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Link11 Discovers Record Number of DDoS Attacks in First Half of 2021

In H1 2021, cyber criminals targeted businesses in record numbers as they continued to exploit vulnerabilities caused by the pandemic A report published by Link11, Europe’s leading IT security provider in cyber resilience, suggests there has been a 33% increase in the number of DDoS attacks in H1 2021. Between January and June, the Link11 Security Operations Centre (LSOC) recorded record numbers of attacks compared to the same period last year. The report also found that between Q1 2021 and Q2 2021 there was a 19% increase in DDoS campaigns, some of which were over 100 Gbps in attack volume; further evidence that cyber criminals are continuing to exploit the vulnerabilities of businesses during the pandemic. The key findings from the report are: The number of attacks continued to rise: + 33% increase year-on-year compared to H1/2020. DDoS attacks are increasing: +19% in Q2 2021 compared to Q1 2021. Overall attack bandwidth remained high: 555 Gbps in maximum attack volume. Sharp increase in attack bandwidth: +37% increase in H1/2021 compared to H1/2020. Number of high-volume attacks > 100 Gbps in H1/2021: 28 Criminals targeted those organisations and institutions that were in high demand during the global pandemic, such as va ccination websites, e-learning platforms or portals and businesses IT infrastructure as well as hosting providers and internet service providers . LSOC also suggests that the use of extortion emails has reached critical levels . Employees have received malicious emails from a multitude of different senders including Fancy Bear, Lazarus Group and most recently Fancy Lazarus. Instead of being indiscriminate, ransom demands now vary depending on the size of the company and the industry of the victims. In fact, companies from a wide range of industries (including finance, e-commerce, media and logistics) are currently being affected. The frequency of these campaigns has increased, ransom demands have skyrocketed and LSOC is warning that they could continue well into Q3 2021. According to Link11’s security experts, the intensity and regularity of extortion emails has noticeably increased . The scale of DDoS activity far exceeds any from previous years and the number of businesses experiencing serious security breaches has risen sharply. The consequences of such an attack can be severe, from loss of revenue, costly business interruptions, long recovery times to sensitive data being compromised. Marc Wilczek, Managing Director of Link11, said: “In an increasingly connected world, the availability and integrity of IT systems are critical to any business. Our research for the first half of 2021 shows that companies are continuously exposed to DDoS attacks and that they are far more frequent and complex. Due to the increasingly sophisticated attack techniques being used by cyber criminals, many security tools are reaching their limits. This means that solutions which provide maximum precision and speed in detecting and mitigating the attacks are more in demand than ever before.” Although the threat level of DDoS attacks has remained high and security providers have provided persistent warnings, LSOC believes some companies are still lack the relevant security solutions to prevent an attack . In a number of cases, organisations have been found to be completely unprotected and operations have been brought to a standstill. The only way to limit the damage is to implement specialised protection solutions on an ad-hoc basis. From an economic and legal point of view, however, it makes more sense to focus on sustainable prevention rather than reaction. As threat levels continue to rise LSOC recommends businesses take this opportunity to conduct a thorough review of their cyber security posture. They are also warning if you fall victim to a DDoS attack do not respond to extortion attempts and call in a specialist for DDoS protection as soon as an attack has been detected. Source: https://www.link11.com/en/blog/threat-landscape/link11-report-discovers-record-number-of-ddos-attacks-in-first-half-of-2021/

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Link11 Discovers Record Number of DDoS Attacks in First Half of 2021

