Category Archives: DDoS News

100,000-Plus Home Routers Hijacked in Campaign to Steal Banking Credentials

The GhostDNS campaign, which has been mainly targeting consumers in Brazil, has exploded in scope since August. An unknown attacker has hijacked over 100,000 home routers and changed their DNS settings in a major campaign to steal login credentials from customers of several banks in Brazil. Security vendor Radware first reported on the campaign in August. Since then, the campaign has exploded in scope from mostly targeting users of DLink DSL modem routers to targeting users of more than 70 different types of home routers. In a report released Saturday, Chinese security vendor Qihoo 360’s Netlab team said it recently observed a significant increase in attempts to break into routers with weak passwords. About 88% of the devices that have been targeted so far in what Netlab is calling the GhostDNS campaign are located in Brazil. The attackers are attempting to install a version of a previously known DNS hijacking exploit called DNSChanger on the routers and change their default settings so traffic gets redirected to a rogue server. When users attempt to access certain banks, the rouge server takes them to a phishing server hosting phishing pages that are clones of the account login page of the corresponding bank. The rogue server currently hosts phishing pages for 52 domains belonging to banks, cloud service providers, Netflix, and one cybersecurity firm. In situations where the attackers are unable to guess the router passwords, they have been using a previously known exploit known as dnscfg.cgi to remotely configure DNS server settings on the routers without authenticating into them first. Unlike previous DNSChanger campaigns, GhostDNS involves the use of an additional three submodules, which Netlab is calling Shell DNSChanger, Js DNSChanger, and PyPhp DNSChanger (after their programming languages). Together, the modules have more than 100 scripts for changing settings on more than 70 routers. The ShellDNSChanger module includes 25 Shell scripts for attacking 21 routers and firmware. It features a third-party tool to scan IPs in a selected range of network segments in Brazil and uses the router information that is collected to try and crack passwords on their Web authentication pages. The Js DNSChanger module, written in JavaScript, contains scripts for attacking six routers/firmware. The PyPhpDNSChanger is the main module, with attack scripts for 47 different routers/firmware. Netlab says it discovered the module deployed on more than 100 servers, scanning for and attacking target router IPs in Brazil. “The GhostDNS system poses a real threat to [the] Internet,” Netlab said in its advisory. “It is highly scaled, utilizes diverse attack [vectors, and] adopts automated attack process.” Pascal Geenens, a cybersecurity evangelist for Radware who wrote about the start of the campaign in August, says GhostDNS is another example of how attackers have begun exploiting vulnerable consumer Internet of Things (IoT) devices in different ways. Previously, attackers have hijacked IoT devices to create botnets for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks or to mine for cryptocurrencies and provide anonymizing proxy services. With GhostDNS, attackers have demonstrated how they can exploit consumer routers to steal information that can be used to break into bank accounts and carry out other fraud. What is especially troubling about the attack is that many users of the compromised routers — especially those on older browsers — will have no indication their traffic is being redirected to a malicious server, he says. “I’m a little bit surprised,” Geenen says about how much the DNS hijacking campaign in Brazil has evolved since August. “It’s not that easy to make an exploit work across that many routers.” Configuration commands for each router can vary. In order to carry out a campaign such as GhostDNS, the attackers would have needed to find the commands for each of the targeted routers and developed scripts for changing them. Then they would have needed to test the scripts to see how well they worked. For Internet users, campaigns such as GhostDNS are another reminder to keep IoT devices properly updated, Geenens says. “All the vulnerabilities that we have seen abused, whether it is for cryptomining or for DDoS, were vulnerabilities that were fixed,” he explains. Attackers have learned that a majority of consumers don’t update their IoT devices promptly when patches for newly announced flaws become available. So it is not unusual to see adversaries attacking new vulnerabilities almost immediately after the flaws are disclosed, he says. Source: https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/100000-plus-home-routers-hijacked-in-campaign-to-steal-banking-credentials/d/d-id/1332946

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100,000-Plus Home Routers Hijacked in Campaign to Steal Banking Credentials

Are Your Applications Secure?

