Tag Archives: ddos-defense

CERT issues cyber attack warning for India

Malware Reaper is acquiring internet-connected devices for coordinated attack, say State Cyber Police Mumbai: The Maharashtra Cyber Department is in the process of issuing a State-wide advisory outlining steps to prevent potential targets from falling prey after the New Delhi-based Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said it has received intelligence inputs about a massive cyber attack on several countries, including India. The CERT is the country’s central cyber security agency. Maharashtra Cyber Police officers confirmed to The Hindu that the attack would be similar to the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack that hit the State last year. In July 2016, The Hindu had reported how small and medium Internet Service Providers were under attack from unknown parties, who were pinging their servers incessantly to the point where the servers crashed, denying service to their clients and causing loss of revenue. According to sources, the imminent DDOS attack, which is believed to be on a much larger scale, is being readied using malware known by two names, Reaper and IoTroop, and is currently taking over thousands of machines connected to the internet to be used for a synchronised attack on the target servers. Maharashtra IG (Cyber) Brijesh Singh said, “Mirai had acquired five lakh devices. The Reaper malware has already affected two million devices worldwide, and is acquiring 10,000 devices per day. It seems to be targeting CCTV camera systems and Digital Video Recorders connected to the internet.” Bot attack A Cyber Police officer said, “It’s difficult to say at this point exactly who the targets are, but we have enough information to indicate that machines connected to the internet, including cell phones, laptops, CCTV cameras and other devices, are susceptible. A large number of such machines are being hacked and turned into bots as we speak. Our cyber intelligence network indicates a lot of abnormal behaviour on the internet, consistent with hacking of devices.” A bot, or robot, is an automated programme. In this kind of cyber attack, hackers use malware to infect devices to turn them into bots that do their bidding. Sources said the perpetrators of Reaper are currently creating a huge network of bots, called a botnet in cyberspeak. In October 2016, a malware known as Mirai had executed multiple DDOs attacks on servers of Dyn, a leading domain name service provider, affecting several popular websites including Twitter, Netflix and Reddit. Cyber Police officers said Reaper is amassing bots on a much larger scale than Mirai. “Once the botnet is ready as per the perpetrators’ requirements, they simply have to command the bots to ping servers of the target all at once, resulting in a server crash. Depending on the size of the company or industry targeted, it will result in massive losses of revenue.” A possible way to execute the attack would be that the bots are pre-programmed to strike on a particular day. This possibility is also being probed, officers said. Superintendent of Police Balsing Rajput, Maharashtra Cyber Police, confirmed that intelligence inputs about Reaper have been received. “We are working on the information and will soon be coming out with an advisory regarding the same.” Source: Malware Reaper is acquiring internet-connected devices for coordinated attack, say State Cyber Police Mumbai: The Maharashtra Cyber Department is in the process of issuing a State-wide advisory outlining steps to prevent potential targets from falling prey after the New Delhi-based Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said it has received intelligence inputs about a massive cyber attack on several countries, including India. The CERT is the country’s central cyber security agency. Maharashtra Cyber Police officers confirmed to The Hindu that the attack would be similar to the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack that hit the State last year. In July 2016, The Hindu had reported how small and medium Internet Service Providers were under attack from unknown parties, who were pinging their servers incessantly to the point where the servers crashed, denying service to their clients and causing loss of revenue. According to sources, the imminent DDOS attack, which is believed to be on a much larger scale, is being readied using malware known by two names, Reaper and IoTroop, and is currently taking over thousands of machines connected to the internet to be used for a synchronised attack on the target servers. Maharashtra IG (Cyber) Brijesh Singh said, “Mirai had acquired five lakh devices. The Reaper malware has already affected two million devices worldwide, and is acquiring 10,000 devices per day. It seems to be targeting CCTV camera systems and Digital Video Recorders connected to the internet.” Bot attack A Cyber Police officer said, “It’s difficult to say at this point exactly who the targets are, but we have enough information to indicate that machines connected to the internet, including cell phones, laptops, CCTV cameras and other devices, are susceptible. A large number of such machines are being hacked and turned into bots as we speak. Our cyber intelligence network indicates a lot of abnormal behaviour on the internet, consistent with hacking of devices.” A bot, or robot, is an automated programme. In this kind of cyber attack, hackers use malware to infect devices to turn them into bots that do their bidding. Sources said the perpetrators of Reaper are currently creating a huge network of bots, called a botnet in cyberspeak. In October 2016, a malware known as Mirai had executed multiple DDOs attacks on servers of Dyn, a leading domain name service provider, affecting several popular websites including Twitter, Netflix and Reddit. Cyber Police officers said Reaper is amassing bots on a much larger scale than Mirai. “Once the botnet is ready as per the perpetrators’ requirements, they simply have to command the bots to ping servers of the target all at once, resulting in a server crash. Depending on the size of the company or industry targeted, it will result in massive losses of revenue.” A possible way to execute the attack would be that the bots are pre-programmed to strike on a particular day. This possibility is also being probed, officers said. Superintendent of Police Balsing Rajput, Maharashtra Cyber Police, confirmed that intelligence inputs about Reaper have been received. “We are working on the information and will soon be coming out with an advisory regarding the same.” Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/cert-issues-cyber-attack-warning-for-india/article19920037.ece

