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Ethical Hacking

Wade Mackey

Oluwaseun Soyomokun

The Top 3 Cyber Security Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

November 9, 2021 by Oluwaseun Soyomokun Leave a Comment

Ransomware cost Americans an estimated $1.4 billion last year, and beyond high-profile hacks like the Kaseya and Colonial Pipeline breaches, cyber threats are more common than ever. As a result, businesses of all sizes are scrambling to learn more about cyber security and ensure that they have the proper measures in place to protect their operations. These are the top three considerations organizations must take into account when implementing or upgrading their cyber security approach.

  1. People and Training

First and foremost, there is a significant lack of cybersecurity education among employees. The human firewall is the most important defense, but it is also the most vulnerable. That means security training has to be a top priority when it comes to an organization’s cyber security. Organizations should implement a security awareness training platform which trains, tests and scores all employees. It’s important to teach employees how to identify cyber security threats and remain vigilant toward anything suspicious, such as scams, fraudulent emails, or even physical threats. It’s also important to consider implementing some sort of email gateway filter. With the rise of remote working, additional problems emerge as more people go mobile. For example, it is much easier on mobile to mix company and private mail and people tend to click quickly, which leads to errors. We all need to slow down, verify incoming requests and be cognizant of what we are clicking on so that we do not fall victim to a cyber security threat.

 

  1. Technology and System

It is also paramount that organizations ensure systems are fully patched, inclusive of their OS, firmware and applications. They must ensure each endpoint detection and response application is installed on each device, with all systems reporting back to a central location or Security Operation Center, where all notifications, events, and alarms can be correlated. A quality Detection and Response application is not only going to defend against malware and other malicious activity, but it will also identify possible insider threats by monitoring lateral traffic. Utilizing such Security SaaS should be part of the overarching security platform which will provide a level of behavioral analytics with the ability to determine what is standard for that user and/or system. Therefore, this allows organizations to identify unusual activity, even if the user has the rights to the systems being accessed.

Additionally, I would suggest V-LANs and least privilege access or even zero trust as a greater security play. For example, IoT devices should not cohabitate on the same V-LAN as the accounting or human resources department. This type of network segmentation allows for greater risk reduction.

 

  1. Staffing and Security Operations

Many organizations forgo the managed services model to create an in-house security operation center, believing they can do it themselves. There are many cyber security tools available; however, there are very few trained and certified security engineers, and these tools often rely upon alarms, event notifications, or automated messaging to provide alerts. However, this begs the question, who will be monitoring and mitigating the environment at 3 a.m. on New Year’s Eve? Effective cyber security infrastructure requires extensive resources to reduce the total volume of alerts, alarms and events to an actionable notification which requires mitigation. Vacation, training, sick time, education and retention programs are all factors to consider when creating a security operator center. There is a deficit of security analysts, engineers and architects throughout the cyber security space today. Even if you can hire a strong team of cyber security specialists, security operation centers require at least five to six people to ensure 24/7 coverage.

In addition to the personnel issues, there are also equipment, software updates and proper configuration to consider. True quality deployment will require multiple layers, and the systems will have to be integrated, monitored and managed. In comparison, an organization that outsources its cyber security needs can depend upon systems being maintained and a team of experts to support them. Simply put, organizations should secure their environment through a third-party managed security service. These services are inclusive of EDRs, patching systems, a security information event manager, behavioral analytics and east/west traffic monitoring. At best, with the current staffing shortage, an in-house SOC is an ineffective method to detect, quarantine and/or remediate an infected device and/or network.

Hackers are only becoming more sophisticated and, big or small, no organization can afford to go unprotected. Being aware of these three points is critical in protecting your organization from cyber threats. In the current cyber security environment, there is no room for mistakes.

The Top 3 Cyber Security Mistakes and How to Avoid Them – Cyber Defense Magazine

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These are the top cybersecurity challenges of 2021

October 26, 2021 by Oluwaseun Soyomokun Leave a Comment

TOP CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGES OF 2021

  • Corporate leaders are increasingly elevating the importance of cybersecurity to their companies.
  • But recent high-profile attacks show how much more needs to be done in the year ahead.
  • Here are the five biggest cybersecurity challenges that must be overcome.

The far-reaching cybersecurity breaches of 2020, culminating in the widespread Solarwinds supply chain attack, were a reminder to decision-makers around the world of the heightened importance of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is a board-level issue now for many firms.

As per the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2021, cyber risks continue ranking among global risks. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated technological adoption, yet exposed cyber vulnerabilities and unpreparedness, while at the same time exacerbated the tech inequalities within and between societies.

