix scanned for vulns

Week in review 12 January 2020 – Office 365 Phishing Attacks, Firms Hit Once Per Minute in 2019, Dixons Carphone Fined for Breach, Travelex hackers threaten to sell credit card data, Mozilla patches actively exploited Firefox zero-day, Hackers probe Citrix servers for remote code execution vulnerability

Week in review 12 January 2020 – Office 365 Phishing Attacks, Firms Hit Once Per Minute in 2019, Dixons Carphone Fined for Breach, Travelex hackers threaten to sell credit card data, Mozilla patches actively exploited Firefox zero-day, Hackers probe Citrix servers for remote code execution vulnerability

Office 365 users: Beware of phishing emails pointing to Office Sway

One of phishers’ preferred methods for fooling both targets and email filters is to use legitimate services to host phishing pages. The latest example of this involves Office 365 users being directed to phishing and malicious pages hosted on Office Sway, a web application for content creation that’s part of Microsoft Office.

The email that tries to trick recipients into visiting the phishing page isn’t stopped by Microsoft’s filters, likely because either it was sent from an onmicrosoft.com email address or it includes links in the email that point to sway.office.com and other trusted sites (e.g., LinkedIn). The email pretends to be a fax receipt notice, shows a small image of the supposedly received fax, and asks the user to open the attachment to view it.

Cyber-Attacks Hit UK Firms Once Per Minute in 2019

UK businesses were deluged with cyber-attacks in 2019, with the average firm hit by over half a million attempts to compromise systems, according to new report.

A UK-based business Internet Service Provider (ISP) extrapolated the findings from data on its own corporate customers across the country.

It calculated the average number of attacks aimed at a single business last year was 576,575, around 152% higher than the 281,094 recorded in 2018 and the highest since the ISP began analyzing this kind of data in 2016.

That means UK businesses were forced to repel 66 attacks per hour on average in 2019.

The firm identified 1.8 million unique IP addresses responsible for the attacks last year, just under a fifth (18%) of which were located in China. However, this is more an indication of the sheer number of potentially hijacked machines based in the country rather than the origin of the attackers.

There was a fairly big drop to second placed Brazil (7%), which was followed by Taiwan (6%) and Russia (5%) in terms of originating IP addresses for attacks.

Attackers most commonly targeted network device admin tools and IoT endpoints like connected security cameras and building control systems, according to Beaming. These suffered 92,448 attacks in total last year, while 35,807 were targeted at file sharing applications.

Read the full article here: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cyberattacks-uk-firms-once-per/

Dixons Carphone Receives Maximum Fine for Major Breach

A major UK high street retailer has been fined the maximum amount under the pre-GDPR data protection regime for deficiencies which led to a breach affecting 14 million customers.

Privacy regulator the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined DSG Retail £500,000 under the 1998 Data Protection Act after Point of Sale (POS) malware was installed on 5390 tills.

The incident affected Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores between July 2017 and April 2018, allowing hackers to harvest data including customer names, postcodes, email addresses and failed credit checks from internal servers, over a nine-month period.

The “poor security arrangements” highlighted by the ICO included ineffective software patching, the absence of a local firewall, and lack of network segregation and routine security testing.

More information here: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/dixons-carphone-receives-maxi-fine/

Travelex hackers threaten to sell credit card data on dark web

Cyber gangsters have stepped up the pressure on Travelex to pay a $6m ransom to decrypt the company’s data by issuing a new threat to sell personal data about its customers on the dark web.

The threat comes after a cyber crime group used sophisticated malware, known as Sodinokibi or REvil, to encrypt the currency exchange’s computer files, forcing the company to switch off its worldwide computer network.

Travelex, which has hired computer experts to investigate the incident, said on 9 January that it was making progress in bringing its systems back online and that there was “still no evidence to date that any data has been exfiltrated”.

The attack has disrupted Travelex operations for 10 days, leaving the firm’s customers unable to collect foreign currency orders, use the Travelex app, or pay for currency using credit cards. This has led to widespread complaints from customers.

Over a dozen banks, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, First Direct, Barclays and Lloyds, which rely on Travelex to provide services, have also told customers they are unable to take orders for foreign currency.

The crime group has stepped up pressure on Travelex, which has operations in 70 countries, by threatening to sell personal data collected from the company, including credit card details, on a Russian cyber crime forum.