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CERT issues cyber attack warning for India

Czech Parliamentary Election Websites Hit by Cyberattacks

The Czech statistical office has reported DDoS (Distrubuted Denial of Service) attacks on websites related to the recent parliamentary elections during the vote count. A number of websites of the Czech statistical office (CZSO) have been subject to cyberattacks during the counting of votes in the Czech parliament’s lower house election, Petra Bacova, the CZSO spokeswoman, told Sputnik Sunday. “The websites related to the parliamentary elections — volby.cz and volbyhned.cz — have temporary failed to function due to DDoS attacks [Distributed Denial of Service] during the vote count on Saturday. These attacks have not affected the overall progress of the election,” Bacova said. The police along with the Czech National Cyber and Information Security Agency have already launched an investigation into the attacks. “Thanks to the rapid response, the attacks on the both aforementioned servers have been neutralized, while the work of the websites has been resumed,” Bacova said. The Czech Republic held an election to the lower house of the parliament on Friday-Saturday. The centrist ANO political party won the election, receiving 29.64 percent of votes. Czech President Milos Zeman stated that he was ready to appoint Andrej Babis, ANO’s leader, as Czech prime minister. Source: https://sputniknews.com/europe/201710231058456317-czech-election-hit-cyberattack/

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Czech Parliamentary Election Websites Hit by Cyberattacks

New Mirai-Like Malware Targets IoT Devices

Security researchers are warning about malware that’s been enslaving routers, webcams and DVRs across the world to create a giant botnet capable of disrupting the internet. The malware, called Reaper or IoTroop, isn’t the first to target poorly secured devices. But it’s doing so at an alarmingly fast rate, according to security firm Check Point, which noticed the malicious code last month. The malware has infected “hundreds of thousands” of devices, said Maya Horowitz, threat intelligence group manager at Check Point. Reaper brings up memories of malware known as Mirai, which formed its own giant botnet in 2016 and infected over 500,000 IoT devices, according to some estimates. It then began launching a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that disrupted internet access across the US. Reaper could be used to launch a similar attack, Check Point researchers said. The good news is the infected bots haven’t launched any DDoS campaigns. Instead, they’re still focused on enslaving new devices. Researchers at security firm Qihoo 360 also noticed the Reaper malware, and found evidence it was trying to infect at least 2 million vulnerable devices. Reaper even borrows some source code from Mirai, though it spreads itself differently, Qihoo said. Unlike Mirai, which relies on cracking the default password to gain access to the device, Reaper has been found targeting around a dozen different vulnerabilities found in products from D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, and others. All these vulnerabilities are publicly known, and at least some of the vendors have released security patches to fix them. But that hasn’t stopped the mysterious developer behind Reaper from exploiting the vulnerabilities. In many cases, IoT devices will remain unpatched because the security fixes aren’t easy to install. Who may have created the malware and what their motives are still isn’t known, but all the tools needed to make it are actually available online, Horowitz said. For instance, the source code to the Mirai malware was dumped on a hacking forum last year. In addition, data about the vulnerabilities Reaper targets can be found in security research posted online. “It’s so easy to be a threat actor when all these public exploits and malware can be just posted on GitHub,” she said. “It’s really easy to just rip the code, and combine, to create your own strong cyber weapon.” Unfortunately, little might be done to stop the Reaper malware. Security experts have all been warning that poorly secured IoT devices need to be patched, but clearly many haven’t. “This is another wakeup call” for manufacturers, Horowitz said. Source: https://www.pcmag.com/news/356926/new-mirai-like-malware-targets-iot-devices

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New Mirai-Like Malware Targets IoT Devices

What is cyber terrorism?