‘Fancy Lazarus’ Cyberattackers Ramp up Ransom DDoS Efforts

The group, known for masquerading as various APT groups, is back with a spate of attacks on U.S. companies. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) extortion group has blazed back on the cybercrime scene, this time under the name of “Fancy Lazarus.” It’s been launching a series of new attacks that may or may not have any teeth, researchers said. The new name is a tongue-in-cheek combination of the Russia-linked Fancy Bear advanced persistent threat (APT) and North Korea’s Lazarus Group. The choice seems natural, given that the gang was last seen – including in a major campaign in October – purporting to be various APTs, including Armada Collective, Fancy Bear and Lazarus Group. According to Proofpoint, this time around the gang has been sending threatening, targeted emails to various organizations, including those operating in the energy, financial, insurance, manufacturing, public utilities and retail sectors – asking for a two-Bitcoin (BTC) starting ransom (around $75,000) if companies want to avoid a crippling DDoS attack. The price doubles to four BTC after the deadline, and increases by one BTC each day after that. The targets are mostly located in the U.S. While it’s hard to make a definitive correlation, the timing of some of the Fancy Lazarus campaigns correspond with high-profile ransomware attacks over the past six months, in terms of targeting the same vertical industries, according to Sherrod DeGrippo, senior director of threat research and detection at Proofpoint. “These include utility, natural gas and manufacturing,” she told Threatpost. “This could be an attempt to ride the coattails of high-profile news stories and result in a higher likelihood of payment. Another trend we have seen over the past four months are a focus on sending these threats to financial institutions and large insurance providers.” Email Campaign Details The emails announce that the organization is being targeted by Fancy Lazarus, and they threaten a DDoS attack in seven days if the target doesn’t pay up, according to an analysis on Thursday from Proofpoint. The messages also warn of potential damage to reputation and loss of internet access at offices, and then promise that a “small attack” will be launched on a specific IP, subnet or Autonomous System with an attack of 2Tbps, as a preview of things to come. The emails are either in plain text, HTML-based or present the letter in an embedded .JPG image – likely a detection-evasion technique, Proofpoint noted. “The emails are typically sent to well researched recipients, such as individuals listed as contacts in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) or Whois information for company networks,” according to Proofpoint’s analysis. “The emailed individuals also work in areas such as communications, external relations, investor relations. Additionally, extortion emails are often sent to email aliases such as help desk, abuse, administrative contacts or customer service.” Meanwhile, the sender email is unique to each target. They use a random “first name, last name” convention for the ender, using fake names. The ransom note. Source: Proofpoint. Some of this is a change in tactics from previous campaigns by the group. For instance, Proofpoint noted that the starting ransom was 10 or 20 BTC in 2020 campaigns – a change that was made likely to account for exchange-rate fluctuations. In October for instance, a 20-BTC demand translated to $230,000. Also, previously the sender names on the emails often contained the name of an APT that was in the headlines, such as Fancy Bear; or, they included the targeted company’s CEO name. Sometimes a Hoax? It’s unknown whether the group always follows through on its threat to launch massive DDoS attacks. An FBI alert on the group from last August said that while the group had taken aim at thousands of organizations from multiple global industry verticals by that point, many of them saw no further activity after the deadline expired – or, they were able to easily mitigate it. In some cases though, such as was the case with Travelex, “the threat actor conducted a volumetric attack on a custom port of four IP addresses serving the company’s subdomains, according to Intel471 researchers writing last year. Two days later, the attackers carried out another DNS amplification attack against Travelex using Google DNS servers, the firm reported. “While FBI reporting indicates they do not always follow through on their threat of a DDoS, there have been several prominent institutions that have reported an impact to their operations and other impacted companies have just been successful at mitigating the attacks,” DeGrippo said. “This type of behavior keeps them more closely aligned with that of a cybercriminal versus a scam artist.” In any case, it’s important for companies and organizations to be prepared by having appropriate mitigations in place such as using a DDoS protection service and having disaster recovery plans at the ready, she added. Ransom DDoS: A Growing Tactic Ransom DDoS is not a recent development, but it has become more popular of late, according to DeGrippo, thanks to the mainstreaming of Bitcoin and Ethereum. “While RDDoS existed earlier this type of extortion likely did not catch on until, in part, the adoption of cryptocurrency, which allowed the threat actors a safer means to receive payment,” she told Threatpost. “These kinds of campaigns have been done in an organized fashion for the past year.” She added that Fancy Lazarus’ choice to align its ransom demand with the fluctuating price of cryptocurrency is notable. “As Bitcoin prices fluctuate, we see some change in their demand amounts, proving that cryptocurrency markets and malicious actor activity are absolutely correlated,” she said. “This has been the case since at least 2016 in the early days of large-scale ransomware. Threat actors send their campaigns when the prices are most advantageous, attempting to make more money when the various currencies are at a high valuation. Other actors use other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, but Bitcoin continues to be the massively popular coin of choice for malicious threat actors.” While it’s impossible to know the success rate of the Fancy Lazarus campaigns, “given the potentially substantial financial payoff for relatively little work on the threat actor’s part, a low success rate would still make this a worthwhile tactic,” DeGrippo noted. One trend to watch is the addition of ransomware to the mix going forward. In February, the REvil ransomware gang started adding DDoS attacks to its efforts, in an effort to ratchet up the pressure to pay. Source: https://threatpost.com/fancy-lazarus-cyberattackers-ransom-ddos/166811/

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‘Fancy Lazarus’ Cyberattackers Ramp up Ransom DDoS Efforts

Docker servers infected with DDoS malware in extremely rare attacks

Up until recently, Docker servers misconfigured and left exposed online have been historically targeted with cryptocurrency-mining malware, which has helped criminal groups generate huge profits by hijacking someone else’s cloud resources. However, in a report published this week, security researchers from Trend Micro have discovered what appears to be the first organized and persistent series of attacks against Docker servers that infect misconfigured clusters with DDoS malware. According to Trend Micro, the two botnets are running versions of the XORDDoS and the Kaiji malware strains. Both malware operations have a long and well-documented history, especially XORDDoS, which has been spotted used in the wild for many years. However, the two DDoS botnets had usually targeted routers and smart devices, and never complex cloud setups, such as Docker clusters. “XORDDoS and Kaiji have been known to leverage telnet and SSH for spreading before, so I see Docker as a new vector which increases the potential of the botnet, a green field full of fresh fruit to pick with no immediate competitors,” Pascal Geenens, cybersecurity evangelist at Radwa r e , told ZDNet via email earlier this week. “Docker containers will typically provide more resources compared to IoT devices, but they typically run in a more secured environment, and it might be hard to impossible for the container to perform DDoS attacks,” Geenens added. “The unique perspective of IoT devices such as routers and IP cameras is that they have unrestricted access to the internet, but typically with less bandwidth and less horsepower compared to containers in a compromised environment,” the Radware researcher told ZDNet . “Containers, on the other hand, typically have access to way more resources in terms of memory, CPU, and network, but the network resources might be limited to only one or a few protocols, resulting in a smaller arsenal of DDoS attack vectors supported by those ‘super’ bots.” However, these limitations don’t usually impact crypto-mining botnets, which only need an open HTTPS channel to the outside world, Geenens said. But despite the limitations in how a DDoS gang could abuse hacked Docker clusters, Geenens says this won’t stop hackers from attacking this “green field full of fresh fruit to pick” as there are very few vulnerable IoT devices that haven’t been infected already, which has forced hackers to target Docker servers to begin with. And on a side note, Geenens also told ZDNet that he suspects that DDoS operators are already quite familiar with Docker systems already. While this is the first time they’re hacking Docker clusters, Geenens believes hackers often use Docker to manage their own attack infrastructure. “I have no immediate proof, but I’m pretty sure that in the same way as legitimate applications benefit from [Docker’s] automation and agility (DevOps), so will illegal applications.” The most common source of Docker hacks is the management interface (API) being left exposed online without authentication or being protected by a firewall. For readers looking to secure their servers, that would be a good first thing to check. In its report, Trend Micro also recommends that server administrators secure their Docker deployments by following a series of basic steps, detailed here . Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/docker-servers-infected-with-ddos-malware-in-extremely-rare-attacks/