Read the full article here: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252476526/Travelex-hackers-threaten-to-sell-credit-card-data-on-dark-web

PayPal Confirms ‘High-Severity’ Password Security Vulnerability

PayPal has confirmed that a researcher found a high-severity security vulnerability that could expose user passwords to an attacker. The problem, which was disclosed on January 8 was patched by PayPal on December 11, 2019.

Mozilla patches actively exploited Firefox zero-day

Mozilla has patched a Firefox zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2019-17026) that is being exploited in attacks in the wild and is urging Firefox and Firefox ESR users to update their installations as soon as possible.

Hackers probe Citrix servers for weakness to remote code execution vulnerability

Cyberattackers are performing scans to find Citrix servers vulnerable to a critical security flaw.

Disclosed in December, the severe vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-19781, impacts the Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) -- also known as NetScaler ADC -- alongside Citrix Gateway, formerly known as NetScaler Gateway. The critical vulnerability permits directory traversal and if exploited permits threat actors to conduct Remote Code Execution (RCE) attacks.

Researchers have estimated that at least 80,000 organizations in 158 countries are users of ADC and could, therefore, be at risk. Companies in the firing line are predominantly based in the US -- roughly 38 percent -- as well as the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia.

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our weekly ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Black Arrow Admin 07/01/2020 Black Arrow Admin 07/01/2020

Our first Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday video for 2020 - what's coming up in the next couple of months

Welcome to our first Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday for 2020 a chance for us to have a think about what's coming up over the next couple of months. Firstly, we know the new GFSC rules on cyber security will be going out to consultation and we know that the GFSC will be putting a lot more focus on cyber security, both in terms of operational and governance risk, and regulated firms need to think about how they are going to demonstrate compliance with these new regulations. Secondly, we will be holding our first workshop for charities later in Q1, once we have completed a number of case studies with local charities to ensure the workshop hits the right note with the charities we are trying to help. More info on this will follow in the next month or so. Whether you're a regulated financial services firm, any other kind of business, large or small, or a charity, contact us today to see how we can help make security easier for you to understand and protect yourselves against attacks.

Welcome to our first Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday for 2020 a chance for us to have a think about what's coming up over the next couple of months.

Firstly, we know the new GFSC rules on cyber security will be going out to consultation and we know that the GFSC will be putting a lot more focus on cyber security, both in terms of operational and governance risk, and regulated firms need to think about how they are going to demonstrate compliance with these new regulations.

Secondly, we will be holding our first workshop for charities later in Q1, once we have completed a number of case studies with local charities to ensure the workshop hits the right note with the charities we are trying to help. More info on this will follow in the next month or so.

Whether you're a regulated financial services firm, any other kind of business, large or small, or a charity, contact us today to see how we can help make security easier for you to understand and protect yourselves against attacks.

Antony Cleal 07/01/2020 Antony Cleal 07/01/2020

Note to Channel Islands firms on media coverage on the increased risk of cyber attacks from Iran

There has been extensive coverage in both tech and mainstream media warning about the possibility of revenge cyber attacks by Iran following the targeted killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by the United States last week.

Whilst there is a chance that Iran will attack the US and her allies, firms in the West need to consider their threat models and whether or not Iranian interests intersect with their business operations.

Unless a local Channel Islands firm is providing high profile services directly to the US, or otherwise would have operations significant enough to be directly targeted by Iran, it is unlikely there is much danger to Channel Islands firms specifically from the Iranians as a result of this assassination.

Nation State actors do pose an ongoing threat to businesses across the Channel Islands and good cyber hygiene should be followed to guard against by Nation States, and any other malicious actors wanting to cause you harm.

If you have any specific concerns or if you want to discuss your existing defensive capabilities please contact us.

Antony Cleal 05/01/2020 Antony Cleal 05/01/2020

Week in review 05 January 2020 - December breaches, worst passwords, Travelex taken offline, IoT security stinks, Iran revenge cyber attacks expected on US

Week in review 05 January 2020 - Round up of the most significant open source stories of the last week, December breaches, worst passwords, Travelex taken offline, IoT security stinks, Iran revenge attacks expected on US

Welcome to our first blog post of 2020:

List of data breaches and cyber attacks in December 2019 – 627 million records breached

The new year – and new decade – is underway, but before saying goodbye to 2019, ITGovernance had one more monthly round-up to get to.

December saw 90 disclosed data breaches and cyber attacks, with 627,486,696 records being compromised. That’s about a third of the average monthly total, although the number of incidents has climbed steadily throughout the year.

