18Mar

Researchers Have Their Eye on Malicious Clones of Android Apps That Put Devices at Risk

March 18, 2021By 0 comment

Researchers at Check Point have found malicious apps in the Google Play Store that will download Trojans to infected devices.

“Check Point Research (CPR) recently discovered a new Dropper spreading via the official Google Play store, which downloads and installs the AlienBot Banker and MRAT,” the researchers write. “This Dropper, dubbed Clast82, utilizes a series of techniques to avoid detection by Google Play Protect detection, completes the evaluation period successfully, and changes the payload dropped from a non-malicious payload to the AlienBot Banker and MRAT.”

The malicious apps posed as VPNs or audio apps. Once the malware was installed, it would gain access to the device’s banking apps.

“The AlienBot malware family is a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) for Android devices that allows a remote attacker, at a first step, to inject malicious code into legitimate financial applications,” Check Point says. “The attacker obtains access to victims’ accounts, and eventually completely controls their device. Upon taking control of a device, the attacker has the ability to control certain functions just as if he was holding the device physically, like installing a new application on the device, or even control it with TeamViewer.”

If the victim’s phone doesn’t allow external installations, the malware will try to trick the user into granting permission.

“If the infected device prevents installations of applications from unknown sources, Clast82 prompts the user with a fake request, pretending to be ‘Google Play Services’ requesting the user to allow the installation every 5 seconds,” Check Point says. “After the malicious payload is successfully installed, the dropper app launches the payload downloaded. In the case of Clast82, we were able to identify over 100 unique payloads of the AlienBot, an Android MaaS Banker (Malware as a service) targeting financial applications and attempting to steal the credentials and 2FA codes for those applications.”

Google has since removed the malicious apps from the Play Store. New-school security awareness training can help your employees avoid falling for phishing attacks and other social engineering tactics.

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17Mar

6 Advanced Email Phishing Attacks

March 17, 2021By 0 comment

No matter how good your policies and technical defenses are, some amount of phishing will get to your end users in a given month. They must be trained to recognize social engineering attempts and how to treat them. Which is hopefully to report them to the appropriate people/groups and/or delete them.
The vast majority of phishing emails are the standard variety, appearing from strange email addresses and pushing unexpected requests for login credentials or to open file attachments. Most of them are fairly easy to recognize if you have had a little training. A few times during the year, newer variants pop up and users must be trained to recognize the latest variants. But even then, the phishing emails are not that sophisticated and fairly easy, to the trained eye, to spot.

Advanced Email Phishing Attacks

But every now and then, a new class of phishing email comes out that does something truly new. Here are six types of phishing attacks I classify as “advanced”.

OAUTH Phishing

OAUTH stands for Open Authorization. It is a new, very widespread authorization standard that allows a participant to use one authenticated login account for multiple sites and services requiring authentication. Most of us have and use an OAUTH account without realizing that we are doing it. Any time you go to a website and it has little buttons allowing you to log in to the new site or service using your Facebook, Twitter, Apple, or Google account (see example below) instead of creating a brand-new log in, it is likely using OAUTH as its single sign-on solution.

OAUTH Phishing

Attached to your OAUTH account on your OAUTH identity provider (again, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, etc.) is a list of which sites and services you have allowed to use your OAUTH identity (see example below).

Apps OAuth Phishing

Sophisticated phishing emails, usually masquerading as Microsoft O365-related (see example below).

Microsoft Office 365 Phishing Email

When the victim clicks on the file attachment, it opens up an OAUTH prompt that requests OAUTH access and permissions (see example below).

Microsoft Permissions

What most victims do not know is that when they click on the (default) Accept button, they are likely unintentionally allowing the new OAUTH requester (the phisher) to have those permissions to their OAUH account and related documents. Notice in the example above, they are requesting permissions to read the victim’s contact list, read the victim’s email, write to the victim’s email client, and have full access to all the files the victim has access to. That is a lot of power. And most of the time, all the victim did was click on a few buttons and the phisher’s malicious code and OAUTH did the rest.