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Docker servers infected with DDoS malware in extremely rare attacks

Huge Cyberattacks Attempt To Silence Black Rights Movement With DDoS Attacks

After the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests across the U.S., cyberattacks on advocacy groups spiked by an astonishing 1,120 times. It’s unclear who is behind the attacks, but they included attempts to neuter anti-racist organizations’ freedom of speech. The data comes from Cloudflare, a Silicon Valley company that protects a vast number of websites from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, where servers are flooded with traffic to make them inaccessible. As its tech is used by a number of advocacy groups—including Black Lives Matter—Cloudflare saw what was happening around the time of Floyd’s death, caused by a police officer—former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin—kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck till the life drained out of him. Fighting prejudice online And organizations whose purpose is to fight prejudice went from seeing almost no attacks on their sites to significant attempts to knock them offline. They included nearly 140 million likely malicious requests to load their websites. DDoS attacks see sites swamped with such requests, which mimic a massive number of people trying to get on a site at the same time, clogging up traffic to the page and making it inaccessible. “Those groups went from having almost no attacks at all in April to attacks peaking at 20,000 requests per second on a single site,” the company’s CEO, Matthew Prince, and its chief technology officer, John Graham-Cumming, wrote in a blog post. “One particular attacker, likely using a hacked server in France, was especially persistent and kept up an attack hitting an advocacy group continuously for over a day. We blocked those malicious HTTP requests and kept the site online.” In May, attacks on government, police and emergency services websites were up 1.8 times and 3.8 times on military websites, compared to the figures in April. Last week, the Minneapolis Police Department website was down after a reported DDoS attack. “We have been listening carefully to those who have taken to the streets in protest to demand justice and an end to structural racism, and believe that their powerful stories can serve as catalysts for real change. But that requires them to be heard,” the Cloudflare chiefs wrote in the post. “Unfortunately, if recent history is any guide, those who speak out against oppression will continue to face cyberattacks that attempt to silence them.” Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/06/03/huge-cyber-attacks-attempt-to-silence-black-rights-movement-with-ddos-attacks/#3460b946742b

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Huge Cyberattacks Attempt To Silence Black Rights Movement With DDoS Attacks

Are you Ready for These 26 Different Types of DDoS Attacks?