How is cyber terrorism defined and how likely is an attack? Everyone is familiar with what “terrorism” means, but when we stick the word “cyber” in front of it, things get a bit more nebulous. Whereas the effects of real-world terrorism are both obvious and destructive, those of cyber terrorism are often hidden to those who aren’t directly affected. Also, those effects are more likely to be disruptive than destructive, although this isn’t always the case. Cyber terrorism incidents One of the earliest examples of cyber terrorism is a 1996 attack on an ISP in Massachusetts. Cited by Edward Maggio of the New York Institute of Technology and the authors of Internet: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 2 , a hacker allegedly associated with the white supremacist movement in the US broke into his Massachusetts-based ISP after it prevented him from sending out a worldwide racist message under its name. The individual deleted some records and temporarily disabled the ISP’s services, leaving the threat “you have yet to see true electronic terrorism. This is a promise” While this is a clear example of a cyber-terrorist incident carried out by a malicious, politically motivated individual that caused both disruption and damage, other frequently listed examples fit less clearly into the category of “terrorism”. For example, while attacks that have taken out emergency services call centres or air-traffic control could be considered cyber terrorism, the motivation of the individuals is often unclear. If a person caused real-life disruption to these systems, but had no particular motivation other than mischief, would they be classed as a terrorist? Perhaps not. Similarly, cyber protests such as those that occurred in 1999 during the Kosovo against NATO’s bombing campaign in the country or website defacements and DDoS attacks are arguably online versions of traditional protests, rather than terrorism. Additionally, in the case of civil war, if one side commits a cyber attack against the other then it can be said to be more of an act of war – or cyber war – than one of cyber terror. Again, where there is a cold war between nations, associated cyber attacks could be thought of as sub-conflict level skirmishes. Indeed, the FBI defines cyber terrorism as “[any] premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems or computer programs, and data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents”. Under this definition, very few of the tens-of-thousands of cyber attacks carried out every year would count as cyber terrorism. The future of cyber terrorism As the number of connected devices increases, the likelihood of a more destructive cyber terrorist incident – something on a par with an attack in the physical world – becomes increasingly possible. The security industry is full of stories and proofs of concept about hacking medical devices, with two particularly famous demonstrations being given by New Zealander Barnaby Jack. This opens up the possibility for targeted assassinations or mass-scale killings carried out remotely and potentially across borders. Similarly, there are concerns self-driving vehicles could be turned into remote-controlled missiles and used in an attack, although the counter argument is that such vehicles will make the roads safer in the face of terrorists driving conventional vehicles into crowds. Another possible style of cyber terrorism is disruption of infrastructure in a way that could potentially endanger life. For example, in 2016 an unknown actor caused a disruption that saw two apartment buildings in Finland lost hot water and heating for a week in the dead of winter. In locations as cold as Finland, actions like this could cause illness and death if widespread and sustained. Nevertheless, the likelihood is most serious cyber attacks will be acts of cyber warfare, rather than cyber terrorism, as nation states have larger and more sophisticated resources at hand. Source: http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/29726/what-is-cyber-terrorism

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What is cyber terrorism?

More than half of businesses fell victim to DDoS attacks in the past year, survey shows

CDNeworks research shows 54% of businesses were hit by distributed denial of service attacks in the last year, and many feel they are underinvesting in cyber defences. More than half of businesses (54%) have been victims of successful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks over the past 12 months, according to research from cloud security firm CDNetworks. The company surveyed 305 organisations in the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland about the technologies that protect them from cyber attacks. Some 83% of the respondents felt either confident or very confident about their cyber defences, but 44% felt they were currently underinvesting in anti-DDoS technologies. Chris Townsley, Emea director for CDNetworks, told Computer Weekly that this mix of opinions was strange. “Not only is there widespread complacency – the overwhelming confidence in DDoS protection, undermined by the high proportion of businesses suffering successful attacks – but there is also a significant number of businesses that are worried that they have not invested enough,” he said. “It is odd to see so much confidence alongside such doubt about whether enough is being done.” The survey also found that 64% of organisations said they would be investing more in such technology over the next year, and in terms of expectation of an attack, 79% rated the likelihood of an attack as between “likely” and “almost certain”. This attitude is reflected in the frequency of incidents, with 86% saying they had suffered a DDoS attack in the previous 12 months. The size of attacks is also growing. In the first half of 2015, the largest DDoS attack recorded was 21Gbps, but during the equivalent period in 2016, it was 58.8Gbps. Also, 31% of attacks in the first half of 2016 were 50Gbps or more, but there were no attacks of that size in the first half of 2015. Townsley added: “As the size of attacks increases, businesses need to look more at protection from the edge and not at the origin or datacentre. “As the size of traffic increases, so does the likelihood that the bandwidth of the origin server will be saturated, no matter what protection is in place to keep it up and functioning. “Also, with the frequency of attacks increasing, businesses should move to a mindset of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ an attack will occur.” When asked whether the number of successful attacks was due to businesses buying the wrong security products, Townsley said: “It could be that the type of protection was not suitable, or was suitable for some types of attack but not all. As the types of attack are changing all the time, products can become obsolete.” Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450428288/More-than-half-of-businesses-fell-victim-to-DDoS-attacks-in-the-past-year-survey-shows

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More than half of businesses fell victim to DDoS attacks in the past year, survey shows