It is a pretty insidious phishing attack. I previously wrote about OAUTH and OAUTH phishing in more detail here.

Compromised Trusted Third-Party Phishing

The most common security advice to potential victims to avoid phishing is for them to be suspicious of any unexpected email coming from a new email address. It is good advice and is often the first sign of a malicious email. But these days, hackers often break into a trusted business partner or friend’s email account (or social media account) and then use that new compromised location to send out fraudulent emails and links to that compromised victim’s contact list.

It is common for Facebook attacks coming from previously compromised friends to send pretend video links (see example below) which are really just a trick to get the new potential victim to download a Trojan Horse malware program.

YouTube Video Phishing

Compromised business email accounts are thoroughly reviewed by hackers to see what ongoing relationships and threads they can exploit. Then, the hacker sends a new email which seems as if it is in response to a previous email (i.e., the middle of a conversation) and asks the new potential victim to do something adversely, such as to pay a fake invoice, change payment information, or open a file attachment. Because the new victim often has a new and ongoing, trusted relationship with the previously compromised victim, the more likely they are to open the email and follow the instructions.

The old adage of being suspicious of unexpected emails from new email addresses does not apply. This is an unexpected email, but it is coming from a valid email address and a person with a previously recognized subject thread. I have spoken to many victims who said they were confused by the new request, but followed the instructions anyway simply because they trusted the sender.

Trusted third-party phishing is more difficult to avoid. So, here is what I tell end users now. Be extra suspicious of unexpected emails, even if it is coming from someone you trust, if it is asking you to do something brand new that you have never done before for them. You can no longer trust all emails just because they are coming from people you trust.

I previously wrote about trusted third-party phishing in more detail here.

Bypass MFA

I’m not sure if we will get to a world without passwords in the next decade, but more and more end users are using multi-factor authentication (MFA). Using MFA significantly reduces some forms of hacking, especially phishing emails which ask for a person’s password. If a person using MFA does not have or know their password, they can’t give it out accidentally.

But most people do not know that 90% of MFA solutions can be bypassed using what looks like a traditional phishing email. The phishing email arrives impersonating a brand or website that the user is familiar with, but the included links take the victim to a man-in-the-middle website, which proxies all information from the victim to the real website; and vice-versa. Anything the user types in is eavesdropped on and transmitted to the real website; and vice-versa. Thus, if the user is asked for their login name, PIN, or any MFA code, and they type it in, the hacker gets it as well and can use the information to log in as the victim to the real website. It is a very, very common hacking method – and it bypasses MFA like it was not even there.

Some forms of MFA, like FIDO2 tokens, have defenses that defeat proxy man-in-the-middle attacks, but most MFA is susceptible. To see a great video of this type of MFA bypass, go here or see the related blog article here.

Dynamic Phishing Kits

Most phishing emails are either very generic looking or tied to a particular well-known brand (e.g., Microsoft, etc.). Although not new, more and more phishing kits (bought and used by less sophisticated phishers) are generating dynamic, brand-related content on the fly that links to the domain the phishing email was sent to. For example, a phishing email sent to me is generated to appear as if it came from KnowBe4, Inc. It includes look alike domain name URLs, mentions KnowBe4 many times in the text, and contains KnowBe4 logos and branding. And if I click on one of the included malicious URLs, the website I am taken to contains the same. But instead of all that content being created beforehand, it is generated on the fly the moment I clicked on the URL.

Many of the dynamic examples only include branded text (see example below), but it is still enough to fool some potential victims.

KnowBe4 Webmail Login

The key differentiator is that the phishing kit that sends out these branded emails and landing pages does all of the branding on the fly. The phisher does not have to modify templates for each domain they send to. The phishing kit’s automation does all the needed changing. We wrote about these types of phishing kits here.

Personalized SMS Messages

It used to be that when you got an SMS spam or phishing message, it was some general ploy (see example below), not mentioning any details to show that it really is directed toward the victim.

SMS Phishing Example

It is becoming more and more common to see SMS-based phishing that begins with the recipient’s (first) name (see example below).