The scourge of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks has been a major concern for businesses and governments for more than two decades. First reported in 1996, this is a destructive and ever-evolving vector of cyber raids that knocks electronic networks offline by flooding them with the traffic they can’t handle. Not only is DDoS a way for hacktivists to manifest protest against Internet censorship and controversial political initiatives, but it’s also a goldmine of opportunities for achieving strictly nefarious goals. For instance, the latest tweak in this epidemic is what’s called “ransom DDoS,” a technique used to extort money from organizations in exchange for discontinuing a massive incursion. A big hurdle to thwarting the DDoS phenomenon is that it’s heterogeneous and spans a variety of different tactics. To begin with, there are three overarching categories of these attacks that form the backbone of this ecosystem: Volume-based (volumetric) attacks are the “classic” ones that congest a target network’s bandwidth with a hefty amount of traffic packets. Protocol attacks are aimed at exhausting server or firewall resources. Application layer (layer 7 DDoS) attacks zero in on specific web applications rather than the whole network. These ones are particularly hard to prevent and mitigate while being relatively easy to orchestrate. Furthermore, there are dozens of sub-types that fall into either one of the above generic groups but exhibit unique characteristics. Here’s a complete breakdown of the present-day DDoS attack methods. 1. SYN Flood This attack exploits the TCP three-way handshake, a technique used to establish any connection between a client, a host, and a server using the TCP protocol. Normally, a client submits a SYN (synchronize) message to the server to request a connection. When a SYN Flood attack is underway, criminals send a plethora of these messages from a spoofed IP address. As a result, the receiving server becomes incapable of processing and storing so many SYN packets and denies service to real clients. 2. LAND attack To perform a Local Area Network Denial (LAND) attack, a threat actor sends a fabricated SYN message in which the source and destination IP addresses are the same. When the server tries to respond to this message, it gets into a loop by recurrently generating replies to itself. This leads to an error scenario, and the target host may eventually crash. 3. SYN-ACK Flood The logic of this attack vector is to abuse the TCP communication stage where the server generates a SYN-ACK packet to acknowledge the client’s request. To execute this onslaught, crooks inundate the CPU and RAM resources of the server with a bevy of rogue SYN-ACK packets. 4. ACK & PUSH ACK Flood Once the TCP three-way handshake has resulted in establishing a connection between a host and a client, ACK or PUSH ACK packets are sent back and forth until the session is terminated. A server targeted by this type of a DDoS attack cannot identify the origin of falsified packets and wastes all of its processing capacity trying to determine how to handle them. 5. Fragmented ACK Flood This attack is a knockoff of the above-mentioned ACK & PUSH ACK Flood technique. It boils down to deluging a target network with a comparatively small number of fragmented ACK packets that have a maximum allowed size, usually 1500 bytes each. Network equipment such as routers ends up running out of resources trying to reassemble these packets. Furthermore, fragmented packets can slip below the radar of intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and firewalls. 6. Spoofed Session Flood (Fake Session Attack) In order to circumvent network protection tools, cybercriminals may forge a TCP session more efficiently by submitting a bogus SYN packet, a series of ACK packets, and at least one RST (reset) or FIN (connection termination) packet. This tactic allows crooks to get around defenses that only keep tabs on incoming traffic rather than analyzing return traffic. 7. UDP Flood As the name suggests, this DDoS attack leverages multiple User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets. For the record, UDP connections lack a handshaking mechanism (unlike TCP), and therefore the IP address verification options are very limited. When this exploitation is in full swing, the volume of dummy packets exceeds the target server’s maximum capacity for processing and responding to requests. 8. DNS Flood This one is a variant of UDP Flood that specifically homes in on DNS servers. The malefactor generates a slew of fake DNS request packets resembling legitimate ones that appear to originate from a huge number of different IP addresses. DNS Flood is one of the hardest denial-of-service raids to prevent and recover from. 9. VoIP Flood This is a common form of UDP Flood that targets a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) server. The multitude of bogus VoIP requests sent from numerous IP addresses drain the victim server’s resources and knock it offline at the end of the day. 10. NTP Flood (NTP Amplification) Network Time Protocol (NTP), one of the oldest networking protocols tasked with clock synchronization between electronic systems, is at the core of another DDoS attack vector. The idea is to harness publicly-accessible NTP servers to overload a target network with a large number of UDP packets. 11. CHARGEN Flood Similarly to NTP, the Character Generator Protocol (CHARGEN) is an oldie whose emergence dates back to the 1980s. In spite of this, it is still being used on some connected devices such as printers and photocopiers. The attack comes down to sending tiny packets containing a victim server’s fabricated IP to devices with CHARGEN protocol enabled. In response, the Internet-facing devices submit UDP packets to the server, thus flooding it with redundant data. 12. SSDP Flood Malefactors can exploit networked devices running Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) services by executing a Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) reflection-based DDoS attack. On a side note, SSDP is embedded in the UPnP protocol framework. The attacker sends small UDP packets with a spoofed IP address of a target server to multiple devices running UPnP. As a result, the server is flooded with requests from these devices to the point where it goes offline. 13. SNMP Flood (SNMP Amplification) Tasked with harvesting and arranging data about connected devices, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) can become a pivot of another attack method. Cybercriminals bombard a target server, switch, or router with numerous small packets coming from a fabricated IP address. As more and more “listening” devices reply to that spoofed address, the network cannot cope with the immense quantity of these incoming responses. 14. HTTP Flood When executing an HTTP Flood DDoS attack, an adversary sends ostensibly legitimate GET or POST requests to a server or web application, siphoning off most or all of its resources. This technique often involves botnets consisting of “zombie” computers previously contaminated with malware. 15. Recursive HTTP GET Flood To perpetrate this attack, a malicious actor requests an array of web pages from a server, inspects the replies, and iteratively requests every website item to exhaust the server’s resources. The exploitation looks like a series of legitimate queries and can be difficult to identify. 16. ICMP Flood Also referred to as Ping Flood, this incursion aims to inundate a server or other network device with numerous spoofed Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo requests or pings. Having received a certain number of ICMP pings, the network responds with the same number of reply packets. Since this capability to respond is finite, the network reaches its performance threshold and becomes unresponsive. 17. Misused Application Attack Instead of using spoofed IP addresses, this attack parasitizes legitimate client computers running resource-intensive applications such as P2P tools. Crooks reroute the traffic from these clients to the victim server to bring it down due to excessive processing load. This DDoS technique is hard to prevent as the traffic originates on real machines previously compromised by the attackers. 18. IP Null Attack This one is carried out by sending a slew of packets containing invalid IPv4 headers that are supposed to carry transport layer protocol details. The trick is that threat actors set this header value to null. Some servers cannot process these corrupt-looking packets properly and waste their resources trying to work out how to handle them. 19. Smurf Attack This one involves a malware strain called Smurf to inundate a computer network with ICMP ping requests carrying a spoofed IP address of the target. The receiving devices are configured to reply to the IP in question, which may produce a flood of pings the server can’t process. 20. Fraggle Attack This DDoS technique follows a logic similar to the Smurf Attack, except that it deluges the intended victim with numerous UDP packets rather than ICMP echo requests. 21. Ping of Death Attack To set this raid in motion, cybercrooks poison a victim network with unconventional ping packets whose size significantly exceeds the maximum allowed value (64 bytes). This inconsistency causes the computer system to allocate too many resources for reassembling the rogue packets. In the aftermath of this, the system may encounter a buffer overflow or even crash. 22. Slowloris This attack stands out from the crowd because it requires very low bandwidth and can be fulfilled using just one computer. It works by initiating multiple concurrent connections to a web server and keeping them open for a long period of time. The attacker sends partial requests and complements them with HTTP headers once a while to make sure they don’t reach a completion stage. As a result, the server’s capability to maintain simultaneous connections is drained and it can no longer process connections from legitimate clients. 23. Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) Originally designed as a network stress testing tool, LOIC can be weaponized in real-world DDoS attacks. Coded in C#, this open-source software deluges a server with a large number of packets (UPD, TCP, or HTTP) in an attempt to disrupt a target’s operation. This onslaught is usually backed by a botnet consisting of thousands of machines and coordinated by a single user. 24. High Orbit Ion Cannon (HOIC) HOIC is a publicly accessible application that superseded the above-mentioned LOIC program and has a much bigger disruptive potential than its precursor. It can be used to submit a plethora of GET and HTTP POST requests to a server concurrently, which ends up knocking a target website offline. HOIC can affect up to 256 different domains at the same time. 25. ReDoS ReDoS stands for “regular expression denial-of-service.” Its goal is to overburden a program’s regular expression implementation with instances of highly complex string search patterns. A malicious actor can trigger a regular expression processing scenario whose algorithmic complexity causes the target system to waste superfluous resources and slow down or crash. 26. Zero-Day DDoS This term denotes an attack that takes advantage of uncatalogued vulnerabilities in a web server or computer network. Unfortunately, such flaws are surfacing off and on, making the prevention a more challenging task. A Serious Threat Although distributed denial-of-service is an old school attack vector, it continues to be a serious threat to organizations. The monthly number of such attacks exceeds 400,000. To top it off, cybercriminals keep adding new DDoS mechanisms to their repertoire and security providers aren’t always prepared to tackle them. Another unnerving thing is that some techniques, including Low and High Orbit Ion Cannon, are open source and can be leveraged by wannabe criminals who lack tech skills. Such an attack may get out of hand and go way beyond the intended damage. To prevent DDoS attacks and minimize the impact, businesses should learn to proactively identify the red flags; have an appropriate response plan in place; make sure their security posture has no single point of failure, and continuously work on strengthening the network architecture. Source: https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/92327-are-you-ready-for-these-26-different-types-of-ddos-attacks