Refer to the original article for the full list of December’s incidents: https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/blog/list-of-data-breaches-and-cyber-attacks-in-december-2019

These are officially the worst passwords of 2019

SplashData has released its annual list of the most commonly-used passwords across the world, uncovering that old security habits really do die hard.

The security firm investigated over five million leaked passwords over the past twelve months, and found that many of the most common logins would be easy to guess for even the most incompetent hackers.

In perhaps the most surprising news, "password" has for the first time been knocked out of the top two spots, being replaced by the painfully simple "123456" and "123456789".

SplashData estimates almost 10 percent of people have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on this year’s list, with nearly three percent using "123456".

Here are the so-called "worst passwords of 2019"

123456
123456789
qwerty
password
1234567
12345678
12345
iloveyou
111111
123123

Read the original article here: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/these-are-officially-the-worst-passwords-of-2019

Hacks and Breaches of 2019: A Year in Review

SecurityBoulevard have a review of the biggest hacks and breaches from 2019, including Fortnite in January, WhatsApp from May, Facebook from April, Amazon Web Services from July and Zynga from September.

Read the full article here: https://securityboulevard.com/2020/01/hacks-and-breaches-of-2019-a-year-in-review/

US based Company shuts down because of ransomware, leaves 300 without jobs just before holidays

An Arkansas-based telemarketing firm sent home more than 300 employees and told them to find new jobs after IT recovery efforts didn't go according to plan following a ransomware incident that took place at the start of October 2019.

Employees of Sherwood-based telemarketing firm The Heritage Company were notified of the decision just days before Christmas, via a letter sent by the company's CEO.

Speaking with local media, employees said they had no idea the company had even suffered a ransomware attack, and the layoffs were unexpected, catching many off guard.

This shows how devastating ransomware attacks can be on businesses of all sizes.

Read the original article here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/company-shuts-down-because-of-ransomware-leaves-300-without-jobs-just-before-holidays/

Travelex site taken offline after cyber attack

The foreign-currency seller Travelex had to suspend some of its services to protect data since the firm suffered from a ‘software virus attack’ on New Year's Eve.

The company has resorted to carrying out transactions manually, providing foreign-exchange services over the counter in its branches.

A spokesman stated the firm is doing all it can to restore full services as soon as possible

More from the BBC here: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50977582

After latest hack, experts say smart home security systems stink at securing data

Another day, another smart home camera system security hack, this one affecting the Seattle-based company Wyze. First reported by a Texas-based cybersecurity firm and confirmed by Wyze, the hack is estimated to have affected 2.4 million customers who had their email addresses, the emails of anyone they ever shared camera access with, a list of their cameras, the last time they were on, and much more information exposed. Some customers even had their health data leaked.

Wyze is a home camera system similar to Amazon’s Ring that’s more economical: Wyze’s products are about a third of Amazon’s Ring. Both companies have now experienced at least one kind of major breach — either a hack or a leak — that should raise the eyebrows of anyone considering purchasing this type of home security.

Read the full article here: https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/wyze-data-hack-protection/

Iran 'revenge' could come in the form of cyber-attacks, experts warn

The US assassination of Qassem Suleimani has increased the likelihood of protracted cyber-hostilities between the US and Iran could escalate into true cyberwarfare.

With tensions mounting and Iran threatening “severe revenge” over the killing, concerns have arisen that blowback could come in the form of hacking attacks on critical infrastructure sectors, which include the power grid, healthcare facilities, banks and communications networks.

Iran has invested heavily in its cyber-attack forces since the Stuxnet attack in 2010 – which saw the US and Israel degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities by means of a computer virus. It has demonstrated its capabilities with attacks on US banks and a small dam, and the US has countered with attacks on an Iranian intelligence group and missile launchers.

There is a danger attacks by Iran against the US spread to other targets in the West and we will continue to monitor any developments.

Read the original article here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/03/iran-cyberattacks-experts-us-suleimani

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our new regular ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog, here and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Antony Cleal 31/12/2019 Antony Cleal 31/12/2019

Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday - Looking to 2020 and increased focus on cyber by the GFSC for all regulated financial service firms

Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday - Looking to 2020 and increased focus on cyber by the GFSC for all regulated financial service firms in the Bailiwick

Welcome to the final Cyber Tip Tuesday of the year, on this the last day of 2019.

As we look back over the last twelve months, the most significant thing, at least as far as regulated financial services firms in the Bailiwick are concerned, is that the GFSC is putting a lot more focus on, and changing the ways it is assessing, cyber risk - both in terms of operational risk and governance risk.