Executives express mixed feelings and a surprisingly high level of confidence in Radware’s 2018 Web Application Security Report. As we close out a year of headline-grabbing data breaches (British Airways, Under Armor, Panera Bread), the introduction of GDPR and the emergence of new application development architectures and frameworks, Radware examined the state of application security in its latest report. This global survey among executives and IT professionals has yielded insights about threats, concerns and application security strategies. The common trend among a variety of application security challenges including data breaches, bot management, DDoS mitigation, API security and DevSecOps, was the high level of confidence reported by those surveyed. 90% of all respondents across regions reported confidence that their security model is effective at mitigating web application attacks. Attacks against applications are at a record high and sensitive data is shared more than ever. So how can execs and IT pros have such confidence in the security of their applications? To get a better understanding, we researched the current threat landscape and application protection strategies organizations currently take. Contradicting evidence stood out immediately: 90% suffered attacks against their applications One in three shared sensitive data with third parties 33% allowed 3 rd parties to create/modify/delete data via APIs 67% believed a hacker can penetrate their network 89% see web-scraping as a significant threat to their IP 83% run bug bounty programs to find vulnerabilities they miss As it turned out there are quite a few threats to application services that are not properly addressed as traditional security approaches are challenged and stretched. In parallel, the adoption of emerging frameworks and architectures, which rely on numerous integrations with multiple services, adds more complexity and increases the attack surface. Current Threat Landscape Last November, OWASP released a new list of top 10 vulnerabilities in web applications. Hackers continue to use injections, XSS, and a few old techniques such as CSRF, RFI/LFI and session hijacking to exploit these vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. Protection is becoming more complex as attacks come through trusted sources such as a CDN, encrypted traffic, or APIs of systems and services we integrate with. Bots behave like real users and bypass challenges such as CAPTCHA, IP-based detection and others, making it even harder to secure and optimize the user experience. Web application security solutions must be smarter and address a broad spectrum of vulnerability exploitation scenarios. On top of protecting the application from these common vulnerabilities, it has to protect APIs and mitigate DoS attacks, manage bot traffic and make a distinction between legitimate bots (search engines for instance) and bad ones like botnets, web-scrapers and more. DDoS Attacks 63% suffered denial of service attack against their application. DoS attacks render applications inoperable by exhausting the application resources. Buffer overflow and HTTP floods were the most common types of DoS attacks, and this form of attack is more common in APAC. 36% find HTTP/Layer-7 DDoS as the most difficult attack to mitigate. Half of the organizations take rate-based approaches (such as limiting the number of request from a certain source or simply buying a rate-based DDoS protection solution) which are ineffective once the threshold is exceeded and real users can’t connect. API Attacks APIs simplify the architecture and delivery of application services and make digital interactions possible. Unfortunately, they also introduce a wide range of risks and vulnerabilities as a backdoor for hackers to break into networks. Through APIs, data is exchanged in HTTP where both parties receive, process and share information. A third party is theoretically able to insert, modify, delete and retrieve content from applications. This is nothing but an invitation to attack: 62% of respondents did not encrypt data sent via API 70% of respondents did not require authentication 33% allowed third parties to perform actions (GET/ POST / PUT/ DELETE) Attacks against APIs: 39% Access violations 32% Brute-force 29% Irregular JSON/XML expressions 38% Protocol attacks 31% Denial of service 29% Injections Bot Attacks The amount of both good and bad bot traffic is growing. Organizations are forced to increase network capacity and need to be able to precisely tell a friend from a foe so both customer experience and security are maintained. Surprisingly, 98% claimed they can make such a distinction. However, a similar amount sees web-scraping as a significant threat. 87% were impacted by such an attack over the past 12 months, despite a variety of methods companies use to overcome the challenge – CAPTCHA, in-session termination, IP-based detection or even buying a dedicated anti-bot solution. Impact of Web-scraping: 50% gathered pricing information 43% copied website 42% theft of intellectual property 37% inventory queued/being held by bot 34% inventory held 26% inventory bought out Data Breaches Multinational organizations keep close tabs on what kinds of data they collect and share. However, almost every other business (46%) reports having suffered a breach. On average an organization suffers 16.5 breach attempts every year. Most (85%) take between hours and days to discover. Data breaches are the most difficult attack to detect, as well as mitigate, in the eyes of our survey respondents. How do organizations discover data breaches? 69% Anomaly detection tools/SIEM 51% Darknet monitoring service 45% Information was leaked publicly 27% Ransom demand IMPACT OF ATTACKS Negative consequences such as loss of reputation, customer compensation, legal action (more common in EMEA), churn (more common in APAC), stock price drops (more common in America) and executives who lose their jobs are quick to follow a successful attack, while the process of repairing the damage and rebuild of a company’s reputation is long and not always successful. About half admitted having encountered such consequences. Securing Emerging Application Development Frameworks The rapidly growing amount of applications and their distribution across multiple environments requires adjustments that lead to variations once a change to the application is needed. It is nearly impossible to deploy and maintain the same security policy efficiently across all environments. Our research shows that ~60% of all applications undergo changes on a weekly basis. How can the security team keep up? While 93% of organizations use a Web Application Firewall (WAF), only three in ten use a WAF that combines both positive and negative security models for effective application protection. Technologies Used By DevOps 63% – DevOps and Automation Tools 48% – Containers (3 in 5 use Orchestration) 44% – Serverless / FaaS 37% – Microservers Among the respondents that used micro-services, one-half rated data protection as the biggest challenge, followed by availability assurance, policy enforcement, authentication, and visibility. Summary Is there a notion that organizations are confident? Yes. Is that a false sense of security? Yes. Attacks are constantly evolving and security measures are not foolproof. Having application security tools and processes in place may provoke a sense of being in control but are likely to be breached or bypassed sooner or later. Another question we are left with is whether senior management is fully aware of the day to day incidents. Rightfully so, they look to their internal teams tasked with application security to manage the issue, but there seems to be a mismatch between their perceptions of the effectiveness of their organizations’ application security strategies and the actual exposure to risk. Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2018/10/are-your-applications-secure