SMS Phishing Example

This means that the senders know the potential victim’s name and phone number. This is not surprising, as most of our phone records are out there on the dark web or Internet, along with our names. The SMS phishers are simply taking a bit more time to insert a victim’s name in the SMS-based phish in order to more easily trick them into thinking the message is real.

Ironically, the names attached to the phone record apparently are not always accurate. I got a privacy notice a few months ago that some stranger was using my phone number (which I have had for over 20 years). And now I get SMS-based phishing message to that guy’s first name about once a month (see example below). So, I am not only getting smishes to my true phone record, but to some stranger’s as well. That is a pain.

SMS Phishing Example

I am continually frustrated by how many robocalls and fake phishes are getting through to my cell phone on a daily basis. If you are interested, this 91-page document has the best coverage of the problem and possible defenses I have read about all in one place here.

Fake Technical Support Voice Calls

I think all of us have received calls from someone pretending to be from Microsoft proactively calling us to help us with a supposed computer virus attack on our compromised computer. I have always laughed at these attempts because I worked for Microsoft for 12 years…and I love Microsoft…but Microsoft (or Google or Apple or Facebook or Instagram, etc.) is so not going to proactively call anyone for any reason. Human-based tech support is expensive. Even with $245 to spend, you’d be lucky to find the right phone number to call to get up with the right Microsoft tech support person to get help with malware. But they definitely are not proactively calling you. It is easy for me to tell people, “Microsoft will never call you. If you get a call from Microsoft, it is a scam!”

But these days, people are getting calls from all sorts of impersonators, including fake banks, hotels companies, credit card companies, airline companies, PayPal, etc. The scammers claim they are from a company you use and that they have detected fraudulent activity. For example, “Mr. Grimes, this is your [credit card company name]. We think we have detected fraudulent activity on your account. Did you buy two American Airline tickets from Dallas, TX, to Nigeria today? No, we did not think so. Do not worry Mr. Grimes, we are here to help you. We have noticed $55,000 of other suspicious activity on your account from the last two days and we are going to reverse the charges. But first we have to make sure they are not legitimate charges. You will need to verify your account first to prove you are who we think you are. What is your login name and password?” And once you give that information, it is game over.

If you have MFA protecting your account, they will put your account into account recovery mode and get an SMS-based reset PIN code sent to your phone. The reset PIN code will be sent to you, at your phone, which they will then tell you to “verify” to them over the phone. With that, they use your reset code to reset the account and take control away from you. From there, they try to keep you on the phone and distracted and away from your account while they drain it or make fraudulent transactions. Here’s an example story.

The key is that with both SMS-based messages and voice calls, the only real authentication is potentially the caller’s phone number or voice, if you recognize it. Of course, phone numbers can be faked and even voices these days (deepfakes). It is far too easy for malicious hackers to pretend to be someone who they are not when you do not recognize the phone number or voice. Statistics show that in 40% of cell phone calls, the receiver does not have the calling phone number in their stored contacts. So, in four out of 10 calls, we usually do not recognize the number or phone number. Many of those calls are fraudulent.

My advice to end users is to be aware that SMS-based messages and voice calls are poorly authenticated and the person on the other side may not be who they say they are. If you receive an unexpected text or call, start by being suspicious. Try to get the sending party to authenticate themselves to you in a way that satisfies to you that they are who they say they are. It can be difficult.

The best mitigation to all of these attacks is education. If you make users aware of these types of more advanced social engineering attacks, the less likely they are to fall for them. Feel free to share this post with your end users as part of your routine security awareness training.

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16Mar

The Evolving Cybercriminal Market Has Given Birth to Impersonation-as-a-Service as Attackers Seek to Impersonate at Scale

March 16, 2021By 0 comment

New research documents Impersonation-as-a-Service (IMPaaS) as an emerging threat where profiles of victim users are available to be used in campaigns where impersonation is critical.