Looking at the year ahead, it is critical to continue elevating cybersecurity as a strategic business issue and develop more partnerships between industries, business leaders, regulators and policymakers. Just like any other strategic societal challenge, cybersecurity cannot be addressed in silos.

Here is a list of five main cybersecurity challenges that global leaders should consider and tackle in 2021.

More complex cybersecurity challenges

Digitalization increasingly impacts all aspects of our lives and industries. We are seeing the rapid adoption of machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, as well as an increasing dependency on software, hardware and cloud infrastructure.

The complexity of digitalization means that governments are fighting different battles — from “fake news” intended to influence elections to cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure. These include the recent wave of ransomware attacks on healthcare systems to the pervasive impact of a compromised provider of widely-adopted network management systems. Vital processes, such as the delivery of the vaccines in the months to come, may also be at risk.

Facing these heightened risks, decision-makers and leaders need to acknowledge that cybersecurity is a national security priority.

The blurring line between digital and physical domains indicates that nations and organizations will only be secure if they incorporate cybersecurity features, principles and frameworks are a necessity for all organizations, especially those with high-value assets. In today’s battles, governments have to adapt to fight against attackers that are silent, distributed, varied and technically savvy. The public and private sectors alike are engaged in this battle – and the private sector will need what only the public sphere can bring to the fight, including policy-making, market-shaping incentive models and training on a large scale.

How business leaders rate risks.
How business leaders rate risks.
Image: World Economic Forum’s COVID-19 Risks Outlook

2. Fragmented and complex regulations

Cyber adversaries do not stop at countries’ borders, nor do they comply with different jurisdictions. Organizations, meanwhile, must navigate both a growing number and increasingly complex system of regulations and rules, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China and many others worldwide.

Privacy and data protection regulations are necessary, but can also create fragmented, and sometimes conflicting, priorities and costs for companies that can weaken defence mechanisms. Within organisations’ budgetary boundaries, companies have to defend and protect against attacks while they also seek to comply with complex regulations.

Policymakers, thus, need to weigh their decisions with this impact in mind. Individual regulations may have similar intent, but multiple policies add complexity for businesses that need to comply with all regulations, and this complexity introduces its challenges to cybersecurity and data protection, not always improving them. Policies must be creative in increasing protection while decreasing regulatory complexity. Cooperation among different policymakers is critical.

3. Dependence on other parties

Organizations operate in an ecosystem that is likely more extensive and less certain than many may recognize. Connected devices are expected to reach 27 billion by 2021 globally, driven by trends such as the rise of 5G, the internet of things and smart systems. In addition, the boom in remote work that began with the pandemic is expected to continue for many. The concentration of a few technology providers globally provides many entry points for cyber criminals throughout the digital supply chain.

The ecosystem is only as strong as its weakest link. The recent attacks against FireEye and SolarWinds highlight the sensitivity of supply chain issues and dependence on providers of IT functionality and services. Organizations must consider what the breadth of this exposure really means and must take steps to assess the real extent of their entire attack surface and resilience to threats. An inclusive and cross-collaborative process involving teams across different business units is vital to make sure there is an acceptable level of visibility and understanding of digital assets.

4. Lack of cybersecurity expertise

Ransomware is the fastest-growing cybercrime and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this threat. Preventative measures for ransomware or any other cyber-attack should include preparation: presume you will get hit, back up IT resources and data, make sure there is continuity of operations in disruptions to computer systems, and drill and train the organization in realistic cyber response plans.

Businesses that actively adopt cybersecurity and more importantly improve their cybersecurity infrastructure are more likely to be successful. These businesses have come to see cybersecurity as an enabler to everyday operations. The significance of cybersecurity will likely only increase in the future in order to take advantage of the speed, scale, flexibility, and resilience that digitalization promises. Security by design and by default are becoming integral to success.

Organizational priorities should include a proactive plan for each business to build and maintain its own cybersecurity workforce. With security expertise becoming so difficult to source and retain, organizations should consider cultivating this talent organically. Organizations must also recognize that mobility is implicit in the modern technology workforce. It will be important to plan for the expected tenure of experienced professionals and recognize the long-term benefits that will accrue from a reputation for cultivating this expertise, transmitted from veterans to newcomers entering the field.

5. Difficulty tracking cyber criminals

Being a cyber criminal offers big rewards and few risks since, until recently, the likelihood of detection and prosecution of a cybercriminal was estimated to be as low as 0.05% in the US. This percentage is even lower in many other countries. Even when not obscuring criminal activity through techniques such as dark web tactics, it can be very challenging to prove that a specific actor committed certain acts. Cyber crime is a growing business model, as the increasing sophistication of tools on the darknet makes malicious services more affordable and easily accessible for anyone that is willing to hire a cyber criminal.