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Are Your Applications Secure?

‘Torii’ Breaks New Ground For IoT Malware

Stealth, persistence mechanism and ability to infect a wide swath of devices make malware dangerous and very different from the usual Mirai knockoffs, Avast says. A dangerous and potentially destructive new IoT malware sample has recently surfaced that for the first time this year is not just another cheap Mirai knockoff. Researchers from security vendor Avast recently analyzed the malware and have named it Torii because the telnet attacks through which it is being propagated have been coming from Tor exit nodes. Besides bearing little resemblance to Mirai in code, Torii is also stealthier and more persistent on compromised devices. It is designed to infect what Avast says is one of the largest sets of devices and architectures for an IoT malware strain. Devices on which Torii works include those based on x86, x64, PowerPC, MIPS, ARM, and several other architectures. Interestingly, so far at least Torii is not being used to assemble DDoS botnets like Mirai was, or to drop cryptomining tools like some more recent variants have been doing. Instead it appears optimized for stealing data from IoT devices. And, like a slew of other recent malware, Torii has a modular design, meaning it is capable of relatively easily fetching and executing other commands. Martin Hron, a security researcher at Avast says, if anything, Torii is more like the destructive VPNFilter malware that infected some 500,000 network attached storage devices and home-office routers this May. VPNFilter attacked network products from at least 12 major vendors and was capable of attacking not just routers and network attached storage devices but the systems behind them as well. Torii is different from other IoT malware on several other fronts. For one thing, “it uses six or more ways to achieve persistence ensuring it doesn’t get kicked out of the device easily on a reboot or by another piece of malware,” Hron notes. Torii’s modular, multistage architecture is different too. “It drops a payload to connect with [command-and-control (CnC)] and then lays in wait to receive commands or files from the CnC,” the security researcher says. The command-and-control server with which the observed samples of Torii have been communicating is located in Arizona. Torii’s support for a large number of common architectures gives it the ability to infect anything with open telnet, which includes millions of IoT devices. Worryingly, it is likely the malware authors have other attack vectors as well, but telnet is the only vector that has been used so far, Hron notes. While Torii hasn’t been used for DDoS attacks yet, it has been sending a lot of information back to its command-and-control server about the devices it has infected. The data being exfiltrated includes Hostname, Process ID, and other machine-specific information that would let the malware operator fingerprint and catalog devices more easily. Hron says Avast researchers aren’t really sure why Torii is collecting all the data. Significantly, Avast researchers discovered a hitherto unused binary on the server that is distributing the malware, which could let the attackers execute any command on an infected device. The app is written in GO, which means it can be easily recompiled to run on virtually any machine. Hron says Avast is unsure what the malware authors plan to do with the functionality. But based on its versatility and presence on the malware distribution server, he thinks it could be a backdoor or a service that would let the attacker orchestrate multiple devices at once. The log data that Avast was able to analyze showed that slightly less than 600 unique client devices had downloaded Torii. But it is likely that the number is just a snapshot of new machines that were recruited into the botnet for the period for which Avast has the log files, the security vendor said. Source: https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/-torii-breaks-new-ground-for-iot-malware/d/d-id/1332930

