There is no doubt that complex industrial control systems need to be secured, but what is holding us back from achieving even a minimum level of security? ICS cybersecurity firm Dragos explores five misconceptions that might be inhibiting your organization from reducing risk to your ICS environments:
The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) has released information on a vulnerability affecting OpenSMTPD. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to take control of an affected system. OpenSMTPD is an open-source server-side implementation of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) that is part of the OpenBSD Project. CISA encourages users and administrators to review CERT/CC’s Vulnerability Note VU#390745 and apply the necessary updates.
Until mid-2019, previous ICS-impacting ransomware had been limited to only IT-based mechanisms that enabled the propagation into control system environments. ICS cybersecurity firm Dragos assesses the newly disclosed EKANS ransomware (also reported as SNAKE) is not the first sample with direct ICS-impacting implications.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has launched its “Identity Theft Central” webpage to provide 24/7 access to online information regarding tax-related identity theft and data security protection. Tax-related identity theft occurs when someone steals personal information to commit tax fraud.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published an advisory on an insufficiently protected credentials vulnerability in AutomationDirect C-More Touch Panels. Firmware versions prior to 6.53 are affected. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may allow an attacker to get account information such as usernames and passwords, obscure or manipulate process data, and lock out access to the device. AutomationDirect recommends users upgrade to version 6.53.
Next week, February 3 to 7, is Tax Identity Theft Awareness Week. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will provide webinars and other resources throughout the week to help educate the public on how to protect against identity theft this tax season. The U.S.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020; 1:00 – 2:00 pm ET; webinar
Cybersecurity firm Trend Micro recently released a report detailing their new OT honeypot research.
According to Proofpoint’s just released State of the Phish report, 55 percent of surveyed organizations dealt with at least one successful phishing attack in 2019. The survey involved more than 600 information security professionals, who also reported a high frequency of social media engineering attempts across a range of methods. Other forms of attack reflected cyber criminals' continued focus on compromising individual end users.
SentinelLabs reports it has observed a new ransomware, called “Snake,” in targeted campaigns over the last month. According to SentinelLabs, Snake stands out among current ransomware variants for being more aggressive and more complex. Upon infection, relevant files are overwritten with encrypted data. Each modified file is also tagged with the string “EKANS” (Snake backwards). In addition, the names of modified files are appended with random characters, rather than a singular or uniform extension change.
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