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Are you Ready for These 26 Different Types of DDoS Attacks?

Cyber Warfare Doesn’t Take a Break During Coronavirus Season

US Health Agencies Are Fending off DDoS Attacks and Disinformation Campaigns in the Midst of a Pandemic Unfettered by social distancing measures or economic concerns, cyber threat actors are taking full advantage of opportunities created by the coronavirus pandemic. United States health agencies are being tested by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and social media disinformation campaigns as they scramble to respond to an unprecedented viral outbreak, and these attacks are thought to be backed by a hostile foreign government. Federal health agency hit with DDoS attack A large-scale DDoS attack was directed at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department sometime around March 15. A spokesperson for the National Security Council stated that the attack did not do any substantial damage and that the networks are being “continuously monitored” to mitigate any future attempts. The DDoS attack involved millions of requests on the health agency’s servers over a period of several hours. A Health and Human Services spokesperson indicated that the government does not know who was behind the attack, but suspects a foreign government. The DDoS attack did not involve any network compromise, nor did it significantly slow down operations. The spokesperson indicated that the agency has put unspecified “extra protections” in place going forward. Fake texts and tweets part of organized disinformation campaign In addition to the DDoS attack, the National Security Council indicated that there is an ongoing disinformation campaign intended to sow fear and confusion in the American public that focuses on the health agencies. This is also believed to be backed by a foreign government. The agency warns about fake text messages that claim a mandatory national quarantine or lockdown is imminent. This disinformation campaign is also circulating widely on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and usually involves someone claiming they heard about imminent National Guard mobilization for a lockdown from some sort of friend or family member with inside information. The most damaging aspect of the disinformation campaign was a hack that managed to penetrate emergency MMS and SMS text-messaging systems used in a number of different cities in the US, which occurred just after Italy opted to lock down the entire country. The attackers sent out a bogus “warning” message claiming that public and emergency services were about to be shut down due to the coronavirus. These messages did not initially get out to the general public on a large scale, but did make their way to various emergency services personnel in a number of major cities including Boston, Washington DC and New York City. There is no indication at present that a national quarantine or lockdown is being considered. Such a move would be logistically difficult and extremely unpopular politically. While President Trump has mentioned that the possibility has been discussed, he has also signaled a desire to avoid action of this sort by the federal government on several occasions. During his March 21 briefing, Trump indicated that the government is focusing on action in coronavirus “hot zones” and that a national shutdown was not being seriously considered at the time. Perpetrators, motives and methods The assumption that a foreign government is behind these cyber incidents is primarily based on the lack of any sort of profit motive behind shutting down health agency servers or spreading false rumors on social media. While the rumors could potentially be used to manipulate stock prices in an indirect way, it seems more likely that this is a coordinated effort given that the DDoS attack and the disinformation campaign emerged at about the same time. Anonymous officials told ABC News that they believe Russia or China are the most likely perpetrators. This would not at all be a surprising move by either of these American adversaries, but particularly not for Russia. Russian “troll farms” that use fake social media accounts to pose as Americans and stir up dissent and division have been making the news since the widespread interference in the 2016 election, but have likely been working for over a decade now. This sort of disinformation campaign is precisely their MO. Any state-sponsored threat actor is capable of using a botnet, but DDoS attacks against other countries have been the hallmark of two particular hacking groups in recent years: APT 28, aka Russia’s infamous “Fancy Bear” group, and APT 33 (Elfin Team) out of Iran. Greg Wendt, Executive Director of Appsian, points out that though these health agencies have been successfully able to mitigate DDoS attacks they may be ripe for more targeted and sophisticated breach attempts: ” … government institutions such as the HHS are key targets for cyberattacks, and given that the government has many applications and systems that were written and developed 35-40 years ago, the process to modernize and transform the critical nature of data is a lengthy one and not a process that can be successfully done overnight.” New challenges for both government and private industry The cyber challenges posed by the coronavirus outbreak are not limited to health agencies. Private industry and individuals can also expect online predators to attempt to take advantage of the situation. Thomas Hatch, CTO and Co-Founder at SaltStack, a Lehi, Utah-based provider of intelligent IT automation software, foresees an inevitable increase in attacks on certain business sectors: “Petty thieves will assume that classical attacks are going to be more effective because cyber defense staffing is likely distracted right now dealing with the influx of issues that come from a demand shift for specific services. Organized groups are likely empowered by the situation and will want to take advantage of it. They can attack specific services, particularly financial institutions because of the overall distracted nature of the defenders.” Leading security firm Crowdstrike is reporting a significant increase in activity in phishing campaigns concurrent with global implementation of coronavirus restrictions. Early examples that have been spotted in the wild have promised free vaccines or offers of charity relief. Some targeted attacks on health care organizations have claimed to be related to shipments of ventilators or personal protective equipment. Hackers are also commonly attempting to pose as a legitimate health agency such as the WHO or CDC. In addition to targeted cyber attacks, everyone should be on heightened alert for messages tied to disinformation campaigns being spread throughout all sorts of public forums online. Source: https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/cyber-warfare-doesnt-take-a-break-during-coronavirus-season-us-health-agencies-are-fending-off-ddos-attacks-and-disinformation-campaigns-in-the-midst-of-a-pandemic/

