Cybersecurity

Business email compromise (BEC) scams have proven to be a lucrative venture, and the criminals behind them are looking to add another revenue stream to their successful business model: BEC-as-a-Service. These actors make it easy for their customers to impersonate CFOs and other executives to request urgent wire transfers, payment of fake invoices, and other actions designed to divert their targets’ money into their hands. This is bad news in an environment where BEC attacks already cost organizations billions of dollars.

Google has set up a free, online quiz anyone can take to evaluate their ability to spot a phishing email. The quiz tests visitors on a series of emails to see if they can distinguish telltale signs of phishing. Many of the examples are actually based on real events, such as the massive phishing attempt that hit Google Doc users in 2017 or an email that Russian hackers sent to Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2016. After each email, Google explains how to tell the signs, often by hovering over URLs to check where they lead and checking the spelling of email addresses.

It may seem strange that nation states are behind breaches of companies like Marriott and Delta. Such attacks would seem to be done for financial gain, a motive that is more often attributed to individuals and criminal groups than countries. As an article from Radware explains, foreign intelligence agencies can accumulate a lot of information about these companies’ customers from these breaches, which they can use to build profiles of certain individuals.

The NCCIC has published an advisory on path traversal and improper authentication vulnerabilities in Johnson Controls Facility Explorer. Versions 14.x prior to 14.4u1 and 6.x prior to 6.6 are affected. Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to read, write, and delete sensitive files to gain administrator privileges in the Facility Explorer system. Johnson Controls has mitigated these vulnerabilities in the updated versions, which the NCCIC recommends users upgrade to. The NCCIC also advises on a series of mitigating measures for this vulnerability.