Cybersecurity: into the data breach

Cybersecurity has become a significant issue as attacks are increasing. In the new payments ecosystem, where third-party developers can directly interact with banks’ customers, data privacy and security become paramount, according to the World Payments Report 2017 by Capgemini and BNP Paribas . A significant issue to address as the new payments ecosystem evolves is that of cybersecurity. During the past few years, cyberattacks and crimes have increased across the globe, with corporate and financial institution entities, large and small, targeted. The price of increasing collaboration among industry stakeholders in the new payments ecosystem could be an increase in cyber security vulnerabilities. To alleviate this risk, corporates are increasingly turning to their banks for advice on how to strengthen their infrastructures against cyber attacks. To ensure the highest levels of cybersecurity and the security of infrastructures in the new payments ecosystem, each stakeholder must assess security across all the data sources and points of collaboration. The need for robust cyber security solutions to cater to all forms of cyberthreats has never been greater for corporate treasurers as new technologies proliferate and collaboration increases. Of prime importance for corporates in developing defence mechanisms is awareness of potential cyber security risks, regular updating of security profiles and continuous training of employees. This is because attacks perpetrated by cybercriminals are unpredictable in both timing and nature. The vulnerabilities stakeholders face include cyber security, data privacy, data breaches, and payments fraud. The utmost vigilance is required to protect organisations against cyber attacks and all stakeholders, including regulators, must be more proactive regarding cybersecurity, with ownership of the issue taken to prevent attacks. In the new payments ecosystem, third-party developers can directly interact with a partner banks’ customers, raising questions about data privacy and security. In an increasingly networked ecosystem, identifying the source of attack will be a challenge. Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report found that security incidents and data breaches affect both large and small financial organisations almost equally. However, the security of larger banks is difficult to compromise as they invest more in cyber security solutions. Smaller banks, which do not have the same access to resources, are more prone to cyberattacks. A fraud survey by the Association for Financial Professionals and JP Morgan found that the highest levels of fraud in 2016 were perpetrated via cheques. However, there was a surge in wire transfer fraud, from 27 per cent in 2014 to 46 per cent in 2016. An increasing number of cyber security breaches are causing significant losses for banks and corporates across the world. Among recent incidents, in February 2016, a cyberheist at Bangladesh Central Bank resulted in a loss of $81 million and prevented another $850 million worth of transactions from being processed on the Swift network. Similarly, in May 2016 cybercriminals hacked the Swift system and stole $9 million from Ecuadorian bank Banco del Austro. In May 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack affected more than 150 countries and 200,000 computers, as attackers demanded each of those affected to pay up to $300 worth of bitcoins to unlock their systems. In a survey for World Payments Report , bank executives ranked distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and customer payments fraud as the main security challenges they face. Also of concern were the high levels of card fraud, which place a significant cost burden on banks. The increasing adoption of digital offerings in transaction banking is also giving rise to higher levels of payments fraud, making cyber security a top priority for banks and corporates. Customer payments fraud is the top ranked concern for financial technology companies and other survey respondents. This group is much less likely to view DDoS attacks as a threat; data breaches due to hacking attacks was of more concern, as was internal fraud. While banks are investing significantly in cybersecurity solutions, there are still many risks at the corporate level that they cannot manage. Corporates must, therefore, step up their own efforts to manage cybersecurity risk and not leave it all to the banks. They should upgrade their internal systems, train their staff, and review their partners’ systems. The idea of a cyberattacker as a lone figure hacking into systems is now obsolete. Cyberattacks are perpetrated by entities that are set up like companies, with project managers, key performance indicators and operations. Attacks to compromise corporates and banks are designed to be multi-staged, with two main objectives: commercial gain and industry espionage. In general, the funds received via attacks go into the coffers of the organisation, while the intelligence gained during an attack will be used by perpetrators to gain a business advantage. Attacks can happen at any time, and over time, therefore all corporates should be vigilant and on constant guard against attacks. So serious are the growing cyberattack and data breach problems that regulators across the globe should move from their present reactive approach to a more proactive one. Stringent regulations and fines to strengthen cybersecurity laws are required from regulators. Many regulations related to this are, however, still in the inception stage. Europe has relatively the most mature