The Commission will be putting new regulations out to public consultation in the new year, but firms need to think about getting on the front foot and consider whether they are doing all they should be doing in relation to cyber security.

We know what the Commission will be looking for as we were directly involved in the thematic review that led to these new regulations, and provided direction for the regulations themselves and the changes to the way firms will be assessed as part of ongoing supervision.

Talk to us to see how we can help you to ensure that you have appropriate protections and controls in place and to help you meet the new regulations when they come into force.

Have a happy, safe and secure 2020

Antony Cleal 29/12/2019 Antony Cleal 29/12/2019

Week in review 29 December 2019 Round up of the most significant open source stories of the last week

Black Arrow Cyber Security review of top open source news articles for week ending 29 December 2019: 10 biggest hacks of the decade, biggest malware threats, MI6 floorplans lost, Citrix vulnerabilities, popular chat app actually spying tool, jobs in infosec

Black Arrow Cyber Consulting would like to wish everyone a happy, prosperous, and cyber safe, 2020

A bit of a quiet week as one would expect with Christmas festivities. As it’s the end of the year, and indeed the end of a decade, there are lots of round ups of the last year and the last decade, and a lot of predictions for what 2020 will hold (we suspect more bad stuff, more ransomware and more devious and nasty strains of ransomware at that, and more breaches) and in that vein on to our first story:

The 10 biggest data hacks of the decade

This article comes from CNBC in the US and whilst the content is US centric a lot of people on this side of the Atlantic would have been caught up in a lot of these breaches too.

Since 2010, data breaches have exposed over 38 billion records, and there have been at least 40,650 data hacks in this time. And while many were smaller data breaches, there were a few mega hacks that will likely remain records for years to come.

Amongst the biggest breaches are:

UnderArmour (MyFitnessPal), from March 2018 with 143.6 million records hacked
Equifax from September 2017 with 147 million records hacked
Marriott (Starwood) from November 2018 with 383 million records hacked
Veeam from September 2018 with 445 million records hacked
Yahoo! from September and December 2016 with up to 3 billion records hacked

There have been many other breaches affecting other companies, such as WhatsApp and Fortnite, who have reported security flaws in the past year that could have exposed millions of customers’ data, but the extent of the accessed data has not yet been fully ascertained.

Read the full article here: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/the-10-biggest-data-hacks-of-the-decade.html

Live visualisations of the World’s Biggest Data Breaches and Hacks can be found anytime by clicking here or on the image below: https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/

Biggest Malware Threats of 2019

2019 was another banner year for bots, trojans, RATS and ransomware. Let’s take a look back.

One out of five computer users were subject to at least one malware-class web attack in 2019. This past year cities such as New Orleans were under ransomware siege by the likes of malware Ryuk. Zero-day vulnerabilities were also in no short supply with targets such as Google Chrome and Operation WizardOpium.

Threatpost have taken a look back over their coverage from the last 12 months.

Remote desktop protocol vulnerabilities BlueKeep, and then DejaBlue, allowed unauthenticated, remote attackers to exploit and take complete control of targeted endpoints. The fear of BlueKeep and its wormable potential to mimic the WannaCry forced Microsoft’s hand to patch systems as old as Windows XP and Windows 2000.

This past year had its fair share of zero-day vulnerabilities. One of the most prominent of the zero days was Urgent/11, impacting 11 remote code execution vulnerabilities in the real-time OS VxWorks. Because of VxWorks use in so many critical infrastructure devices, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took the unusual step and released a warning, urging admins to patch.

We were warned last year when mitigating against Meltdown and Spectre that we would face more side-channel related CPU flaws in the future. And this year we did, with variants ranging from ZombieLoad to Bounds Check Bypass Store, Netspectre and NetCAT. For 2020? Expect even more variants, say experts.

2019 was the year ransomware criminals turned their attention away from consumers and started focusing on big targets such as hospitals, municipalities and schools. There was the Ryuk attack against New Orleans, Maze ransomware behind Pensacola attack and rash of attacks against hospitals that resulted in some care facilities turning patients away.

Botnets continued to be a key tool in cyberattacks in 2019. This past year saw the return of the notorious Emotet botnet. Crooks behind Trickbot partnered with bank trojan cybercriminals from IcedID and Ursif. Lastly, Echobot, an IoT botnet, casts a wider net in 2019 with raft of exploit additions.

