Ethical Hacking

Wade Mackey

Ethical Hacking

MIS 5211.702 ■ Fall 2020 ■ Wade Mackey

Kyuande Johnson

Week 6: In the news

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Illinois Community College Addressing Cybersecurity Breach

Heartland Community College is working with outside consultants to address a security breach in its computer systems. As of now all of the college’s online operations including classes are shut down. The college became aware of the breach on Monday and immediately shut down all of the university online services in efforts to investigate and maintain the security breach. The College is unaware if any student or personal data have been compromised. Reports mentioned the spike of phishing emails since the pandemic. Since the shutdown the college informed students via social media that their instructors would be in touch to reschedule missed classes, tests and assignments. Heartland Community College is working to resume normal online operations as quickly as possible, but it did not provide a timeline. The college has not shared any more information on the nature of the cyberattack.

https://www.wglt.org/post/breach-disrupts-heartland-community-colleges-computer-systems#stream/0

Week 5: Reading

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Netcat is a utility capable of establishing a TCP or UDP connection between two computers, meaning it can write and read through an open port. Network and System Administrators need to be able to quickly identify how their network is performing and what type of activity is occurring so NetCat is a great tool for that. Netcat is suitable for interactive use or as a network-connected back end for other tools.

Week 5: In the News

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Nebraska Medicine Falls Victim To Cyber Attack

Nebraska Medicine is the most comprehensive health network in the region, with two major hospitals, more than 1000 doctors and 40 clinics in the Omaha area. Earlier this week Nebraska Medicine experienced a significant information technology system downtime event. This downtime is the result of a cyber security attack.  Nebraska Medicine was forced to postpone many appointments and prioritized patients who have appointments or surgeries critical to their health and well-being. According to Nebraska Medicine no patient data has been deleted or destroyed. As of this time there is no report of Patient data being compromised. Law Enforcement have been notified and contingency plans are in place. Nebraska Medicine says normal operations should resume in a few days after the cyber attack. 

The statement did not include any further information about the attack’s nature, extent or origins. According to the distribution and event leading to the discovery of the attack. It seems that Nebraska Medicine has been affected by a denial of service attack. As this investigation continues Nebraska Medicine and other health institutions should seek to improve their Security Awareness. Training employees to watch out for suspicious links and always updating phone and computer software is essential . Nebraska Medicine should also improve defense-in-depth or layered security. Layered Security provides additional protection even after an unauthorized access is achieved. Even if an attacker is able to breach into the network.What they can access is very limited. Which is going to make accessing other data more difficult.

Week 4: Nessus

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Nessus is a remote security scanning tool, which scans a computer and raises an alert if it discovers any vulnerabilities that malicious hackers could use to gain access to any computer you have connected to a network. Nessus discovers vulnerabilities for security specialist to analyze and harden their systems. Nessus Scans can become ineffective if ran behind a firewall. It’s always best to run a credentialed scan to receive full test results. Nessus Scan isn’t made to fully secure your environment as it doesn’t implement Physical or Access Controls.

Week 4: In the News

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Anglicare Sydney being held to ransom over sensitive data stolen from computer system

 

Anglicare Sydney is a community service organization that provides foster care and adoption services. As of Yesterday (Sept 20, 2020) Anglicare has confirmed that their sensitive data has been held for ransom. The ongoing investigation reported that 17 Gigabytes worth of sensitive data has been transmitted to a remote location. At this time Anglicare refuses to pay the ransom. Anglicare’s spokesperson hinted that the organization does not want to engage with cyber criminals. People receiving government services were entitled to have their personal identification protected. 

Anglicare has to eventually make a decision about resolving this issue. The integrity and security of the stolen data is detrimental. Many children could be at risk. 

 

Anglicare Sydney is contracted by the NSW Department of Family and Community Services to provide foster care and adoption services as well as programs for vulnerable families and young people