Will "GDPR Extortion" become the new "trend" in cybercrime?

Even though this is not an "official" term that is being used (well, at least not yet), it does describe the concern I am trying to explain to people at different occasions. I often discuss GDPR from the security perspective, and the conversations most of the time end up focusing at the implications of the regulation and the "next day". 

This is when I end up trying to describe the potential scenario of "GDPR Extortion", as I always like to see things through different lenses when it comes to forward-thinking in Information Security and CyberSecurity. 

By saying "GDPR Extortion" I tend to mean something similar to "DDoS Extortion", and it is easier to give an example to people in order to explain this type of potentially evolving threat. 

IRISSCON 2016 - IRISSCERT

The 8th IRISSCERT Cyber Crime Conference will be held this year on Thursday the 24th of November 2016 in the Ballsbridge, Pembroke Road, Dublin. www.iriss.ie 

This all day conference, focuses on providing attendees with an overview of the current cyber-threats throughout the world and focuses especially on threats that affect businesses in Ireland, and what should be the best course of action when it comes to defending against these threats. You can find my recap blog post for last year's event here.

Like every year, professionals that work in cybersecurity and tackle cybercrime / cyber threats on a daily basis, will be sharing their thoughts and experiences, while attendees have a unique opportunity to ask questions,discuss cybersecurity strategies, and most importantly will meet and network with likeminded individuals allowing them to share their views and opinions.

I am honoured to be invited to speak at this event and get to share my thoughts and views on cybersecurity and most importantly, on cyber resilience, which is also reflected by my talk's title: "All aboard, next stop; Cyber Resilience". 

The abstract for my talk can be found below and I do hope you find it interesting. If you find yourselves in Dublin during the conference, I strongly suggest getting a ticket on time and join us at IRISSCON, and please come and say hi. It is always a pleasure to meet people who are passionate about information security and cybersecurity, and want to discuss/share their thoughts and opinions. Looking forwards to seeing you all there.

Ransomware - Did you update your incident response plan?

At the beginning of 2016 an article was published about the increasing threat of ransomware and provided advice on having an incident response plan that is ready to face this emerging threat. Our article focused on tips related to prevention, response and evading extortion. If you did not have a chance to read our article from January, we recommend that you read it as soon as possible.

Now, at the end of the first quarter of 2016, it is evident that ransomware has become a headache for those who did not take all the necessary precautions to avoid being the next target. Recently, the FBI released a statement to The Wall Street Journal that ransomware is a prevalent and increasing threat. As this recent article describes, attackers are trying new approaches to infection, such as ransomware ‘malvertising’, and have succeeded in creating the first Mac OS X ransomware.

Have a plan, Be Prepared
Due to the fact that it is not easy to deal with the situation after an organisation is hit by ransomware, the best course of action is to ensure there is a backup plan in place. It might come as a surprise but in order to understand the seriousness of the situation, consider that an official in the FBI’s Boston field office went against normal FBI policy and suggested to a conference audience that often the only solution is to pay the ransom. Sysnet wants to make sure you do not have to face that moral dilemma and for that reason we are trying to inform you about the increasing threat and ensure you have taken all the necessary steps towards prevention.

Teach your brain to regenerate passwords instead of remembering them

@TripwireInc posted a brief article about my talk for @AbertayHackers and #SecuriTayV happening this Friday 26/Feb. For those attending, you will learn how to teach your brain to regenerate passwords instead of remembering them! 

Let's cut to the chase. Despite the existence of a number of advanced authentication mechanisms, such as Single Sign-On (SSO), different types of Biometrics, multi-factor authentication, etc., the use of passwords is still the most popular means of authenticating users.

The need to generate, and hopefully to remember these passwords, has become even more demanding due to the rapid increase in the number of systems and online accounts being used. 

Best practice is that these passwords need to be as strong as the assets they protect, and password management applications are supposed to be the most straightforward solution for storing them safely.

If you think about it for a moment, no one has ever actually taught you how to think when choosing a password. Due to the fact, it is generally considered a straightforward task, it is assumed that you actually know how to choose the appropriate password for protecting a particular asset (email, social media account, OS login, etc.).

The rise of the (Chief) Data Protection Officer

Back in August 2015, Sysnet discussed the complexity of what the term CyberSecurity represents, especially in the context of today’s threat landscape. This complexity is not only constantly increasing but it is also expanding at an exponential rate. The risks involved demand constant attention and very good understanding of the new technologies being introduced onto the cyber defence ‘chessboard’.

Sysnet also explored the noticeable shift in the traditional roles of the CSO (Chief Security Officer) and the CIO (Chief Information Officer) which have changed a great deal over the past five years. Their focus on managing security by applying resources to the most crucial system components, in order to reduce the likelihood of a successful breach, is now considered an insufficient approach in the current environment of cyber threats. Threats are changing faster than traditional risk management approaches can cope with, and a more proactive and adaptive approach is needed for an effective cybersecurity strategy.

Looking back a bit further, Sysnet discussed the new EU Data Protection Regulation, which requires the appointment of a Data Protection Officer (DPO) for most organisations, and explained the role and responsibilities of the appointed DPO. 

