Cybersecurity

Today, the water sector, EPA and the White House National Security Council announced the launch of the Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Initiative – Water and Wastewater Sector Action Plan - a 100-day “surge” to investigate the pros and cons of utilities implementing industrial control system (ICS) monitoring and sharing monitoring results with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The FBI has published a TLP:WHITE Private Industry Notification (PIN) providing context and recommendations to protect against malicious activity by Iranian cyber group Emennet Pasargad. While some of the Emennet’s  most notable cyber activities have involved information operations, particularly election interference activities, it has also conducted traditional cyber exploitation activity targeting several sectors, including oil and petrochemical, financial, and telecommunications, in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East.

Threat actors continue abusing Microsoft Office products to fool unsuspecting individuals and to inject malware onto victims’ devices. Since December, threat actors have been sending mass phishing attacks with Excel files that deceive victims into downloading Emotet onto their systems. After victims open the Excel file, it prompts them to enable macros which subsequently downloads Emotet and enables other malicious activity.

Ransomware threat actors continue to terrorize organizations across the world and when one group is shutdown another seemingly appears. It’s no surprise that last year saw a lot of ransomware activity. According to Digital Shadows, in the last quarter of 2021 there were 781 ransomware victims reported on data-leakage sites, a 37 percent increase compared to the previous quarter. The U.S. was the most targeted country with over 300 attacks.