It’s not every day you hear about a new “aaS” in the world of cybersecurity. We’ve seen lots of service-oriented offerings in the world of ransomware, and even been made aware of those focusing on launching phishing attacks. But to hear that impersonation is now a service offered to the bad guys is seriously disturbing. Cybersecurity PhD-candidate Michele Campobasso discusses the reality of IMPaaS in his publication, Impersonation-as-a-Service: Characterizing the Emerging Criminal Infrastructure for User Impersonation at Scale. In it, he discusses a now defunct website – IMPaaS [dot] ru – that was offering “hundreds of thousands” of compromised victim “profiles”. These profiles included user credentials, cookies, device and behavioral fingerprints, and other metadata to “circumvent risk-based authentication system and effectively bypass multi-factor authentication mechanisms.”

In essence, a cybercriminal could purchase an account of an individual at a particular company, in a certain vertical, having a specific job title or function, etc. and take over as that person – not just on email, but be able to even access resources secured behind MFA!

We’ve talked about impersonation before, but it’s always been in the context of just using a person or company name or, at best, spoofing a lookalike domain name. But in the case of IMPaaS, it’s now been proven that the bad guys have a means to collect enough data, files, and credentials on a given victim to allow an attacker to pose as that victim when engaging in future malicious activity.

This should terrify organizations – the thought that you won’t be able to tell that it’s not the actual person means all security solutions are rendered useless. The only last defense against an attack that would leverage this level of impersonation is Security Awareness Training, which can teach a user to be wary of unusual requests, even when it (supposedly) comes from a known individual.

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15Mar

The Most Commonly Spoofed Business-Related Applications in a Phishing Campaign

March 15, 2021By 0 comment

Business-related applications like Zoom, Microsoft, and DocuSign are the most commonly spoofed services in phishing attacks, according to a new report from GreatHorn. Business apps made up 45% of all impersonation phishing attacks. Social media-related phishing attacks accounted for 34% of attacks, while consumer services like Amazon and PayPal made up 20%.

The researchers also found that while the total volume of daily phishing attempts has decreased compared to last year, the number of successful phishing attacks has increased. The researchers attribute this to attackers getting better at the social engineering aspect, as well as getting their emails past security filters.

“Though daily occurrences of phishing attacks have decreased from 36% to 25% between 2020 and 2021, weekly and monthly phishing attacks have increased from 28% to 42% and 11% to 17%, respectively,” GreatHorn says. “These attacks are increasingly difficult to detect as cybercriminals become more sophisticated and targeted in their attacks – advancing beyond the ‘batch and blast’ methodology to social engineering phishing campaigns. As a result of this, the quantity of phishing attempts being experienced by organizations may have decreased daily, but the impact of those campaigns that bypass traditional email security is increasing. As a result of increasing attacks, email security has risen to one of the top 3 IT security projects for 2021 among the organizations surveyed.”

The researchers note that a primary concern of most respondents regarding email security products was that the product would miss phishing attacks.

“Missing phishing attacks remains the top issue in current email security solutions with 39% of respondents noting this as a top concern in both 2020 and 2021,” the researchers write. They add, “Fewer organizations report being ‘satisfied’ with their current email security solution, decreasing from 76% in 2020 to 53% in 2021. On the other hand, organizations reporting their email security solution was ‘good enough’ increased from 19% in 2020 to 36% in 2021.”

New-school security awareness training can provide your organization with an essential layer of defense by teaching your employees how to recognize phishing attacks.

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11Mar

Video Verification and Deepfakes

March 11, 2021By 0 comment

Technology has introduced greater convenience for consumers around the world. With each new technological advancement, we have benefited from better, faster, and more accurate interactions.

Anyone over the age of 35 will likely remember a time before smartphones, internet banking, or one-click shopping. But each of these have been underpinned by reliable technology.

The pandemic of 2020 has forced many organisations to adopt remote working policies for their employees. But it has also made organisations reconsider how they interact with their customers who traditionally have walked into an office or branch to verify their identity.

Video Verification

Enter remote and video verification techniques, which are being adopted around the world, particularly in finance where KYC (know your customer) checks are essential. Video verification allows for customers to remotely verify their identity from the comfort of their own home, usually via a mobile app.