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Cyber Warfare Doesn’t Take a Break During Coronavirus Season

Over third of large Dutch firms hit by cyberattack in 2016 – CBS

Large companies are hit by cyberattacks at an above average rate, according to the Cybersecurity Monitor of Dutch statistics bureau CBS for 2018. Among companies of 250+ employees, 39 percent were hit at least once by a cyberattack in 2016, such as a hack or DDoS attack. By contrast, around 9 percent of small companies (2-10 employees) were confronted with such an ICT incident. Of the larger companies, 23 percent suffered from failure of business processes due to the outside cyberattacks. This compares to 6 percent for the smaller companies. Of all ICT incidents, failures were most common, for all sizes, though again, the larger companies were more affected (55%) than the smaller ones (21%). The incidents led to costs for both groups of companies. Chance of incident bigger at large company CBS noted that ICT incidents can arise from both from an outside attack and from an internal cause, such as incorrectly installed software or hardware or from the unintentional disclosure of data by an employee. The fact that larger companies suffer more from ICT incidents can be related to the fact that more people work with computers; this increases the chance of incidents. In addition, larger companies often have a more complex ICT infrastructure, which can cause more problems. The number of ICT incidents also varies per industry. For example, small businesses in the ICT sector (12%) and industry (10%) often suffer from ICT incidents due to external attacks. Small companies in the hospitality sector (6%) and health and welfare care (5%) were less often confronted with cyberattacks. Internal cause more common at smaller companies Compared to larger companies, ICT incidents at small companies more often have an internal cause: 2 out 3, compared to 2 out of 5 for larger companies. ICT incidents at small companies in health and welfare care most often had an internal cause (84%). In the ICT sector, this share was 60 percent. About 7 percent of companies with an ICT incident report them to one or more authorities, including police, the Dutch Data Protection Authority AP, a security team or their bank. The largest companies report ICT incidents much more often (41%) than the smallest companies (6%). Large companies report these ICT incidents most frequently to the AP, complying with law. After that, most reports are made to the police. The smallest companies report incidents most often to their bank. Smaller: less safe Small businesses are less often confronted with ICT incidents and, in comparison with large companies, take fewer security measures. Around 60 percent of small companies take three or more measures. This goes to 98 percent for larger companies. Source: https://www.telecompaper.com/news/over-third-39-of-large-dutch-firms-hit-by-cyberattack-in-2016-cbs–1265851

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Over third of large Dutch firms hit by cyberattack in 2016 – CBS

The FBI Is Investigating More Cyberattacks in a California Congressional Race

The hacks — first reported by Rolling Stone — targeted a Democratic candidate in one of the country’s most competitive primary races WASHINGTON — The FBI has opened an investigation into cyberattacks that targeted a Democratic candidate in a highly competitive congressional primary in southern California. As Rolling Stone first reported in September, Democrat Bryan Caforio was the victim of what cybersecurity experts believe were distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks. The hacks crashed his campaign website on four separate occasions over a five-week span, including several hours before the biggest debate of the primary race and a week before the election itself, according to emails and other forensic data reviewed by Rolling Stone. They were the first reported instances of DDoS attacks on a congressional candidate in 2018. Caforio was running in the 25th congressional district represented by Republican Rep. Steve Knight, a vulnerable incumbent and a top target of the Democratic Party. Caforio ultimately finished third in the June primary, failing to move on to the general election by several thousand votes. “I’m glad the FBI has now launched an investigation into the hack,” Caforio tells Rolling Stone in a statement. “These attacks put our democracy at risk, and they’ll keep happening until we take them seriously and start to punish those responsible.” It was unclear from the campaign’s data who launched the attacks. But in early October, a few weeks after Rolling Stone’s report, Caforio says an FBI special agent based in southern California contacted one of his former campaign staffers about the DDoS attacks. The FBI has since spoken with several people who worked on the campaign, requested forensic data in connection with the attacks and tasked several specialists with investigating what happened, according to a source close to the campaign. According to the source, the FBI has expressed interest in several details of the DDoS attacks. The bureau asked about data showing that servers run by Amazon Web Services, the tech arm of the online retail giant, appear to have been used to carry out the attacks. The FBI employees also seemed to focus on the last of the four attacks on Caforio’s website, the one that came a week before the primary election. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment for this story. A DDoS attack occurs when a flood of online traffic coming from multiple sources intentionally overwhelms a website and cripples it. The cybersecurity company Cloudflare compares DDoS to “a traffic jam clogging up a highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its desired destination.” Such attacks are becoming more common in American elections and civic life, according to experts who monitor and study cyberattacks. “DDoS attacks are being used to silence political speech and voters’ access to the information they need,” George Conard, a product manager at Jigsaw, a Google spin-off organization, wrote in May. “Political parties, campaigns and organizations are a growing target.” Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, told Rolling Stone last month that his company had noticed an increase in such attacks after 2016 and the successful Russian operations on U.S. soil. “Our thesis is that, prior to 2016, U.S.-style democracy was seen as the shining city on the hill. The same things you could do to undermine a developing democracy wouldn’t work here,” Prince says. “But after 2016, the bloom’s off the rose.” The FBI has since created a foreign influence task force to combat future efforts to interfere and disrupt U.S. elections. Southern California, in particular, has seen multiple cyberattacks on Democratic congressional candidates during the 2018 midterms. Rolling Stone reported that Hans Keirstead, a Democratic candidate who had challenged Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), widely seen as the most pro-Russia and pro-Putin member of Congress, had been the victim of multiple hacking efforts, including a successful spear-phishing attempt on his private email account that resembled the 2016 hack of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Hackers also reportedly broke into the campaign computer of Dave Min, another Democratic challenger in a different southern California district, prompting the FBI to open an investigation. On Friday, the nation’s four top law enforcement and national security agencies — the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — released a joint statement saying there were “ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran” that include interference in the 2018 and 2020 elections. Cybersecurity experts and political consultants say there are many reports of hacking attempts on 2018 campaigns that have not been publicized. But the proximity of the attacks is significant because Democrats have a greater chance of taking back the House of Representatives if they can flip multiple seats in Southern California. Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/california-congressional-race-hack-745519/