cybersecurity and data privacy laws, with recent initiatives including the Electronic Identification and Trusted Service which was launched in 2016. Effective cybersecurity requires organisations to efficiently and quickly identify, mitigate and manage cyber risks and incidents. All stakeholders are taking measures to strengthen the security of transactions against potential cyber threats. Banks and other stakeholders have three options available to them: collaborating with financial technology companies, making investments in advanced technologies and monitoring tools, and strengthening internal governance to ensure seamless compliance. Collaboration with fintechs This is occurring in several areas including secure authentication and authorisation, account onboarding, identity verification and anti-money laundering. Examples include India’s Yes Bank and FortyTwoLabs’ development of multi-factor authentication tool PI-Control, which enables users to apply for internet banking access, pay bills, transfer funds, seek loans, make remittances and undertake other card transactions. Rabobank in the Netherlands is working with Signicat to provide digital identity solutions that can be easily integrated using API technology. As banks increasingly collaborate with fintechs and regtechs, due diligence, adherence to industry standards and participating in the development of new industry standards has become critical. Investment in advanced technologies and monitoring tools Blockchain technology is still in a nascent stage, with its potential as an enabler of digital identity and payment transaction security still being tested. Banks can leverage the technology to differentiate themselves in the provision of digital identity, authentication and know your customer services. Banks are investing in projects that combine advanced cryptography that supports private or permitted use of blockchain technology with transaction security elements that provider greater transaction visibility. To ensure the highest levels of cybersecurity and transaction security, all the ecosystem participants must assess security from multiple sources in the network. Common security standards and protocols when developing and investing in new technologies and monitoring tools will be increasingly important as collaboration increases. With a common network governing the interfaces between banks and third-party providers, various groups are developing network-based security standards to ensure a secure environment is built around the dynamic payments ecosystem. The ability to respond to cyber threats or attacks in real-time is hampered by legacy security systems. Traditional security monitoring typically identified and reacted to cyber threats in isolation. A modern approach identifies specific unusual patterns or behaviour and alerts operational teams to anomalous activity. Advanced machine learning algorithms are the logical next step as response mechanisms in the event of a threat. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are being piloted globally, yet legal issues regarding accountability for the actions of such systems persist. Contextualisation of threats (linking the threat to the business and not just to technology) is needed to identify the source and understand the objective behind any attack. Another useful approach is risk-based authentication (RBA) to detect the risk profile of transaction banks and retailers. Using RBA and analytics processes, banks can create a threat matrix of fraud profiles to triangulate the threat instances to their origin and be able to proactively block fraudulent traffic. Behavioural analytics, AI, machine learning and threat matrix can help to continuously monitor the ecosystem network and provide threat intelligence. Banks can undertake various activities such as continuously checking all systems for possible threats, observing markets, scenario simulation, examination of previous attacks, monitoring activities and applications, and establishing a payments control centre to permanently monitor payments and identify exceptional situations. Robust internal governance A robust governance model and standards are imperative for seamless functioning of the new payments ecosystem. Banks and treasurers need to interact with central authorities and regulators to share feedback, which in turn will help to improve compliance. Banks and treasurers are increasingly collaborating with regtechs to ensure compliance. Industry stakeholders must establish common data, technical, legal, functional, and security standards for robust governance. Firms will be well served if they can ensure that security systems have multiple layers to withstand ‘flood’ attacks. To ensure a foolproof system, firms should identify the data needs of all stakeholders before finalising the controls to put in place. With the onset of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in the EU, the focus on compliance with data privacy and security has increased. Firms must install a dedicated team to continuously review and update security policies. Additionally, stakeholders should work with the local regulatory authorities to understand the complexity of different regional legal requirements and expectations for each country. Firms must ensure mandatory data privacy and security training is conducted at regular intervals. Educating employees on potential threats and ensuring they keep their systems updated would have prevented, or greatly reduced the impact of, events such as the WannaCry ransomware attack. Source: http://www.bankingtech.com/1019032/cybersecurity-into-the-data-breach/