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‘Torii’ Breaks New Ground For IoT Malware

190 UK Universities Targeted with Hundreds of DDoS Attacks

A large number of security attacks have been targeting universities all over the UK. Over 850 DDoS attacks were analyzed across 190 universities. Security experts suspect students or staff to be behind the large-scale attacks. Over 850 DDoS attacks have taken place in the United Kingdom, that have targeted 190 universities in the 2017-2018 academic year. Security researchers from JISC studied all of the reported attacks and have found clear patterns that tie all of the attacks. JISC is responsible for providing internet connectivity to UK research and education institutions. After a thorough analysis of all attacks during the past academic year, their study reveals that the attackers are most likely staff or students who are associated with the academic cycle. JISC came to this conclusion because the DDoS activity sees noticeable drops during holidays at universities. More importantly, most of the attacks were centered around the university working hours of 9 am to 4 pm local time. Image Courtesy of JISC Head of JISC’s security operations center John Chapman revealed “We can only speculate on the reasons why students or staff attack their college or university – for the ‘fun’ of disruption and kudos among peers of launching an attack that stops internet access and causes chaos, or because they bear a grudge for a poor grade or failure to secure a pay rise”. One of the DDoS attacks lasted four days and was sourced to a university’s hall of residence. A larger dip in attacks was noticed this summer compared to the summer of 2017. With an international law enforcement operation going into effect against the number one DDoS-for-hire online market. The website being taken down led to a massive drop in the number of DDoS attacks globally, which indicates that the attacks on the UK universities were not done by professional hackers working with a personal agenda, but hired professionals. The motive behind these DDoS attacks is unknown, and it may serve as a cover for more sinister cybercriminal activity. Universities often store valuable intellectual property which makes them prime targets for many hackers. Source: https://www.technadu.com/190-uk-universities-targeted-hundreds-ddos-attacks/42816/

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190 UK Universities Targeted with Hundreds of DDoS Attacks

Beware of Torii! Security experts discover the ‘most sophisticated botnet ever seen’ – and say it is targeting smart home gadgets