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The FBI Is Investigating More Cyberattacks in a California Congressional Race

The Haunting Horror Story Of Cybercrime

As the old saying goes, “darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand.” Halloween is upon the scene and frightening things are unforeseen. Imagine watching a chilling movie depicting a zombie apocalypse or a deadly virus spreading fast across a metropolis, infecting everything in its wake. Sounds like a monstrous scenario? Sounds analogous to a cyber-attack? You could be onto something. Strap yourself in. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. According to recent F5 Labs threat analysis, the top application breaches haunting companies right now with rapidly mutating sophistication include payment card theft via web injection (70%), website hacking (26%), and app database hacking (4%). Frighteningly, further analysis shows that 13% of all web application breaches in 2017 and Q1 2018 were access related. This bloodcurdling discovery can be dissected as follows: credentials stolen via compromised email (34.29%), access control misconfiguration (22.86%); credential stuffing from stolen passwords (8.57%), brute force attacks to crack passwords (5.71%), and social engineering theft (2.76). The eerie evidence also shows that applications and identities are the initial targets in 86% of breaches. Businesses worldwide now face a sense of creeping dread and imminent disruption. Nowadays, they are more prone than ever to terrors such as malware hijacking browsers to sniff or intercept application authentication credentials. Then there are the strains of malware that target financial logins to menace both browser and mobile clients. There’s no way around it. Getting your cybersecurity posture right is the only way to stay safe. Get it wrong, however, and you’ll get the fright of your life in the shape of EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforcement. There is definitively nowhere to hide this Halloween if you’re breached or fall short of tightening compliance expectations. Yet, if scary movies have taught us anything about horror stories, it is to never to scream and run away. As this ghoulish season can overshadow any organisation, it’s imperative that preventative measures are in place to protect vital assets. Yes, the findings from F5 Labs may paint a bleak picture but there are plenty of preventative measures you can take to improve your security posture and safeguard your employees’ applications and sensitive data: Understand your threat environment and prioritise defences against grave risk concerns. Know which applications are important and minimise your attack surface. Remember, an app’s surface is broadening all the time, encompassing multiple tiers and the ever-increasing use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to share data with third parties. Use data to drive your risk strategy and identify what attackers would typically target. Beware that any part of an application service visible on the Internet will be probed by fiendish hackers for possible exploitation. Configure your network systems properly or suffer the consequences of applications leaking internal and infrastructure information, including server names, private network addresses, email addresses, and even usernames. This is all valuable ammunition for a horrible hacker to carry out an attack. Be aware of common threats including DDoS attacks, ransomware, malware, phishing, and botnets. Ensure your IT response strategies are built to adapt and update in line with new vulnerabilities and threats will invariably improve survival rates. Implement a strong set of easily manageable and powerful security solutions such as an advanced web application firewall (AWAF). This type of technology is extremely scalable and can protect against the latest wave of attacks using behavioural analytics, proactive bot defence, and application-layer encryption of sensitive data like personal credentials. Ensure the company enforces a proactive culture of security and educates employees on policy, device management, as well as safe internet and cloud usage. When travelling on business, ensure staff never conduct financial transactions requiring a debit or credit card when using public or free Wi-Fi services. Never assume mobiles and laptop devices are safe, even at the local coffee bar. Change your passwords regularly (i.e. every month). This is especially important after travel. Devices may have been compromised during transit. Always perform regular data backups on approved devices and/or secure cloud platforms to ensure sensitive information is not lost or stolen and can be quickly recovered in the event of an attack. Remember, careless employees who feel they are unaccountable for the loss of work devices can damage business reputations. The grim reality Remember this is the time of year when “creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize the neighbourhood”. Whether you’re expecting a trick or treat this Halloween, neglecting cybersecurity is certain to have ghastly consequences. The business world is littered with victims of cybercrime, so don’t get consigned to the grievous graveyard of cyber fraud. Know what makes your apps vulnerable and how they can be attacked. Makes sure you put the right solutions in place to lower your risk. Now is the time to stop being haunted by cybercriminals draining the lifeblood out of your business. Source: https://www.informationsecuritybuzz.com/articles/the-haunting-horror-story-of-cybercrime/