Perhaps the highest-profile cryptominer attack occurred in May when researchers found 50,000 servers were infected for over four months as part of a high-profile cryptojacking campaign featuring the malware Nansh0u. The past year also saw a new XMRig-based cryptominer called Norman emerge, which stood apart because of its clever ability to go undetected.

Even though the target is smaller, mobile devices offer criminals top-tier data. Not only are APTs shifting focus on mobile, but so are garden-variety crooks. Take, for example, the Anubis mobile banking trojan that only goes into action after it senses the targeted device is in motion. Then there was the Instagram-initiated campaign using the Gustuff Android mobile banking trojan that rolled out in October.

Google’s Project Zero, in August, found 14 iOS vulnerabilities in the wild since September 2016. According to Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) the flaws could allow malware easily steal messages, photos and GPS coordinates. These flaws highlighted five exploit chains in a watering hole attack that has lasted years. Google said malware payload used in the attack is a custom job, built for monitoring.

In May, researchers uncovered a unique Linux-based malware dubbed HiddenWasp that targeted systems to remotely control them. The malware is believed to be used as part of a second-stage attack against already-compromised systems and is composed of a rootkit, trojan and deployment script.

Discussing malware without touching on business email compromise-based attacks would be like talking about the New England Patriots without mentioning Tom Brady. Fake Greta Thunberg emails used to lure victims to download Emotet malware. Of course the Swedish climate-change activist was just one of the lures that in 2018 contributed to 351,000 scams with losses exceeding $2.7 billion.

Read the original article here: https://threatpost.com/biggest-malware-threats-of-2019/151423/

7 types of virus – a short glossary of contemporary cyberbadness

Technically, this article is about malware in general, not about viruses in particular.

These days, however, the crooks don’t really need to program auto-spreading into their malware – thanks to always-on internet connectivity, the “spreading” part is easier than ever, so that’s one attention-grabbing step the crooks no longer need to use.

But the word virus has remained as a synonym for malware in general, and that’s how we’re using the word here.

So, for the record, here are seven categories of malware that give you a fair idea of the breadth and the depth of the risk that malware can pose to your organisation.

Read the full article here: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/12/28/7-types-of-virus-a-short-glossary-of-contemporary-cyberbadness/

MI6 floor plans lost by building contractor

Floor plans of MI6's central London headquarters were lost by building contractors during a refurbishment.

The documents, most of which were recovered inside the building, held sensitive information on the layout, including entry and exit points.

Balfour Beatty, the company working on the refurbishment at the headquarters in Vauxhall, is reportedly no longer working on the project.

The Foreign Office said it did not comment on intelligence matters.

The documents, which went missing a few weeks ago, were produced and owned by Balfour Beatty and designed to be used for the refurbishment.

The contractor kept the plans on the site at Vauxhall Cross in a secure location.

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said the missing plans were not classified or intelligence documents, but the pages did hold sensitive details.

Most, but not all, of the documents were recovered inside the building after it was noticed they were missing, he said.

Balfour Beatty said it could not comment because of sensitivities.

The incident, first reported by the Sun newspaper, is reportedly a result of carelessness, rather than any hostile activity.

Read the original article here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50927854

Citrix vulnerability allowed criminals to hack 80,000 companies

Researchers have found a vulnerability in popular enterprise software offerings from Citrix which puts tens of thousands of companies at risk of cyber attack.

A security researcher uncovered a critical vulnerability in Citrix Application Delivery Controller (NetScaler ADC) and Citrix Gateway (NetScaler Gateway), which allows direct access to a company network from the internet.

According to a report on the flaw, around 80,000 companies in 158 countries around the world could be at risk. Most companies are located in the US, with the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia sharing a significant portion.

Read the full article here: http://www.itproportal.com/news/citrix-vulnerability-allows-criminals-to-hack-80000-companies

Popular chat app ToTok is actually a spying tool of UAE government – report

A chat app that quickly became popular in the United Arab Emirates for communicating with friends and family is actually a spying tool used by the government to track its users, according to a New York Times report.

The government uses ToTok to track conversations, locations, images and other data of those who install the app on their phones, the Times reported, citing US officials familiar with a classified intelligence assessment and the newspaper’s own investigation.

The Emirates has long blocked Apple’s FaceTime, Facebook’s WhatsApp and other calling apps. Emirati media has been playing up ToTok as an alternative for expatriates living in the country to call home to their loved ones for free.