Researchers from Avast have identified a worrying botnet affecting IoT devices Called ‘Torii,’ the virus infects devices at a server level that have weak encryption Virus can fetch and execute different commands, making it ‘very sophisticated’ Keep an eye on your smart home devices. Security experts have identified what they consider the ‘most sophisticated botnet they’ve ever seen’ and it’s believed to be targeting internet of things gadgets. Antivirus firm Avast said in a new report they’ve been closely watching a new malware strain, called ‘Torii,’ which uses ‘advanced techniques’ to infect devices. ‘…This one tries to be more stealthy and persistent once the device is compromised, an it does not (yet) do the usual stuff a botnet does like [Distributed Denial of Service attacks], attacking all the devices connected to the internet, or, of course, mining cryptocurrencies,’ Avast researchers wrote in a blog post. The malware goes after devices that have weak encryption, using the Telnet remote access protocol. Telnet is a remote access tool that’s primarily used to log into remote servers, but it’s largely been replaced by tools that are more secure. Once it has identified a poorly secured system, Torii will attempt to steal your personal information. It’s entirely possible that vulnerable IoT device owners have no idea their device has been compromised. ‘As we’ve been digging into this strain, we’ve found indications that this operation has been running since December 2017, maybe even longer,’ the researchers wrote. While Torii hasn’t attempted cryptojacking or carried out DDoS attacks, researchers say the malware is capable of fetching and executing commands of different kinds on the infected device, making it very sophisticated. What’s more, many smart home gadgets are connected to one another, and it’s unclear yet if the malware is capable of spreading to other devices. ‘Even though our investigation is continuing, it is clear that Torii is an example of the evolution of IoT malware, and that its sophistication is a level above anything we have seen before,’ the Avast researchers explained. Once Torii infects a device, it floods it with information and communicates with the master server, allowing the author of the malware to execute any code or deliver any payload to the infected device, according to researchers. ‘This suggests that Torii could become a modular platform for future use,’ the researchers continued. ‘Also, because the payload itself is not scanning for other potential targets, it is quite stealthy on the network layer. Stay tuned for the follow ups.’ WHAT IS A DDOS ATTACK? DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. These attacks attempt to crash a website or online service by bombarding them with a torrent of superfluous requests at exactly the same time. The surge of simple requests overload the servers, causing them to become overwhelmed and shut down. In order to leverage the number of requests necessary to crash a popular website or online service, hackers will often resort to botnets – networks of computers brought under their control with malware. Malware is distributed by tricking users into inadvertently downloading software, typically by tricking users into following a link in an email or agreeing to download a corrupted file. Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6216451/Security-experts-discover-sophisticated-botnet-seen.html

Don’t Look Away, Peekaboo Vulnerability May Allow Hackers to Play the Long Game

The newly named Peekaboo vulnerability is a zero-day flaw in China-based Nuuo’s video recorder technology.The flaw in NVRMini2, a network-attached storage device, has remained unfixed in the three months since the vendor was alerted. This vulnerability put internet-connected CCTV cameras at risk, a grave concern for organizations using the service to view and manage their connected CCTV cameras. NUUO both uses the technology in its own products and licenses it to third-party surveillance system makers and systems integration partners. Exposure from Peekaboo Vulnerability Tenable Research, which discovered the Peekaboo flaw, said it could potentially impact more than 100 CCTV brands and approximately 2,500 different camera models. Organizations in wide range of industries, including retail, transportation, banking, and government, install these cameras to improve security. NUUO was informed of the vulnerability on June 5, 2018. Patches are now available on their website. This is not the first time an IoT vulnerability has brought unexpected risk to organizations. The Mirai botnet attacks showed how hackers can use CCTVs, webcams, and other Internet-connected devices to launch massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to cause mass disruption. Many of us saw the impact of Mirai in October 2016, when they used the botnets to take down Dyn. Apparently the latest IoT-related risk comes from the Peekaboo vulnerability, opening organizations to risk from an unexpected vector. Multiple Vulnerabilities Add Risk The Tenable team found two vulnerabilities; the first was an unauthenticated stack buffer overflow. A buffer overflow attack is when a hacker sends more data than a computer is designed to receive, leading the computer to inadvertently store the leftover data as commands the computer will later run. Buffer overflow is a common code level issue that has been prevalent for years, which can be identified through static analysis. The second vulnerability was a backdoor in leftover debug code, so together the flaws allow hackers to explore the surveillance data and access login credentials, port usage, IP addresses, and other information on the camera equipment itself. These types of issue map directly to coding errors and the remediation exposure disciplines of software exposure. Let’s take a look, however, at what a patient hacker can do with this particular security camera hack. Here is a hypothetical example of how a hacker might use the Peekaboo vulnerability: Turn off cameras or delete recordings by executing the buffer overflow Allow individuals to access to the building Install additional software within the building for later use Execute that software well after initial camera hack, resulting in significant exploits against the compromised system Confuse experts trying to determine the cause of exploit due to the multi-step attack Think Like a Hacker As usual, the original hack itself is not the end game. Deleting data or controlling security cameras allows attackers to circumvent security systems to rob residences or businesses. However, my major concern is the potential for infrastructure terrorism on electrical grids, nuclear plants, or water supplies. Hackers play the long game, and we in the security field need to as well. The software industry must react quickly to vulnerabilities such as Peekaboo, either to provide a patch in our own software, or to apply it as soon as it’s available. Software runs most of the objects we know and use every day. It’s our responsibility to make it as safe and secure as possible. Source:https://securityboulevard.com/2018/09/dont-look-away-peekaboo-vulnerability-may-allow-hackers-to-play-the-long-game/