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Cybersecurity: into the data breach

Despite increased spend, why doesn’t DDoS mitigation always work?

Newly published research suggests that while there has been a marked increase in spending to mitigate against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, organisations are still falling victim. Newly published research suggests that while there has been a marked increase in spending to mitigate against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, organisations are still falling victim. The ‘DDoS 2017 Report: Dangerous Overconfidence’, published today by CDNetworks, reveals that spending on DDoS mitigation in the UK has increased over the last year. Indeed, it says that the average annual spend is now £24,200 and 20 percent of businesses are investing more than £40,000 per year. While 83 percent of businesses were confident of their resilience against the business continuity threat, despite the greater investment more than half (54 percent) still ended up victims of a successful DDoS attack during the last 12 months that took their website, network or online app down. According to Kaspersky Lab’s Global IT Security Risks Survey 2017, some 33 percent of organisations have experienced an attack this year, twice the number in 2016. While 20 percent were small businesses, 41 percent were enterprises. Then there’s the Neustar Global DDoS Attacks and Cyber Security Insights report which revealed 92 percent of those attacked reported theft of intellectual property, customer data or financial assets; and 36 percent saw malware activation happening during the DDoS attack. Research by the Imperva Incapsula security team suggests that attack patterns are changing, with high packet rate attacks becoming the norm. An A10 Networks report confirms this to be the case, suggesting that attacks greater than 50Gbps have quadrupled over the past two years and companies experiencing between 6-25 attacks per year also quadrupling in that timeframe. Given the growing threat, and you only have to look at some of the recent victims such as The National Lottery and Blizzard Entertainment for example, to realise that DDoS mitigation isn’t always working. SC Media UK put the ‘why does DDoS mitigation fail’ question to several vendors providing this type of service. But first, we spoke to Alex Nam, managing director of CDNetworks (US & EMEA) who told us there are various reasons including that some forms of DDoS mitigation don’t protect against all forms of attack. “A layer 7 DDoS attack, which impacts applications and the end-user,” Nam explained, “can only be protected against using web application firewall technology for example.” So not understanding the different types of attack, or the types of technology that can be protected, is a reason why DDoS mitigation often fails according to Nam. Rich Groves, the A10 director of research and development, thinks that the question would be better phrased as ‘what causes DDoS solutions to fail in certain instances?’ as he insists “otherwise it implies DDoS solutions are failing across the board, which isn’t the case.” Kirill Kasavchenko, principal security technologist (EMEA) at Arbor Network, also thinks that there is an important distinction to be made between whether DDoS mitigation fails or the approach to it does. “As the headlines became more dramatic, more vendors have rushed to claim they have a solution for the DDoS problem,” Kasavchenko explains, “this has caused much confusion in the market.” So, for example, elements of a layered security strategy such as IPS devices and firewalls address network integrity and confidentiality but not availability. They are stateful, inline, solutions that not only “are vulnerable to DDoS attacks” but “often become the targets themselves.” Indeed, Arbor’s annual security report shows 40 percent of respondents seeing firewalls fail as a direct result of a DDoS attack. Meanwhile, Ben Herzberg, security research group manager at Imperva, told SC Media that attackers are “changing tactics rapidly specifically to defeat anti-DDoS solutions, such as hit-and-run and pulse wave attacks” which should come as no great surprise to anyone. James Willett, SVP of products at Neustar, explained that attackers “routinely scout and reconnoitre their targets launching throttled attacks to identify defence response, defence tactics, and defence capacity.” Once known, the proper types and sizes of attacks can be readily crafted to overwhelm unsuspecting organisations that lack effective cloud-based mitigation depth. So what should enterprises be doing to ensure that spending on DDoS mitigation is invested wisely? “If they haven’t already, they should consider a cloud-based DDoS mitigation service that automatically routes traffic through the service and only delivers clean traffic,” Ben Herzberg insists, adding “these services are supported by dedicated security staff that track attack patterns on a daily basis and can quickly react to changing attack patterns.” James Willett suggests they need to understand that not all clouds are managed the same. “Organisations can ensure proper investments that reduce impact and minimise disruption risk,” he told SC, “by pressing security providers on their management of good and bad traffic.” Rich Groves agrees that the focus “should be on vendor performance and solution effectiveness rather than on any particular feature set.” The highest-performing DDoS detection and mitigation available to them at the best price range to identify attack traffic and eliminate it, in other words. But perhaps Kasavchenko has the most straightforward advice of all: “The number one thing to do is work with a DDoS mitigation vendor. Vendors who treat DDoS as an add-on are likely to have very limited capabilities…” Source: https://www.scmagazineuk.com/despite-increased-spend-why-doesnt-ddos-mitigation-always-work/article/699729/

DDoS Attacks Cause Train Delays Across Sweden

DDoS attacks on two separate days have brought down several IT systems employed by Sweden’s transport agencies, causing train delays in some cases. The incidents took place early in the mornings of Wednesday and Thursday, October 11 and 12, this week. The first attack hit the Sweden Transport Administration (Trafikverket) on Wednesday. According to local press, the attack brought down the IT system that manages train orders. The agency had to stop or delay trains for the time of the attack. Trafikverket’s email system and website also went down, exacerbating the issue and preventing travelers from making reservations or getting updates on the delays. The agency used Facebook to manage the crisis and keep travelers informed. Road traffic maps were also affected, an issue that lingers even today, at the time of publishing, according to the agency’s website. Three Swedish transportation agencies targeted Speaking to local media, Trafikverket officials said the attack was cleverly aimed at TDC and DGC, the agency’s two service providers, but they were both aimed in such a way to affect the agency’s services. Trafikverket was able to restore service in a few hours, but the delays affected the entire day’s train operations. While initially, some might have thought this was a random incident, the next day, a similar DDoS attack hit the website of another government agency, the Sweden Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen), and public transport operator Västtrafik, who provides train, bus, ferry, and tram transport for parts of Western Sweden. Cyber-warfare implications In perspective, both incidents give the impression of someone probing various parts of Sweden’s transportation system to see how the country would react in the face of a cyber-attack and downtime. The DDoS attacks come a week after a report that Russia was testing cyber-weapons in the Baltic Sea region. In April 2016, Swedish officials blamed Russia for carrying out cyber-attacks on the country’s air traffic control infrastructure that grounded flights for a day in November 2015. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ddos-attacks-cause-train-delays-across-sweden/

