Over the past several years, hackers have increasingly targeted the physical systems we rely on to run our society. Electrical utilities, food processing plants, and aluminum producers are only a few of the industries that have recently been attacked, resulting in tremendous supply chain disruptions. Fortunately, innovative research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is bringing …
Iran threatens to hacked off with us. Are we really on the brink of World War Three? Remember the new combat will feature cyber conflict – it’ll be WW IoT.
The buffet of IT security solutions is maddening – so many products, so many promises – but what will protect your organization? Deception technology is less of a fringe player these days. Although it has been on the radar of well-heeled organizations for some time, it is becoming accessible to smaller organizations with fewer resources thanks to more manageable and affordable product offerings.
Ray Kafity, VP at Attivo Networks META region, said it is generally understood that prevention alone is not enough, and attackers now have the ability to ‘roam’ or sit inside a network for extended periods of time before proceeding with an attack/data breach. There is a need to have a tool to control the network once it is compromised. Businesses are now looking to deploy so-called ‘honey pots’ inside the network to trap the attacker by creating a fake environment based on a deception solution. However, this solution must be based on authentic operating systems and must reflect a similar DNA to the true network.
You have helmed several leadership roles in several companies. Tell us a bit about your journey from the marketing space to starting Marticulate and then becoming a Chief Deception Officer at Attivo. What was the transition like? From core marketing to core technology? I didn’t originally start out thinking I was going to become a sales or marketing professional. If you have ever played Monopoly, think of the stigma they put on that profession, and as such it really wasn’t top of mind. That said, while I was going to Santa Clara University, studying both electrical engineering and computer science, I took a job as an assistant to the VP of Marketing.
While cyberattacks continue to grow, deception-based technology is providing accurate and scalable detection and response to in-network threats.
Distributed deception platforms have grown well beyond basic DecoyDoc trapping techniques and are designed for high-interaction deceptions, early detection, and analysis of attackers’ lateral movement. Additionally, deception platforms change the asymmetry of an attack by giving security teams the upper hand when a threat enters their network and forcing the attackers to be right 100% of the time or have their presence revealed, and by providing decoys that obfuscate the attack surface and through valuable threat intelligence and counterintelligence that is required to outmaneuver the advanced human attacker.
Criminals make student data public in escalating demands for ransom; some districts pay up
Hackers looking to exploit sensitive information for profit are increasingly targeting the nation’s schools, where they are finding a relatively weak system to protect a valuable asset: student data.
Cyberthieves have struck more than three dozen school systems from Georgia to California so far this year, stealing paychecks and data or taking over networks to extort money. The thefts have prompted many school officials to hire cybersecurity consultants to fight back against a trend that experts say is growing fast.
Thanks to a newly discovered security flaw, your home Wi-Fi is completely hackable, giving cyber thieves a front row seat to everything from your private chats to your baby monitor. And there’s not much you can do about it — yet.
Bob Rudis, chief data scientist at Rapid7, a security data and analytics company, told NBC News this vulnerability was particularly troubling.
“When I woke up this morning and saw this one, I was taken aback,” he said.
Since May, hackers have been penetrating the computer networks of companies that operate nuclear power stations and other energy facilities, as well as manufacturing plants in the United States and other countries.
Among the companies targeted was the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan., according to security consultants and an urgent joint report issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week.
DoublePulsar is estimated to have previously infected nearly 100,000 Windows PCs.
Hackers are reportedly using the NSA’s leaked DoublePulsar malware to infect vulnerable Windows PCs with a new cryptocurrency miner identified as “Trojan.BtcMine.1259”. The Trojan reportedly leverages DoublePulsar, an NSA hacking tool leaked by the Shadow Brokers, to infect systems running unsecured SMB protocols.
DoublePulsar was at the heart of the WannaCry attacks and was used by hackers to spread the self-propagating ransomware last month. Security experts estimated that hackers used the NSA malware, which essentially functions as a backdoor, providing access to vulnerable Windows systems, to infect nearly 100,000 Windows PCs.