The Times says ToTok is a few months old and has been downloaded millions of times, with most of its users in the Emirates, a US-allied federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian peninsula. Government surveillance in the Emirates is prolific, and the Emirates long has been suspected of using so-called “zero day” exploits to target human rights activists and others. Zero days exploits can be expensive to obtain on the black market because they represent software vulnerabilities for which fixes have yet to be developed.

The Times described ToTok as a way to give the government free access to personal information, as millions of users are willingly downloading and installing the app on their phones and unknowingly giving permission to enable features.

As with many apps, ToTok requests location information, purportedly to provide accurate weather forecasts, according to the Times. It also requests access to a phone’s contacts, supposedly to help users connect with friends. The app also has access to microphones, cameras, calendar and other data.

Read the full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/23/totok-popular-chat-app-spying-tool-uae-government

Jobs in Information Security (InfoSec)

For anyone considering a career in cyber or information security (infosec) there is a useful article detailing different roles and different potential areas of work in this field.

We also run a free mentoring program for anyone either looking to move into cyber security or currently in a cyber security role wanting to progress their careers. Contact us for more information.

Read the article here: https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/jobs-in-information-security-infosec-93a5efc12ca2

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our new regular ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog, here and on our YouTube channel.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Antony Cleal 24/12/2019 Antony Cleal 24/12/2019

Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday - Christmas Eve 2019 - Christmas Giving

Welcome to a special Christmas Eve 2019 Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday. Christmas is a time for giving so we thought it would be an ideal time to mention the services we give free of charge to help protect Guernsey and the local community. 1. Mentoring - anyone looking to move into cyber or already in cyber wanting to progress their careers can join our mentoring program for a number of one to one meetings to see where our experience and guidance can help them get started or 2. Free 30 minute chats for Startups and Entrepreneurs - new startups and entrepreneurs can ask us for a free 30 minute consultation to help ensure they are getting the fundamentals of cyber security in place to protect their growing businesses. 3. Free pro bono advisory services for charities and non-profits - we provide one day a month to charities in Guernsey to help them take appropriate steps and implement the most cost effective measures, where possible utilising no or low cost solutions, to protect themselves. Black Arrow Cyber Consulting wishes everyone a Happy Christmas and a safe, secure and prosperous 2020

Welcome to a special Christmas Eve 2019 Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday.

Christmas is a time for giving so we thought it would be an ideal time to mention the services we give free of charge to help protect Guernsey and the local community.

Mentoring: if you are looking to start or progress your career in cyber security, you could be eligible for our mentoring program consisting of a rolling series of one to one meetings to see where our experience and guidance can help you.
Free 30 minute chats for Startups and Entrepreneurs: a free 30 minute consultation for new startups and entrepreneurs to help ensure they are getting the fundamentals of cyber security in place to protect their growing business.
Free pro bono advisory services for charities and non-profits: we are giving one day every month to support those that support our communities in Guernsey, to help them protect themselves, using where possible, or where appropriate, low or no cost solutions.

Black Arrow Cyber Consulting wishes everyone a Happy Christmas and a safe, secure and prosperous 2020

Antony Cleal 24/12/2019 Antony Cleal 24/12/2019

Happy Christmas

Black Arrow Cyber Consulting would like to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas! Whilst enjoying the festivities just bear in mind that the bag guys don’t stop and cyber attacks typically increase around this time of year.

Antony Cleal 22/12/2019 Antony Cleal 22/12/2019

Week in review 22 December 2019 - ransomware changes, Christmas scams, Microsoft Office apps hit, predictions for 2020

Week in review 22 December 2019

Round up of the most significant open source stories of the last week

Black Arrow Cyber Consulting would like to wish customers old and new a Very Happy Christmas and a happy, prosperous, and cyber safe, 2020

Christmas malware spreading fast: Protect yourself now

Holiday party invitations may infect your PC

It's time for ugly Christmas sweaters — and for ugly Christmas-themed malicious spam emails.

A new malspam campaign dumps an email in your inbox marked "Christmas Party," "Christmas Party next week," "Party menu," "Holiday schedule" or something similar. But the attached Word document delivers a lump of coal: the notorious Emotet Trojan malware.

"HAPPY HOLIDAYS," begins the email, as spotted by researchers. "I have attached the menu for the Christmas Party next week. If you would like bring something, look at the list and let me know.

"Don't forget to get your donations in for the money tree," the email adds. "Also, wear your tackiest/ugliest Christmas sweater to the party." Sometimes it adds, "Details in the attachment."