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Don’t Look Away, Peekaboo Vulnerability May Allow Hackers to Play the Long Game

DDoS Attack on Infinite Campus Limits Parent Access

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Infinite Campus, an educational software provider that houses the parent portal for Oklahoma City Public Schools, created access issues for those parents trying to connect to the district’s student information system. While this was not the first attack on Infinite Campus, district spokeswoman Beth Harrison told NewsOK that the most recent attacks were greater than any it had previously experienced in both volume and duration. “The latest series of attacks began Monday, September 17, and included multiple customers and data centers. Homeland Security is now involved and Infinite Campus has hired additional security experts to assure all data is safe and to track down the attack perpetrators.” In an announcement to parents explaining the cause of the access issues, the Oklahoma City Public Schools wrote, “Please note that NO student data was stolen or breached. This attack just causes the service to be very slow or unresponsive. Many districts across the country are impacted and authorities are investigating. We’ll provide updates as soon as we have them. Thanks for your patience!” The attack comes at the beginning of a new school year, and while the motive is unclear at this point, attackers often have myriad objectives when orchestrating these types of attacks. According to recent research from Corero Network Security, during the first half of 2018 DDoS attacks increased 40% from Q2 2017 to Q2 2018. “This highlights the increasing need for organizations that rely on high levels of online availability to ensure they include the latest always-on, real-time, automatic DDoS protection in their defenses,” said Sean Newman, director product management, Corero Network Security. “The key point is that such a critical service is able to be taken down by what is now a relatively cheap-and-simple-to-launch attack vector. It’s good to see that a strong emphasis is being placed on the privacy of any data being held, but that doesn’t help with the disruption and inconvenience caused when such a vital service is down for an extended period of time.” Many online services are delivered by third parties such as Infinite Campus, and when these service providers are targeted with DDoS or other attacks, their customers feel the impact. “The attack on Oklahoma City’s student information system is just another example of just how many services, which are increasingly provided online for reasons of cost, efficiency and scalability, are delivered without adequate resiliency to distributed denial-of-service attacks,” Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ddos-attacks-infinite-campus/

Verizon Digital Media Services adds managed security services to its Cloud Security Solution

Verizon Digital Media Services announced it has added a managed cloud security offering as part of its global Cloud Security Solution. The managed cloud security component provides access to security professionals who monitor and take corrective action against the security threats, no matter the time of day. The addition of this offering complements features previously available within Verizon Digital Media Services’ Cloud Security Solution, including a dual web application firewall (WAF), distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, … More ? The post Verizon Digital Media Services adds managed security services to its Cloud Security Solution appeared first on Help Net Security .