Depending on the organisation’s requirements, this can be a video interview handled by a live operator, or it could be completely automated, with the customer taking photos of their ID, themselves, and recording a video clip of themselves to be submitted as proof.

Video verification technologies are not just restricted to financial institutions wanting to carry out KYC checks, but other industry verticals are also considering implementing it to enhance their ability to remotely interact with customers and partners in a secure manner.

However, each new technological innovation brings with itself risks. Enter, deepfakes.

Deepfakes

Deepfakes can be broadly described as fabricated media created through AI and/or deep learning methods.

The chart below shows examples of what could be considered a deepfake. Anything below the green line is not really a deepfake (in accordance with our definition) because it is largely created through manual processes and not by AI or neural networks. As you move along the x axis, the sophistication increases as we move from static media such as photos to dynamic, complete videos.

Deepfake Chart

Sites like thispersondoesnotexist.com give very realistic images that are purely created by the AI. There may be some glitches in some areas with extra fingers or hair being out of place etc., but overall, they are good enough to fool most people during the first viewing, especially on smaller images (e.g., social media profile pics).

Deepfake ExampleDeepfake ExampleDeepfake ExampleDeepfake Example

Images source: thispersondoesnotexist.com

Video Deepfakes

Of all the deepfake media, videos are perhaps the most interesting and worrying.

Face swapping or puppeting is where the deepfake AI maps the face of the source images and generates a 3D face model based on the photos it is fed. The model maps out the features and then when fed a source video, it will map it over.

Some of the most famous earlier examples of these were President Obama’s deepfakes where the University of Washington’s graphics and imaging laboratory were able to use an audio clip to synthesize a high quality video of him speaking with accurate lip sync, composited into a target video clip.

President Deepfake Example

Source: http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/AudioToObama/

There are many other examples available whereby famous actors have been superimposed over others in movie scenes.

Risks of Deepfakes

Like most new technologies, deepfakes come with their own risks. Some early iterations of the technology were used to digitally remove clothing from women, and others have been circulating to spread disinformation or fake news, while there have been reports of criminals using deepfake audio technology to fool an organisation into sending money to a bank account controlled by fraudsters.

One of the emerging concerns is whether deepfake videos can or will be used to bypass video verification. As of today, there doesn’t appear to be any cases of deepfakes being successful in bypassing video verification systems, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, or won’t be possible in the near future.

For the most part, bypassing video verification systems is a multi-step process, with video being only one part of it. There are usually documents, photos, and other checks that need to be successfully completed prior to reaching the video stage. Secondly, video verification is still a growing market, which makes it unattractive for most criminals at the present time.

Like any biometric security system, video verification will have false acceptances and false rejections. It will be up to organisations how they want to tune their systems depending on the risk that it presents.

This in itself creates a position whereby criminals can attempt DDoS attacks by flooding video verification systems with deepfake videos they know will fail, but overload the system.  

Technical Defences

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to deal with the challenge of verifying videos and photos. The first is to look for modifications in an image or video. Forensic techniques are used to pick out whether any pixels or metadata seem altered. They can look for shadows or reflections that do not follow the laws of physics, for example, or check how many times a file has been compressed to determine whether it has been saved multiple times.

The second method is to verify an image’s integrity the moment it is taken. This involves performing dozens of checks to make sure the recording device’s location data and time stamp is not being spoofed. Do the camera’s coordinates, time zone, and altitude and nearby Wi-Fi networks all corroborate each other? Does the light in the image refract as it would for a three-dimensional scene? Or is someone taking a picture of another two-dimensional photo?

There is an ever-growing number of organisations developing technologies to automate and streamline the process of validating videos that are submitted or streamed for verification.

The Menlo Park-based nonprofit research group SRI International has been working on developing tools capable of identifying when photos and videos have been meaningfully altered from their original state after being awarded three contracts by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

More recently, Microsoft launched their own tool, Microsoft Video Authenticator, which also provides the tech for Reality Defender to validate the authenticity of videos.

