InfoSec and Compliance – With 20 years of blogging experience, DISC InfoSec blog is dedicated to providing trusted insights and practical solutions for professionals and organizations navigating the evolving cybersecurity landscape. From cutting-edge threats to compliance strategies, this blog is your reliable resource for staying informed and secure. Dive into the content, connect with the community, and elevate your InfoSec expertise!
Oct 08 2020
The Springfield Public Schools district in Massachusetts has become the victim of a ransomware attack that has caused the closure of schools while they investigate the cyberattack.
Source: Massachusetts school district shut down by ransomware attack
FBI warning schools to create a ransomware attack plan
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riLtsU9IKiI&ab_channel=News5Cleveland
Oct 06 2020
Including HP Official Ink and Toner cartridge security, HP announced rewards up to $10,000 under the new printer bug bounty program.
After pioneering a bug rewards program for printer security, HP takes another step in this direction. As announced, HP has expanded its bug bounty program for printers to include cartridge security vulnerabilities.
Source: HP Printer Bug Bounty Expands To Include Cartridge Security
Oct 05 2020
Jailbreak involves combining last year’s checkm8 exploit with the Blackbird vulnerability disclosed this August.
Source: Hackers claim they can now jailbreak Apple’s T2 security chip | ZDNet
How to Disable T2 Security
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzjXgPmVtdQ
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Oct 04 2020
No patients were affected, but the incident was another reminder of the risks in the increasingly common assaults on healthcare computer networks.
A Philadelphia company that sells software used in hundreds of clinical trials, including the crash effort to develop tests, treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus, was hit by a ransomware attack that has slowed some of those trials over the past two weeks.
The attack on eResearch Technology, which has not previously been reported, began two weeks ago when employees discovered that they were locked out of their data by ransomware, an attack that holds victims’ data hostage until they pay to unlock it. ERT said clinical trial patients were never at risk, but customers said the attack forced trial researchers to track their patients with pen and paper.
Source: Clinical Trials Hit by Ransomware Attack on Health Tech Firm
Clinic.al Trials Hit by Ransomware Attack on Health Tech Firm
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wYhmwTtZ3w&ab_channel=NewsHotDailyc
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Oct 02 2020
Suitable for senior management and the C-suite, general or legal counsel, IT executives, IT organizations, and IT and security students, this pocket guide will give you a solid introduction to the CMMC and its requirements.
A clear, concise primer on the CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification), this pocket guide:
Oct 02 2020
Christopher Wright is one of IT Governance Publishing’s most prolific writers, having released five books with us over the past six years.
His work covers many different topics, including advice on organizational cyber security, project management and risk management auditing.
In How Cyber Security Can Protect Your Business – A guide for all stakeholders, Wright provides an effective and efficient framework to help organizations manage cyber governance, risk and compliance.
How Cyber Security Can Protect Your BusinessBusinesses must protect themselves and their reputations, while reassuring stakeholders they take cyber security seriously. Wright’s pocket guide:
Receive 15% off all of Christopher Wright’s books throughout October by entering the voucher code WRIGHT15 at the checkout. |
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Oct 01 2020
Take a look at the top data breaches and cyber attacks in September, as well as our full list of 102 incidents.
Sep 29 2020
The newly published Building Security in Maturity Model provides the software security basics organizations should cover to keep up with their peers.
As application security methodology and best practices have evolved over more than a decade, the Building Security in Maturity Model (BSIMM) has been there each year to track how organizations are making progress. BSIMM11, released last week by Synopsys, is based on the software security practices in place at 130 different firms across numerous industries, including financial services, software, cloud, and healthcare.
The practices were measured by the model’s proprietary yardstick, which lumps 121 different software security metrics into four major domains: governance, intelligence, secure software development lifecycle (SSDL) touchpoints, and deployment. Each of these domains are further broken down into three practice categories containing numerous activities that slide from simple to very mature.
Similar to previous reports, BSIMM11 shows that most organizations are at the very least hitting the basics — including activities like performing external penetration testing and instituting basic software security training across development organizations. The following are the most common activities cited for each practice category, providing an excellent yardstick for the bare minimum that organizations should be doing to keep up with their peers.
Source: 12 Bare-Minimum Benchmarks for AppSec Initiatives
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Sep 28 2020
The mass transition to working from home clearly shows the best technologies for a secure and convenient remote environment.