The Rise of Ransomware - Tips on prevention, response and evading extortion

Ransomware, a malware that prevents or in some cases limits users from accessing their data has been on the rise. Last year, 2015 saw a considerable increase with Crowti (also known as CryptoWall) and FakeBSOD being the two instances that affected more than 850,000 systems between June and November. In the first quarter of 2015, ransomware saw a 165% increase compared to the previous year. In the second quarter of 2015, 4 million samples of ransomware were identified indicating 58% ransomware growth. Ransomware is expected to grow in 2016 considering that more than half of malware attacks in 2015 also carried ransomware.

The main function of ransomware is to prevent the user (or users if it infects a server) from using that particular system. It does this by encrypting the files that it finds stored in the filesystem and connected drives. Usually, ransomware also tries to prevent certain applications and services from running.

Malicious files

These malicious files are called ransomware because they demand a payment (a ransom) in order to allow the users to decrypt their files; the attacker provides the decryption key in exchange for the payment. Some of these types of malicious files try to convince individuals that they have done something illegal in an attempt to scare them into making the payment (ransomware acting as scareware). In order to be more believable, some ransomware payment demands pretend to be from a law enforcement agency. The ransom usually starts at a few US dollars to hundreds of dollars or its Bitcoin equivalent.

Have you heard of "Cyber Insurance"?

The Cyber Liability Insurance Cover (CLIC) or otherwise referred to as cyber insurance, is a market that grew significantly in 2015. One of the main factors that contributed significantly to this growth is the constant increase of threats in the cyber space and more specifically the high profile data breaches that took place during the past years. Due to these data breaches companies were taken to court and were forced not only to cover the losses, but to take upon the extra costs for the data breaches as well. In most cases, these additional costs included crisis management, legal costs, reputational damages, engaging in identity theft resolution, credit and fraud monitoring and further technical costs as well.

Under the potential threat of a breach and the inevitable consequences, this has established not only a need but also a demand for a cyber insurance market. This has also been highlighted by a cyber survey conducted by RIMS. The survey showed that 74 percent of the companies without Cyber insurance will be purchasing one within the next two years. Likewise, by 2025 the total annual premiums for stand-alone cyber insurance are projected to grow to $20 billion.

Biometrics: the Future of Mobile Payments?

Billions of people are now using smartphones, even in the most remote areas of the planet. Global adoption of these new mobile technologies opens up the discussion for more advanced methods of identification, authentication, and verification, especially when it comes to protecting against fraud, identity theft and financial crime. One of these promising new technologies, available to end users as a result of the acceptance of mobile devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops, is biometrics.

Biometrics look promising when it comes to simplifying the processing, authentication, and confirmation of transactions in general, but more importantly when it comes to payments. Technological advances, along with pattern recognition and multi-factor biometrics, are expected to tackle cybercrime by making it very expensive and time-consuming for cybercriminals to attempt to target these systems. 

Message Header Analyzer (Microsoft & Google)

Spear-phishing attacks still happen and are still successful. According to Symantec: “The FBI estimates that the amount lost to BEC (Business Email Compromise) between October 2013 and August 2015 was over $1.2 billion. With such huge returns, it’s unlikely that these scams will cease any time soon.”

Symantec researchers also explained that “BEC attackers target senior-level employees rather than consumers as it’s easier to scam them out of large amounts. In one incident, we observed the scammers asking the target to transfer over US$370,000. By requesting large amounts of money, the scammers only need to be successful a couple of times to make a profit,”.

Usually spear-phishing emails are used for untargeted attacks. Lately we saw spear-phishing attacks becoming more targeted. An example is the CEO fraud attacks. A cyber criminal sends an email that appears to be from an executive (usually from the CEO to the CFO) asking for a specific payment to be processed immediately. The payment may be in any currently or even BitCoin(s). 

There are a couple of tools online that you can use to check the email headers of incoming emails. The email headers allow you to check if a suspicious incoming email is actually a spoofed email as part of a spear-phishing attack campaign.

Adult Friend Finder data breach, the aftermath...

Did you hear about the Adult Friend Finder data breach? Of course you did, it’s all over the news [1] [2] and it is getting major attention due to the spicy nature of the content. 
The online adult service was breached and 3.8 million accounts became public. 

The information including sexual preference, marital status and other personal data (such as, date of birth, email addresses and postal/home addresses) are now all publicly available. 

Well, we have seen data breaches before, but how is this data breach a little bit different??

Up to now, every article I read online about this incident treats it as yet another data breach, without paying any attention to the effects such a data breach will bring to people. Let us see the issues that come to mind, one by one in the following lines. 

Cyber Essentials Scheme explained

Cyber Security is of increasing importance to private companies, SMEs and organisations. Becoming certified against a cyber security standard can be proven a trivial task. Getting familiar with the Cyber Essentials Scheme might proven invaluable when it comes to the cyber security of a business/organisation and to obtaining government contracts. Becoming certified to a cyber security standard significantly lowers the risk of becoming the victim of a data breach. 

According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (2013-2015) most of the attacks require very little skill or experience to be carried out. Consequently, the UK government in order to roll out a basic level of security for protecting businesses against these widely spread cyber attacks (usually low-tech attacks) introduced the Cyber Essentials Scheme on the 1st of October 2014.

EU Data Protection Regulation

The globalisation of data and the enormous technological developments of the last decade raises a number of new challenges when it comes to data protection and privacy. Current privacy legislation has not yet caught up with the technology boom when it comes to personal data, and fails to consider aspects such as cloud storage and the wide spread use of social networks. This is set to change with the launch of the proposed EU Data Protection Regulation.