Week 07

Article Link:  Click Here

I found this article very interesting.   As an IT professional, I preach to people all the time about the safety of their data, and what they are doing on a PC.   This is a great article that visualizes what is vulnerable and available to a hacker.

 

 

 

Another month another WikiLeaks revelation, and cybersecurity is right in the middle of it all. As you probably already heard this past week, WikiLeaks released what many believe to be CIA’s tools arsenal to hack to into pretty much anything. Samsung smart TVs, iOS phones, Android smart devices, messaging App services, etc. You name it and WikiLeaks says that the CIA has technology capabilities to hack into it. Nothing has yet been confirmed from the CIA about those claims, nobody should expect them to, but those are among what Snowden talked about in the past.

Google confirmed that recent WikiLeaks information are not serious cybersecurity threats. In other words, nothing surprising from a security perspective. Google is not saying that you should not be surprised that the CIA is spying on you. The search giant is trying to explain that WikiLeaks’ claims are fundamental technologies against which companies and consumers should be able to protect themselves if WikiLeaks is telling the truth. I am looking forward to see how this matter is evolving.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-03-10/wikileaks-releases-cia-hacking-tools-fbi-probes

 

Recently, the whistleblower website WikiLeaks publicly leaked 8,761 documents purportedly containing highly confidential information on the CIA global hacking capabilities and malware arsenal. The data dump was the largest-ever leak of confidential CIA information. The revealed files and documents were code-named Vault7 and came from an isolated, high-security network inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence facility in Langley. The documents contained a voluminous library of cyber attack techniques collected from malware produced by other countries and several hundred million lines of attack code and a collection of hacker tools developed over the year for breaking into and spying on adversary systems and networks, and masking the origin of attacks and confusing forensic investigations. WikiLeaks also stated that the documents were circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive. The leaked documents described numerous zero-day vulnerabilities targeting Android, iOS, and Windows systems, as well as exploits against network routers, smart TVs, and critical components in connected vehicles. This data dump created a concern on the ability of CIA to protect their confidential data against such massive leaks, and concern about WikiLeaks’ motives for such a leak and responsibility for potential misuse of the leaked data by criminal attackers. FBI has opened a federal criminal investigation into the WikiLeaks disclosure on Wednesday.

Link: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/entire-hacking-capacity-of-cia-dumped-on-wikileaks-site-claims/d/d-id/1328339

Article Link – https://nyti.ms/2naGHUJ

Vault7, One of the largest intelligence leaks in recent history, talks about how the CIA is able to spy on anyone through Apple or Android Smartphones, Microsoft Windows Updates, Skype, Smart TVs, and pretty much any IOTs device.  Regardless of encryption, the CIA had back-doors to all of these devices.  They often times sent their employees to work at large tech companies to have them intentionally install back-doors that they would later have access to.  Wikileaks states the source is from an internal CIA agent who wants to spark debate about the government’s cyber techniques of spying, and believes the agency is abusing its power.  In 2015, Samsung had to add in their privacy policy that the voice recognition may be used to record conversations and anything private should not be said near the TV.

The security breaches that we posted about in 2016 resulted in a $350 million discount in Verizon’s purchase of Yahoo.  It also resulted in Yahoo CEO being stripped of her 2016 annual bonus (up to $2 million).  She also volunteered to surrender her 2017 equity grant (no less than $12 million).  The board accepted her offer and she has requested that it be distributed among the Yahoo employees.

An interesting part of the article was a Gartner analyst comment that “security is often not on the top of a company’s agenda because it isn’t directly tied to revenue growth.”

If cybersecurity is not a top item on the board’s agenda for internet based companies, financial services, and other critical infrastructure companies, they’ll have a lot more to worry about than revenue growth.

I’m encouraged that Yahoo and even Marissa Mayer acknowledged her accountability in this breach.  More needs to be done to hold executives accountable for cybersecurity at these major companies.

http://www.securityinfowatch.com/news/12311944/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-stripped-of-bonus-after-probe-reveals-high-level-knowledge-of-huge-hack

Advanced Penetration Testing -Week-7