33% of businesses hit by DDoS attack in 2017, double that of 2016

Distributed Denial of Service attacks are on the rise this year, and used to gain access to corporate data and harm a victim’s services, according to a Kaspersky Lab report. Cybercriminals are increasingly turning to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) this year, as 33% of organizations faced such an attack in 2017—up from just 17% in 2016, according to a new report from Kaspersky Lab. These cyber attacks are hitting businesses of all sizes: Of those affected, 20% were very small businesses, 33% were SMBs, and 41% were enterprises. Half of all businesses reported that the frequency and complexity of DDoS attacks targeting organizations like theirs is growing every year, highlighting the need for more awareness and protection against them, according to Kaspersky Lab. Of the companies that were hit in 2016, 82% said that they faced more than one DDoS attack. At this point in 2017, 76% of those hit said they had faced at least one attack. Cybercriminals use DDoS attacks to gain access to valuable corporate data, as well as to cripple a victim’s services, Kaspersky Lab noted. These attacks often result in serious disruption of business: Of the organizations hit by DDoS attacks this year, 26% reported a significant decrease in performance of services, and 14% reported a failure of transactions and processes in affected services. Additionally, some 53% of companies reported that DDoS attacks against them were used as a smokescreen to cover up other types of cybercrime. Half (50%) of these respondents said that the attack hid a malware infection, 49% said that it masked a data leak or theft, 42% said that it was used to cover up a network intrusion or hacking, and 26% said that it was hiding financial theft, Kaspersky Lab found. These results are part of Kaspersky Lab’s annual IT Security Risks survey, which included responses from more than 5,200 representatives of small, medium, and large businesses from 29 countries. “The threat of being hit by a DDoS attack – either standalone or as part of a greater attack arsenal – is showing no signs of diminishing,” said Kirill Ilganaev, head of Kaspersky DDoS protection at Kaspersky Lab, in a press release. “It’s not a case of if an organization will be hit, but when. With the problem growing and affecting every type and size of company, it is important for organizations to protect their IT infrastructure from being infiltrated and keep their data safe from attack.” Want to use this data in your next business presentation? Feel free to copy and paste these top takeaways into your next slideshow. 33% of organizations experienced a DDoS attack in 2017, compared to 17% in 2016. -Kaspersky Lab, 2017 Of organizations hit by DDoS attacks, 20% were very small businesses, 33% were SMBs, and 41% were enterprises. -Kaspersky Lab, 2017 53% of companies reported that DDoS attacks against them were used as a smokescreen to cover up other types of cybercrime, including malware, data leaks, and financial theft. -Kaspersky Lab, 2017 Source: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/33-of-businesses-hit-by-ddos-attack-in-2017-double-that-of-2016/

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33% of businesses hit by DDoS attack in 2017, double that of 2016