Human Defence

Human intervention will still be required to address claims of false rejections, or where the confidence in automated detection controls is low. So, training of staff is vital to help them understand what characteristics are common in deepfakes, how to spot them, and how to respond to them.

This is particularly important where additional videos may be sent or streamed for additional information and it is where criminals may use psychological lures to manipulate human operators.

In conclusion, there is little evidence to suggest that deepfakes are currently being used successfully to bypass video verification checks. But that does not mean it will not be possible in the future. However, at the same time, defensive techniques continue to evolve, so the onus will be on organisations to assess the risk, implement the right level of controls, and ensure staff are trained up appropriately with new-school security awareness training.

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10Mar

Recognizing Elder Scams

March 10, 2021By 0 comment

People need to ensure that their elderly relatives are aware of scams that target older people, according to Emma McGowan at Avast. McGowan says it’s best to avoid being condescending, and to remain aware that your older relatives have more experience than you.

“First, talk with them about what to look out for and how to protect themselves,” McGowan says. “And here’s an important point of emphasis: You need to talk with them, not at them. Your older relatives have a whole lifetime of experience; a whole lifetime of making their own decisions and relying on their own judgement. It’s unlikely that they’re going to want to be lectured by someone who is 20 or 30 or even 50 years younger than they are. Think about this way: Would you want your niece or nephew to lecture you about the safety of a neighborhood that you’d lived in for longer than they’ve been alive? Of course not! And to the same token, your older relatives don’t want to be lectured about safety online.”

McGowan explains that there are ways to show your relatives how scammers can target them.

“So instead of lecturing, empower them to take care of themselves,” McGowan writes. “One way to start the conversation is by googling their names and showing them what’s publicly available online. This is a good way to visually illustrate to them how easy it is for scammers to get information about someone.”

One of the best ways to help people avoid falling for scams is to tell them to ask you for your opinion if they think something might be a scam. Many scams try to isolate their victims to prevent them from asking for a second opinion.

“You can also offer to be their sounding board if they think something might be a scam, with no judgement,” McGowan says. “Tell them they can share any email, direct message, pop-up — anything — and you’ll help them figure out if it’s legit or not. That way, you get to help your parent (or grandparent or aunt or uncle) and they get the bonus of more time spent with you.”

New-school security awareness training can help people learn to avoid scams on their own and teach their loved ones to recognize these tactics as well.

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08Mar

Think Your Cyber Insurance is Going to Cover that $6 Million in Cyber Fraud? Think Again.

March 8, 2021By 0 comment

The latest tale of an organization falling victim to a business email compromise attack on their credit card processor highlights how very specific the scenario needs to be to see a payout.

In 2018, RealPage, a Texas-based service provider for property owners and property management companies was the victim of a cyber attack that took the company for $6 million. RealPage processed their credit card transactions through a third-party processor, Stripe. Stripe fell victim to an impersonation attack where cybercriminals gained control over a RealPage user’s credentials and convinced Stripe to modify the disbursement instructions to point to a bad guy-controlled bank account. In total, $10 million was sent to the fraudulent account, with $4 million recovered.

In recent court documents where RealPage sued their cyber insurer for non-payment under their cybercrime policy, it was determined that Stripe possessed the funds at the time the fraud was committed, with the policy essentially stating that the insurer will pay for loss of or damage to “money” … resulting directly from the use of any computer to fraudulently cause a transfer of that property from inside the “premises” or “banking premises“. The court found this to mean RealPage is only covered if they themselves were the victim. But, because Stripe was the victim – despite the funds belonging to RealPage – the denial of a policy payout was upheld.

Many organizations believe that just because they have cyber insurance, they’re covered against any kind of attack. But more and more of these cases are finding their way into the headlines, making it clear that you need to be sure to read the fine print and establish the specific attack circumstances that are to be covered.