Six Lessons From Boston Children’s ‘Hacktivist’ Attack

CIO Daniel Nigrin, M.D., says hospitals must prepare for DDoS and ransomware Most health system CIOs have heard about the 2014 attack on Boston Children’s Hospital by a member or members of the activist hacker group Anonymous. The hospital was forced to deal with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack as well as a spear phishing campaign. Yesterday, as part of the Harvard Medical School Clinical Informatics Lecture Series, the hospital’s senior vice president and CIO Daniel Nigrin, M.D., discussed six lessons learned from the attack. Although the cyber-attack took place four years ago, there have been some recent developments. The attack was undertaken to protest the treatment of a teenager, Justina Pelletier, in a dispute over her diagnosis and custody between her parents and the hospital. In August 2018 Martin Gottesfeld, 32, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to damage protected computers and one count of damaging protected computers. U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel Gorton scheduled sentencing for Nov. 14, 2018. Gottesfeld was charged in February 2016. According the U.S. Department of Justice, Gottesfeld launched a massive DDOS attack against the computer network of the Boston Children’s Hospital. He customized malicious software that he installed on 40,000 network routers that he was then able to control from his home computer. After spending more than a week preparing his methods, on April 19, 2014, he unleashed a DDOS attack that directed so much hostile traffic at the Children’s Hospital computer network that he temporarily knocked Boston Children’s Hospital off the Internet. In his Oct. 17 talk, Nigrin said cyber criminals still see healthcare as a soft target compared to other industries. “The bottom line is that in healthcare, we have not paid attention to cybersecurity,” he said. “In the years since this attack, we have seen ransomware attacks that have brought hospital systems to their knees. We have to pay more attention and invest more in terms of dollars and technical people, but it really does extend to entire organizations — educating people about what a phishing attack is, what a social engineering attack is. These need to be made a priority.” He offered six lessons learned from Boston Children’s experience: 1. DDoS countermeasures are critical. No longer can healthcare organizations assume that a DDoS attacks are things that only occur against corporate entities, he said. “Prior to this event, I had never thought about the need to protect our organization against a DDoS attack,” he said. “I will submit that the vast majority of my CIO colleagues were in the same boat. And that was wrong. I think now we have gotten this understanding.” 2. Know what depends on the internet. Having a really detailed understanding of what systems and processes in your organization depend on internet access is critical, Nigrin stressed. You also mush have good mitigation strategies in place to know what to do if you lose internet access — whether it is because you have a network outage due to a technical issue or a malicious issue. “As healthcare has become more automated and dependent on technology, these things are crippling events. You have got to know how you are going to deal with it ahead of time. Figuring it out on the fly is not going to work.” 3. Recognize the importance of email. Email may be seen as old-school, Nigrin noted, but it is still the primary method to communicate, so you have to think about how you can communicate and get the word out in scenarios where you don’t have email or lose voice communication. “In our case, we were super-lucky because we had just deployed a secure texting platform, so we could do HIPAA-compliant texting, and when our email was down, that was how we communicated, and it was very effective,” he explained. 4. Push through security initiatives – no excuses anymore. Because he is a doctor himself, Nigrin feels OK picking on doctors about security. Historically they have always pushed back on security measures such as dual-factor authentication. He paraphrases them saying “Come on, Dan, that is an extra 10 seconds; I have to carry a secure ID, or you have to send me a text message on my phone. It is a pain. I don’t want to do it. I am the highest-paid employee in your organization and that is time better spend on something else.” But Nigrin argues that we can’t afford to think like that anymore. He used the Anonymous attack as an opportunity to push through four or five security initiatives within the next two to three months when he had everyone’s attention. “The platform was burning, and the board of trustees was willing to expend the money to pay for it all. They all of a sudden recognized the risk.” 5. Securing audio- and teleconference meetings. Nigrin said this topic wouldn’t have occurred to Boston Children’s until they were warned by the FBI. “The FBI told us about an attack that affected them when they were dealing with Anonymous. When Anonymous was attacking the FBI, the FBI convened internal conference calls on how to deal with it. Anonymous had already breached their messaging platform and intercepted the calendar invites that invited everyone to dial in. Anonymous basically was called into the meeting. Within 30 minutes of one of those meetings, the entire audio transcript of the conference call was posted to YouTube. “So we took heed of that and made sure that when we had conference calls, we sent out PINs over our secure texting platform,” he said. 6. Separating signal from noise. During the attack, Boston Children’s set up a command center and told employees: if you see something, say something. “We didn’t know what attack was coming next. We were flying blind,” Nigrin said. “We started to get lots of calls into our command center with reports of things that seemed somewhat suspicious,” he remembers. People got calls on their cell phone with a recorded message saying your bank account has been compromised. Press 1 to talk to someone to deal with it. “Today we would recognize this as some type of phishing scam and hang up,” he said, “but at the time it was sort of new. People started calling us and we didn’t know if this was Anonymous trying to get into the bank accounts of our senior clinicians. Was it part of the attack? It was tough for us to detect signal from noise.” In the Q&A after his presentation, listeners were curious about how much the incident cost the hospital. Nigrin said there two big costs incurred: One was the technology it had to deploy in an emergent way to do DDOS protection and penetration testing. The other was revenue lost from philanthropic donations. Together they were close to $1 million. Another person asked if the hospital had cyber insurance. Nigrin said they did, but when they read the fine print it said they were covered only if they were breached and technically they were never breached, so the insurance company was reluctant to pay. Although they eventually got compensated for a good share of it, the hospital also made sure to update its policy. Still another attendee asked Nigrin if ransomware attacks were still targeting hospitals. He said they definitely were. “Think about community hospitals just squeaking by on their budgets,” he said. “They don’t have millions to spend, yet their data is valuable on the black market. Attackers recognize we are dead in the water as entities if we don’t have these systems. We have important data and will do anything to get our systems back up and running.” Nigrin said even large health systems can be vulnerable because some technology they deploy is run by third-party vendors who haven’t upgraded their systems. An example, he said, might be technology to record videos in the operating room setting. Some vendors, he said, are not accustomed to thinking about security. They are unable to update their software so it works on more modern operating systems. That leaves CIOs with a tough choice. “We can shut off the functionality or take the risk of continuing to use outdated and unpatched operating systems. Those vendors now have woken up and realize they have to pay more attention.” Source: https://www.healthcare-informatics.com/article/cybersecurity/six-lessons-boston-children-s-hacktivist-attack

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Six Lessons From Boston Children’s ‘Hacktivist’ Attack