Euro commissioner calls for more collaboration on cyber security

European commissioner for security union has called for greater awareness of cyber security risks and increased collaboration in defending against them. Cyber threats are one of the top security concerns for nine out of 10 European Union citizens, according to Julian King, European commissioner for security union. “In an internet-connected age that is becoming ever more dependent on internet-connected technologies, we have become more vulnerable to those who are ready to exploit those technologies to try and do us harm for financial or political motives,” he told the CyberSec European Cybersecurity Forum in Krakow, Poland. King, who has previously served as the UK ambassador to France, said that while the digital age brings “huge opportunities”, it also brings risk. But he said these risks are becoming increasingly widely understood, particularly because of events such as the WannaCry and NotPetya attacks in May and June 2017, which affected hundreds of thousands of individuals and organisations in more than 150 countries and naturally serve as a “wake-up call”. According to the latest Europol report on internet organised crime, King said the barriers to committing cyber attacks are “woefully low”, with little chance of getting caught, mainly because of the availability of a “vast range” of cyber criminal tools and services on the dark net, with some attacks costing as little as $5. “For criminals, non-state and state actors, life has never been so easy,” he said, “with an arsenal that includes ransomware, phishing tools, Trojans, distributed denial of service [DDoS] attacks, botnets and identity theft services.” In 2016, said King, European citizens were the subject of two billion data breaches, and every month, one in five industrial computers was attacked. Since 2016, more than 4,000 ransomware attacks have taken place every day across the EU – a 300% increase on 2015, he said. Aviation systems face an average of 1,000 cyber attacks a month, and card-not-present fraud is currently worth about €1bn a year in the Eurozone alone. ‘Tackle this scourge’ “If we were talking about a public health issue, then we would be using the word ‘pandemic’ to describe the scale of the challenge,” said King, “so I think it is time to shift our efforts to tackle this scourge, which is precisely what the European Commission, with the other institutions and the member states, wants to do. “We want to strengthen resilience, build effective deterrents and create durable cyber defence.” King pointed out that this work has been going on for some time, and that the European Union has had a cyber security strategy since 2013. “The Network and Information System [NIS] directive, agreed in 2016, built on that and will require [operators of] essential systems to assess risk, prepare a strategy, put in place protections, develop capabilities and competence, educate staff and the public, and share information about threats and incidents,” he said. The challenge is that the threat itself does not stand still, said King. “It continues to change and evolve, both in its nature and in terms of the expanding attack surface that we are seeking to protect and manage, with homes, hospitals, governments, electricity grids and cars becoming increasingly connected.” ‘Offline’ lives affected Another important fact to acknowledge, said King, is that cyber attacks are increasingly affecting people’s “offline” lives, such as the power outages in Ukraine caused by cyber attacks. He noted that, according to Symantec, the Dragonfly hacking group potentially still has the capacity to control or sabotage European energy systems. “The internet of things [IoT] means that tens of billions more devices will go online, and in 2016, the Mirai malware attack highlighted IoT vulnerability, with hundreds of thousands of normal devices infected and turned into the world’s biggest botnet,” he said. The internet was designed and built on trust, said King. “Our challenge today is to retro-engineer security and security awareness into the system,” he said, noting that “too often” in the rush to get new devices to market, manufacturers “forget” security or do not give it enough importance. “That means devices never lose their easy-to-guess default passwords; it means the update policy is unclear; it means encryption not being used; and it means unnecessary ports, hardware, services and code that make the attack surface larger than it needs to be,” he said. According to King, all these things are “relatively straightforward” to sort out, but when they are attacked cumulatively, it has “deeply troubling implications for our collective digital security and, as a result, cyber threats are becoming more strategic, especially with the ability to endanger critical infrastructure, and they are becoming more ‘endemic’ – spreading from IT networks to the business-critical operations of other economic sectors”. Collective response A few days after the recent State of the Union speech by European Commission president Jean Claude Junker underlining the importance of tackling cyber threats, King said the EC had presented a package of proposals intended to reinforce a collective response based on resilience, deterrence and defence. “In all of these areas, we need to strengthen co-operation and we need to focus on international governance and international co-operation,” said King. “We urgently need to become more resilient. We need to make ourselves harder to attack, and we need to be quicker to respond.” To that end, he said, the EC is proposing an EU cyber security agency based on the existing Enisa network and information security agency to help drive up cyber security standards and ensure a rapid and co-ordinated response to attacks across the whole of the EU. Member states also need to fully implement the NIS directive, said King, to extend beyond critical sectors to other sectors at risk, starting with public administration, and to resource their computer incident response teams properly. “To further reinforce these efforts, the new cyber security agency will also implement an EU standards certification framework to drive up the level of cyber security by ensuring that products on the market are sufficiently cyber resilient,” he said. “We need to move to a world in which there are no default passwords on internet-connected devices, where all companies providing internet services and devices adhere to a vulnerability disclosure policy, and where connected devices and software are updatable for their entire lifespan.” Standards certification framework King said the new standards certification framework should promote new EU-wide schemes and procedures and create a comprehensive set of rules, requirements and standards to evaluate how secure digital products and services actually are. “But, given that 95% of attacks involve some human interaction with technology, building resilience also means changing behaviours to improve cyber hygiene…and having the right skills to drive technological innovation to stay ahead of attackers,” he said, pointing out that Europe is projected to have 350,000 unfilled cyber security jobs by 2022. “We need to mainstream cyber security education and training programmes and we need to invest in innovation,” said King. As well as improving resilience, he said, there is a need to create real and credible disincentives for attackers. “We need to make attacks easier to detect, trace, investigate and punish,” he said. But attribution is often difficult, said King, and for this reason, the EC is seeking to promote the uptake of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). “Under IPv6, you will only be able to allocate a single user per IP address,” he said, adding that the EC is also seeking to increase cooperation and sharing of cyber expertise and reinforcing forensic capabilities across the EU and within Europol “so that law enforcement can keep pace with criminals”. Strengthen cyber defence When it comes to defence, said King, the EC plans to explore whether the new EU Defence Fund could help to develop and strengthen cyber defence capabilities. “We want to team up with our partners, and the EU will deepen co-operation with Nato on cyber security, hybrid threats and cyber defence,” he said. “It is in our common interest.” Finally, King said that while the internet offers “enormous opportunities” for citizens, governments and international organisations, it also offers “unprecedented opportunities” for criminals, terrorists and other hostile actors. “We need to be alive to this risk, and we need to take steps together to counter these threats because by working together, we can boost resilience, drive technological innovation, increase deterrents, and harness international co-operation to promote our collective security,” he concluded. Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450427879/Euro-commissioner-calls-for-more-collaboration-on-cyber-security

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Euro commissioner calls for more collaboration on cyber security