Beyond this, the least expensive form of action is to work to avoid becoming a victim in the first place. In the case of RealPage, it’s highly likely that the compromised credentials were obtained using a simple phishing attack that presented itself as needing the victim user to logon to their online email. Security Awareness Training helps to mitigate these kinds of attacks by educating users about cyber attacks, banking fraud schemes, phishing attacks, and social engineering tactics.

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05Mar

[ALERT] New Stanford Research: 88% Of Data Breaches Are Caused By Human Error

March 5, 2021By 0 comment

A brand new report confirms what we have been saying for many years now. About 9 out 10 data breaches are caused by your users.

Researchers from Stanford University and a top cybersecurity organization found that approximately 88 percent of all data breaches are caused by an employee mistake. Human error is still very much the driving force behind an overwhelming majority of cybersecurity problems.

The study was done by  Stanford University Professor Jeff Hancock and security firm Tessian. The study “Psychology of Human Error” highlighted that employees are unwilling to admit to their mistakes if organizations judge them severely.

Understanding the psychology behind human errors helps organizations to know how to prevent mistakes before they turn into data leaks. According to the study, nearly 50% of the employees stated that they are “very” or “pretty” certain they have made an error at work that could have led to security issues to their company. The study goes into detail about the differences between young and older employees, where younger users will more easily admit to mistakes and are also easier to phish.

Other Findings include:
  • Nearly 45% of respondents cited distraction as the top reason for falling for a phishing scam.
  • 57% of remote workers admit they are more distracted when working from home.
  • The top reasons for clicking on phishing emails are the perceived legitimacy of the email (43%) and the fact that it appeared to have come from either a senior executive (41%) or a well-known brand (40%).

“Your employees are focused on the job you hired them to do and when faced with to-do lists, distractions, and pressure to get things done quickly, cognitive loads become overwhelming and mistakes can happen,” the study report concluded. Stepping users through new-school security awareness training is a must that you simply cannot afford not to do.

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04Mar

Universal Health Services Becomes Next Victim of Ryuk Ransomware, Costing $67 Million

March 4, 2021By 0 comment

Fortune 500 hospital and health care service provider Universal Health Services (UHS) recently became victim to Ryuk ransomware in September 2020.

UHS released the following statement, “The substantial majority of the unfavorable impact was attributable to our acute care services and consisted primarily of lost operating income resulting from the related decrease in patient activity as well as increased revenue reserves recorded in connection with the associated billing delays,”

The hospital operations system and affected systems managed to be restored. The hospital has stated that normal operations have resumed.

Remember in October 2020 when the government warned of Ryuk ransomware targeting healthcare industries? The deadly ransomware group has already hit about 20 companies a week and have been the masterminds behind the big wave of attacks on the US healthcare system.

It’s important to make sure you frequently check your network’s effectiveness. New-school security awareness training can also help your users spot and report any suspicious activity in their day to day operations.

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02Mar

New Dutch Data Breach Report Warns of Explosive Increase in Cyber Attacks and Stolen Personal Data

March 2, 2021By 0 comment

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) recently measured the number of reports of data theft in 2020 and the number of attacks skyrocketed. The report documented that it increased no less than 30% in 2020 compared to the year prior.

Types of attacks that have been reported are centered around phishing or malware. It’s very concerning that cybercriminals are attempting to steal personal data. If successful, it can be very costly to you and your organization.

The report also detailed specifics, including 1,173 reports of data leaks which tactics are used to steal personal data. 2019 compared to the previous year alone was already increased in attacks by 25%. Therefore, the amount of attacks have only continued to increase.

In a quote by AP chairman Aleid Wolfsen detailing the report, “Many people are personally affected when criminals manage to steal their personal data. Criminals use the stolen data for identity fraud and to carry out spam and phishing attacks. The damage of such scams can be such that people really get into trouble and lose all their savings.”

With an estimated 600,000 to 2,000,000 people who were potentially affected by a data breach, it’s important to have strong password protections measures, including the use of multi-factor authentication. While not fully effective, it’s can help limit or prevent any potential damage.  New-school security awareness training is the best layer of defense for protecting your organizations from phishing and ransomware attacks.

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