California Dem hit with DDoS attacks during failed primary bid: report

The campaign website of a Democratic congressional candidate in California was taken down by cyberattacks several times during the primary election season, according to cybersecurity experts. Rolling Stone reported on Thursday that cybersecurity experts who reviewed forensic server data and emails concluded that the website for Bryan Caforio, who finished third in the June primary, was hit with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks while he was campaigning. The attacks, which amount to artificially heavy website traffic that forces hosting companies to shut down or slow website services, were not advanced enough to access any data on the campaign site, but they succeeded in blocking access to bryancaforio.com four times before the primary, including during a crucial debate and in the week before the election. Caforio’s campaign didn’t blame his loss on the attacks, but noted that he failed to advance to a runoff against Rep. Steve Knight (R-Calif.) by coming up 1,497 votes short in his loss against fellow Democrat Katie Hill. Caforio’s campaign tried several tactics to deter malicious actors, including upgrading the website’s hosting service and adding specific DDoS protections, which in the end failed to deter the attacks. “As I saw firsthand, dealing with cyberattacks is the new normal when running for office, forcing candidates to spend time fending off those attacks when they should be out talking to voters,” Caforio told the magazine. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told Rolling Stone that it offered to help Caforio’s campaign investigate the four attacks but received no response. A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill. An aide to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm for House Democrats, told Rolling Stone that it takes attacks such as the ones Caforio faced “very seriously.” “While we don’t have control over the operations of individual campaigns, we continue to work with and encourage candidates and their staffs to utilize the resources we have offered and adopt best security practices,” the aide said. Source: https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/407608-california-democrat-hit-with-ddos-attacks-during-failed-primary-bid

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California Dem hit with DDoS attacks during failed primary bid: report

IoT malware grew significantly during the first half of 2018

New research from Kaspersky Lab reveals how cybercriminals are targeting IoT devices. During the first half of 2018, malware designed specifically for Internet of Things (IoT) devices grew three-fold with over 120,000 modifications of malware according to new research from Kaspersky Lab. The security firm’s IoT report revealed that the growth of malware families for smart devices is snowballing and part of a dangerous trend that could leave consumer devices vulnerable to illegal activity including cryptocurrency mining, DDoS attacks or being used in large scale attacks by becoming part of a botnet. Kaspersky Lab is well aware of these threats and the company has set up its own decoy devices called honeypots to lure cybercriminals and analyse their activities online. According to the statistics, the most popular method of spreading IoT malware is still brute forcing passwords where hackers repetitively try various password combinations before eventually gaining access to a device. Brute forcing was used in 93 per cent of attacks while well-known exploits were used in the remaining cases. Kaspersky Lab’s honeypots were attacked most often by routers with 60 per cent of attacks coming from them. The remaining attacks were carried out by a variety of devices including DVRs and printers. Surprisingly, 33 attacks were carried out by connected washing machines. Why target IoT devices Cybercriminals may have different reasons for exploiting IoT devices but the most popular reason was to create botnets which would be used to facilitate DDoS attacks. Some of the malware modifications discovered by Kaspersky Lab were even tailored to disable competing malware. Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab, David Emm provided further insight on the firm’s report, saying: “For those people who think that IoT devices don’t seem powerful enough to attract the attention of cybercriminals, and that won’t become targets for malicious activities, this research should serve as a wake-up call. Some smart gadget manufacturers are still not paying enough attention to the security of their products, and it’s vital that this changes – and that security is implemented at the design stage, rather than considered as an afterthought. “At this point, even if vendors improve the security of devices currently on the market, it will be a while before old, vulnerable devices have been phased out of our homes. In addition, IoT malware families are rapidly being customised and developed, and while previously exploited breaches have not been fixed, criminals are constantly discovering new ones. IoT products have therefore become an easy target for cybercriminals, who can turn simple machines into powerful devices for illegal activity, such as spying, stealing, blackmailing and conducting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.” Source: https://www.techradar.com/news/iot-malware-grew-significantly-during-the-first-half-of-2018