Users receive the maximum security benefits by connecting to virtual desktops from thin clients.
A thin client is a terminal-mode device. It often doesn’t even have any internal storage, being just a box that connects to a server and lets users connect a monitor and peripheral devices (configuration may vary depending on the specific model). The thin client does not process or store any work data.
Of course, a thin client requires a good communications channel. In recent years, however, that’s not much of a hurdle.
Communication between a thin client and a server is usually conducted over an encrypted protocol, solving the problem of the unreliable network environment.
Source: Thin clients from a security perspective
2020 Security Playbook
1) Data discovery
2) Compartmented Data Access
3) Move to thin client
4) Increase focus on AAA
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Sep 27 2020
ISO/IEC 27701:2019 provides guidance on data protection, including how organizations should manage personal information, and helps demonstrate compliance with privacy regulations around the world, such as the GDPR.
The Standard integrates with the international information security management standard ISO/IEC 27001 to extend an ISMS (information security management system), enabling an organization to establish, implement, maintain and continually improve a PIMS (privacy information management system).
ITG pocket guide ISO/IEC 27701:2019: An introduction to privacy information management is an ideal primer for anyone implementing a PIMS based on ISO 27701.
Improve your privacy information management regimeCo-written by Alan Shipman, an acknowledged expert in the field of privacy and personal information and the project editor of ISO/IEC 27701, this pocket guide will help you understand the basics of privacy management, including:
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Sep 25 2020
The database containing personal information of over 600,000 clients of the US fitness chain Town Sports was exposed on the Internet.
The archive contained records for almost 600,000 members or staff, exposed info includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, last four digits of credit cards, credit card expiration dates, and a member’s billing history.
“Fitness chain Town Sports International has exposed 600,000 records of members and employees on the web without a password or any other authentication required to access it, Comparitech researchers report.” reads the report published by Comparitech, “Comparitech security researcher Bob Diachenko received a tip from cybersecurity expert Sami Toivonen about the exposure on September 21, 2020.”
Source: Data for 600K customers of U.S. fitness chains Town Sports leaked online
Sep 24 2020
If you got someone else’s “free offer” in what looked like a misdirected message, would you take a peek?
Dear Christopher, we have your packet in queue. Address: Londonderry, Ballynagard crescent http COLON SLASH SLASH xxxxxxxx DOT com SLASH zzzzzzz
The message is meant to look as though it was sent to the wrong number, so the crooks are relying on you being intrigued enough to click through, whereupon they use some sneaky “reverse authentication” psychology to lure you in further
Source: SMS phishing scam pretends to be Apple “chatbot” – don’t fall for it!
Sep 24 2020
An unnamed U.S. federal agency was hit with a cyber-attack after a hacker used valid access credentials, authorities said on Thursday.
While many details of the hack weren’t revealed, federal authorities did divulge that the hacker was able to browse directories, copy at least one file and exfiltrate data, according to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA.
The hacker implanted malware that evaded the agency’s protection system and was able to gain access to the network by using valid access credentials for multiple users’ Microsoft 365 accounts and domain administrator accounts, according to authorities.
Source: Hacker Accessed Network of U.S. Agency and Downloaded Data
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Sep 23 2020
Tyler Technologies, a Texas-based company that bills itself as the largest provider of software and technology services to the United States public sector, is battling a network intrusion that has disrupted its operations. The company declined to discuss the exact cause of the disruption, but their response so far is straight out of the playbook…
Earlier today, the normal content on tylertech.com was replaced with a notice saying the site was offline. In a statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity after the markets closed central time, Tyler Tech said early this morning the company became aware that an unauthorized intruder had gained access to its phone and information technology systems.
“Upon discovery and out of an abundance of caution, we shut down points of access to external systems and immediately began investigating and remediating the problem,” Tyler’s Chief Information Officer Matt Bieri said. “We have since engaged outside IT security and forensics experts to conduct a detailed review and help us securely restore affected equipment. We are implementing enhanced monitoring systems, and we have notified law enforcement.”
“At this time and based on the evidence available to us to-date, all indications are that the impact of this incident is limited to our internal network and phone systems,” their statement continues. “We currently have no reason to believe that any client data, client servers, or hosted systems were affected.”