Policymakers can help by working with cyber crime experts to establish internationally accepted criteria for attribution, evidence, and cooperation in pursuing cyber criminals and bringing them to justice.

We have learned a lot over the last 18 months, and 2021 will be no different. We need to continue to adapt and take cyber risks seriously by planning, preparing and educating. Since it is a universal issue, open communications between corporations, policymakers, and regulators are a critical key to success. Until security features become integral to technology – seamless, transparent, and naturally usable by people – we will need to rely on business leadership to pay serious attention to cybersecurity.

Link: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/top-cybersecurity-challenges-of-2021/

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Geriatric Microsoft Bug Exploited by APT Using Commodity RATs

October 20, 2021 by Oluwaseun Soyomokun 1 Comment

An Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) described as a “lone wolf” is exploiting a decades-old Microsoft Office flaw to deliver a barrage of commodity Remote Access Trojans (RATs) to organizations in India and Afghanistan, researchers have found.

Attackers use political and government-themed malicious domains as lures in the campaign, which targets mobile devices with out-of-the-box RATs such as dcRAT and QuasarRAT for Windows and AndroidRAT. They’re delivering the RATs in malicious documents by exploiting CVE-2017-11882.

CVE-2017-11882 is a more than 20-year-old memory corruption vulnerability in Microsoft Office that persisted for 17 years before the company patched it in 2017. However, as recently as two years ago, attackers were seen exploiting the bug, which allows them to run malicious code automatically without requiring user interaction.

The advanced persistent threat (APT) behind the campaign also uses a custom file enumerator and infector in the reconnaissance phase of the two-step attack, followed by a second phase added in later versions of the campaign that deploys the ultimate RAT payload, researchers said.

To host the malware payloads, the threat actor registered multiple domains with political and government themes used to fool victims, particularly ones linked to diplomatic and humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan to target entities in that country, researchers said.

“This campaign is a classic example of an individual threat actor employing political, humanitarian and diplomatic themes in a campaign to deliver commodity malware to victims” – in this case, RATs “packed with multiple functionalities to achieve complete control over the victim’s endpoint,”

https://threatpost.com/apt-commodity-rats-microsoft-bug/175601/

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Explanation of the flaws in Software and Systems Code

October 16, 2021 by Oluwaseun Soyomokun Leave a Comment

I found this article about Vice President Cybersecurity Advisor Network – Peter Coroneos explains the “Zero day vulnerabilities are flaws in software or systems code that leaves end users open to attack.
“They are called ‘zero day’ because they are either unknown to the vendor who produced the product, or are known but no patch has yet been made available.

“The period between when the zero day is first discovered by an attacker and when the patch is installed by the end user is the attack window in which a compromise can occur. The consequences can be vast and most serious attacks these days involve zero day exploits.”
“The first famous zero day attack was Stuxnet in 2009 against the Iranian uranium enrichment program. More recent attacks include WannaCry, NotPeyta, SolarWinds, MS Exchange Server hacks of 2021 and the infamous Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack.”
“‘White hat’ zero day researchers form a critical piece in the remediation of exploitable connected systems. They uncover the existence of unpatched vulnerabilities and report them to vendors of the relevant products they can be fixed. Regrettably, they face legal threats from some vendors sensitive to the discovery of flaws in their products.
Most digital security incidents are caused by malicious actors (e.g. cybercriminals and state-sponsored groups) exploiting vulnerabilities in organisations’ digital ecosystems. Addressing vulnerabilities before attackers take advantage of them is an effective means of reducing the probability of cybersecurity incidents. This article discusses vulnerabilities in products’ code such as software and firmware, and in how products are implemented in information systems. It shows that the technical community has progressed in developing good practice for treating vulnerabilities, including through co-ordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD). However, significant economic and social challenges prevent stakeholders from adopting good practice, such as legal frameworks that do not sufficiently protect “ethical hackers” from legal proceedings. The paper stresses that public policies aimed at removing obstacles and encouraging vulnerability treatment could significantly reduce digital security risk for all.

https://itwire.com/security/video-interview-cyan-vp-peter-coroneos-explains-why-laws-are-needed-to-protect-ethical-zero-day-cyber-research.html

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September 21, 2021 by Oluwaseun Soyomokun Leave a Comment

MIS5211_Assignment_Reconnaissance_Presentation

 

MIS5211_Assignment_Reconnaissance_Presentation

https://community.mis.temple.edu/mis5211sec002fall2021/2021/09/21/50/

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