More here: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/ugly-christmas-emails-give-the-gift-of-malware

Ransomware Gangs Now Outing Victim Businesses That Don’t Pay Up

As if the scourge of ransomware wasn’t bad enough already: Several prominent purveyors of ransomware have signaled they plan to start publishing data stolen from victims who refuse to pay up. To make matters worse, one ransomware gang has now created a public Web site identifying recent victim companies that have chosen to rebuild their operations instead of quietly acquiescing to their tormentors.

The cyber criminals behind the Maze Ransomware strain erected a Web site on the public Internet, and it currently lists the company names and corresponding Web sites for eight victims of their malware that have declined to pay a ransom demand.

“Represented here companies dont wish to cooperate with us, and trying to hide our successful attack on their resources,” the site explains in broken English. “Wait for their databases and private papers here. Follow the news!”

Researchers were able to verify that at least one of the companies listed on the site indeed recently suffered from a Maze ransomware infestation that has not yet been reported in the news media.

The information disclosed for each Maze victim includes the initial date of infection, several stolen Microsoft Office, text and PDF files, the total volume of files allegedly exfiltrated from victims (measured in Gigabytes), as well as the IP addresses and machine names of the servers infected by Maze.

As shocking as this new development may be to some, it’s not like the bad guys haven’t warned us this was coming.

Read the full article here: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/12/ransomware-gangs-now-outing-victim-businesses-that-dont-pay-up/

Ransomware: The number of victims paying up is on the rise, and that's bad news

The number of organisations that are giving into the extortion demands of cyber criminals after falling victim to ransomware attacks has more than doubled this year.

A rise in the number of ransomware attacks in the past year has contributed to to the increased number of organisations opting to pay a ransom for the safe return of networks locked down by file-encrypting malware.

That's according to figures in the newly released 2019 CrowdStrike Global; Security Attitude Survey, which said the total number of organisations around the world that pay the ransom after falling victim to a supply-chain attack has more than doubled from 14% of victims to 39% of those affected.

In the UK specifically, the number of organisations that have experienced a ransomware attack and paid the demanded price for the decryption key stands at 28% – double the 14% figure of the previous year.

Read the full article here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ransomware-the-number-of-victims-paying-up-is-on-the-rise-and-thats-bad-news/

Microsoft Office apps hit with more cyber attacks than ever

New reports have claimed Microsoft Office was the most commonly exploited application worldwide as of the the third quarter of this year.

Researchers found that Microsoft Office solutions and applications were the target of exactly 72.85 percent of cyber exploits this year according to the firm's research.

However, cyber criminals also targeted web browsers with 13.47 percent of the total number of exploits, Android (9.09 percent), Java (2.36 percent), and Adobe Flash (1.57 percent).

Read the full article here: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/microsoft-office-apps-hit-with-more-cyberattacks-than-ever

Inconsistent password advice could increase risk of cyber attacks

New research suggests that ‘inconsistent and misleading’ password meters seen on various websites could increase the risk of cyber attacks.

The study, led by researchers at the University of Plymouth, investigated the effectiveness of 16 password meters that people are likely to use or encounter on a regular basis.

It tested 16 passwords against the various meters, with 10 of them being ranked among the world’s most commonly used passwords (including ‘password’ and ‘123456’).

Of the 10 explicitly weak passwords, only five of them were consistently scored as such by all the password meters, while ‘Password1!’ performed far better than it should do and was even rated strongly by three of the meters.

However, the team at Plymouth said one positive finding was that a browser-generated password was consistently rated strong, meaning users can seemingly trust these features to do a good job.

More here: https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/12/inconsistent-password-advice-could-increase-risk-of-cyber-attacks/

Cyber security predictions for 2020: 45 industry experts have their say

Cyber security is a fast-moving industry, and with a new decade dawning, the next year promises new challenges for enterprises, security professionals and workers. But what predictions do experts have for cybersecurity in 2020?

Verdict.co.uk heard from 45 experts across the field of cybersecurity about their predictions for 2020, from new methods and targets to changing regulation and business practices.

Read the full list of predictions here: https://www.verdict.co.uk/cybersecurity-predictions-2020/

This ‘grab-bag’ hacking attack drops six different types of malware in one go

'Hornet's Nest' campaign delivers a variety of malware that could create a nightmare for organisations that fall victim to attacks, warn researchers.