Source: Govt. Services Firm Tyler Technologies Hit in Apparent Ransomware Attack
Sep 22 2020
A global police sting dubbed Operation DisrupTor targeted vendors and buyers of illicit goods on the dark web, Europol announced.
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Sep 21 2020
Tracking allows the companies to improve their algorithm and app experience, but this experience comes at the cost of your digital data. In this guide, we’re going to focus on the search engines and browsers that you’ll want to use if you care about your online privacy.
Popular search engines and browsers do a great job at finding and browsing content on the web, but can do a better job at protecting your privacy while doing so.
With your data being the digital currency of our times, websites, advertisers, browsers, and search engines track your behavior your on the web to deliver tailored advertising, improve their algorithms, or improve their services.
Below are the best privacy-focused search engines that do not track your searchers or display advertisements based on your cookies or interests.
Source: Guard your data with these privacy-focused search engines & browsers
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Sep 17 2020
One of the new features in iOS 14 is the ability to change the default email or browser app to a third-party alternative such as Chrome, Edge, or Outlook. A bug in the first public release of iOS 14, however, causes your default browser or mail app setting to reset to Mail or Safari when […]
Source: iOS 14 default app settings automatically reset to Mail and Safari after reboot – 9to5Mac
In the version of iOS 14 released to the public this week, there is a massive caveat to the new default browser and settings. If you reboot your iPhone or iPad, the default app setting will reset to Apple’s first-party Mail and Safari applications.
What this means is that if you set Chrome as the default browser, but then your iPhone dies or you need to reboot it, Safari will once again become the default browser app until you go back into the Settings app and make the change again. The same applies to email apps such as Microsoft Outlook and Spark as well.
This is almost certainly some sort of bug on Apple’s side, because it is affecting email and browser apps from multiple companies including Google, Microsoft, and Readdle. On Twitter, a Google Chrome engineer has acknowledged the problem, though the ball is likely in Apple’s court to roll out some sort of fix — unless this is bizarrely the intended behavior.
Sep 16 2020
DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, announced that August 2020 ended in over 2 billion total searches via its search platform.
Source: Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo is growing fast
Sep 15 2020
Nearly 2,000 e-commerce shops pwned over weekend so it’s time to migrate
Thousands of e-commerce stores built using Magento 1 have been poisoned with malicious code that steals customers’ bank card information as they enter their details to order stuff online.
Sansec, a software company focused on these so-called “digital skimming” attacks, discovered that 1,904 cyber-shops had been altered by miscreants over the weekend to include malicious JavaScript that siphoned off folks’ card info.
“This automated campaign is by far the largest one that Sansec has identified since it started monitoring in 2015,” it said in a statement on Monday. “The previous record was 962 hacked stores in a single day in July last year.”
The security biz estimated attackers have stolen personal data from “tens of thousands customers” so far. The intrusions can be traced back to a Magneto 1 zero-day exploit being sold by a Russian-speaking hacker going by the name “z3r0day” on a shady online forum.
For $5,000, z3r0day will show you a video on how to exploit a security hole in the web software to inject the digital-skimming code into an e-commerce site’s files so that the code is run when a customer goes to a payment page on the hijacked site. No authentication is required. The hacker promised not to sell the exploit to more than 10 people to keep it under wraps and valuable.
Unfortunately, the vulnerability isn’t easy to patch as the Adobe-owned Magento has ended support for the software. The best way to avoid such attacks is to migrate to Magento 2, a spokesperson from Sansec told El Reg. “Ideally they should upgrade to Magento 2, but we understand that merchants may need more time. Meanwhile, we recommend having server-side malware monitoring set up and to contract an alternative vendor for critical security patches.”
Techies at Sansec have studied two servers with IP addresses in the US and France that were targeted by crooks armed with z3r0day’s exploit. The payment details appear to have been funnelled through to a website hosted in Moscow. “We are not at liberty to disclose affected merchants. However, we have shared all relevant data with law enforcement today,” the Sansec spokesperson told us. ®
Sep 14 2020
CISA says attacks have started a year ago and some have been successful.
Source: CISA: Chinese state hackers are exploiting F5, Citrix, Pulse Secure, and Exchange bugs | ZDNet
Chinese Hackers Working w/ Ministry of State Security Charged w/ Global Computer Intrusion Campaign
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8zhLOnXDdY&ab_channel=TheJusticeDepartment
The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics
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