A high-volume hacking campaign is targeting organisations around the world with attacks that deliver a 'grab-bag' of malware that includes information-stealing trojans, a remote backdoor, a cryptojacker and a cryptocurrency stealer.

Uncovered by researchers at Deep Instinct, the combination of the volume of attacks with the number of different malware families has led to the campaign being named 'Hornet's Nest'.

The attacks are suspected to be offered as part of a cybercrime-as-a-service operation with those behind the initial dropper, which researchers have dubbed Legion Loader, leasing out their services to other criminals.

Clues in the code point to the Legion Loader being written by a Russian-speaker – and researchers note that the malware is still being worked on and updated. Attacks using the loader appear to be focused on targets in the United States and Europe.

Read the full article here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-grab-bag-hacking-attack-drops-six-different-types-of-malware-in-one-go/

Tiny band of fraud police left to deal with third of all crime

Only one in 200 police officers is dedicated to investigating fraud despite it accounting for more than a third of all crimes, The Times revealed.

Most forces have less than half of 1 per cent of their officers allocated to fraud cases and some have none at all, according to figures disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. In some areas the number of officers tackling fraud has fallen significantly.

Amid a surge in online and cold-calling scams, there were 3.8 million incidents of fraud last year, more than a third of all crimes in England and Wales. Victims are increasingly targeted online and can lose their life savings. However, as few as one in 50 fraud reports leads to a “judicial outcome” such as a suspect being charged.

Last night police bosses said the failure to investigate the cases was due to budget cuts and “poor government direction” and the situation had become a national emergency. Boris Johnson has pledged to “make the streets safer” by recruiting an extra 20,000 police officers but there are concerns that victims of fraud will continue to be failed.

Read the original article here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/less-than-1-of-police-officers-target-fraud-kf6d37qfz

IT worker with a grudge jailed for cyber attack that shut down network for 12 hours

A contractor with a grudge over the handling of an incident in Benidrom has been jailed for carrying out a revenge cyber attack. Scott Burns, 27, was unhappy with the way a disciplinary matter against him by Jet2 was dealt with so decided to cause harm. The attack led to the company’s computer network being shut down for 12 hours and it was only thanks to a fast-thinking colleague that a ‘complete disaster’ was avoided. Burns’s attack cost the company £165,000 in lost business, Leeds Crown Court was told. Jailing Burns for 10 months, Judge Andrew Stubbs QC heard how the motive was revenge because Burns was unhappy about how Jet2 dealt with a disciplinary matter against him relating to an incident at a ‘roadshow in Benidorm’ in 2017. No further details of the incident were outlined in court.

30 years of ransomware: How one bizarre attack laid the foundations for the malware taking over the world

In December 1989 the world was introduced to the first ever ransomware - and 30 years later ransomware attacks are now at crisis levels.

Ransomware has been one of the most prolific cyber threats facing the world throughout 2019, and it's unlikely to stop being a menace any time soon.

Organisations from businesses and schools to entire city administrations have fallen victim to network-encrypting malware attacks that are now demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin or other cryptocurrency for the safe return of the files.

While law enforcement recommends that victims don't give into the demands of cyber criminals and pay the ransom, many opt to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars because they view it as the quickest and easiest means of restoring their network. That means some of the criminal groups operating ransomware campaigns in 2019 are making millions of dollars.

But what is now one of the major cyber scourges in the world today started with much more humble origins in December 1989 with a campaign by one man that would ultimately influence some of the biggest cyber attacks in the world thirty years later.

The first instance of what we now know as ransomware was called the AIDS Trojan because of who it was targeting – delegates who'd attended the World Health Organization AIDS conference in Stockholm in 1989.

Attendees were sent floppy discs containing malicious code that installed itself onto MS-DOS systems and counted the number of the times the machine was booted. When the machine was booted for the 90th time, the trojan hid all the directories and encrypted the names of all the files on the drive, making it unusable.

Victims saw instead a note claiming to be from 'PC Cyborg Corporation' which said their software lease had expired and that they needed to send $189 by post to an address in Panama in order to regain access to their system.

It was a ransom demand for payment in order for the victim to regain access to their computer.

Read the full article here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/30-years-of-ransomware-how-one-bizarre-attack-laid-the-foundations-for-the-malware-taking-over-the-world/

As usual, contact us to help assess where your risks lie and to ensure you are doing all you can do to keep you and your business secure.

Look out for our new regular ‘Cyber Tip Tuesday’ video blog, here and on our YouTube channel

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.