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Key Takeaways for Control 4

Most fresh installs of operating systems or applications come with pre-configured settings that are usually insecure or not properly configured with security in mind. Use the leverage provided by multiple frameworks such as CIS Benchmarks or NIST NCP to find out if your organization needs to augment or adjust any baselines to become better aligned with policies your organization is trying to adhere to.

Zero-day vulnerabilities by design have always been a thorn in the side of the security team that’s trying to balance allowing employees to continue working productively with ensuring that they are protected from threats while waiting for a patch. Recently, a new zero-day threat was discovered called CVE-2021-40444 that adds risk for any employee that opens a file containing this vulnerability.

Financial account takeover is a form of identity fraud where fraudsters use stolen credentials to break into digital financial accounts of genuine customers. An exponential increase in the number of consumers using fintech services and digital channels for banking needs during the pandemic has opened up the attack surface like never before, leading to a greater risk to financial institutions.

In August, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) identified a small number of attacks (less than 10) that attempted to exploit a remote code execution vulnerability in MSHTML using specially crafted Microsoft Office documents. These attacks used the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-40444, as part of an initial access campaign that distributed custom Cobalt Strike Beacon loaders. These loaders communicated with an infrastructure that Microsoft associates with multiple cybercriminal campaigns, including human-operated ransomware.

TTEC, [NASDAQ: TTEC], a company used by some of the world’s largest brands to help manage customer support and sales online and over the phone, is dealing with disruptions from a network security incident resulting from a ransomware attack, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.

Ash Fontana Contributor

• Growing up in the intelligence era

Investors in AI-first technology companies serving the defense industry, such as Palantir, Primer and Anduril, are doing well. Anduril, for one, reached a valuation of over $4 billion in less than four years. Many other companies that build general-purpose, AI-first technologies — such as image labeling — receive large (undisclosed) portions of their revenue from the defense industry.

Once considered highly valuable cyberweapons held mostly by elite government hackers, publicly disclosed zero-day exploits are on a sharp rise. Project Zero, a Google team devoted to identifying and cataloging zero days, has tallied 44 this year alone where hackers had likely discovered them before researchers did. That’s already a sharp rise from last year, which saw 25. The number has increased every year since 2018. Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security, a company that connects cybersecurity researchers and companies with vulnerabilities, said that the rise in zero days is thanks to the ad hoc way that software is usually programmed, which often treats security as an afterthought. “It was absolutely inevitable,” she said. “We’ve never addressed the root cause of all of these vulnerabilities, which is not building security in from the ground up.” But almost paradoxically, the rise in zero days reflects an online world in which certain individuals are more vulnerable, but most are actually safer from hackers.

COVID-19 , Governance & Risk Management , Incident & Breach Response

September 15, 2021 • Jake Munroe

In intelligence analysis, a picture is worth a thousand words… but could it be worth even more? Traditionally, intelligence analysis has been text-centric. Intelligence analysts in the private and public sector spend hours collecting and reading documents, social media posts, news sites, classified reporting, and more all to get a full picture of what is happening with the topic or event they are digging into. While text has and will always give powerful insights for analysts, they  can often gain more insights from images or images married with text, and understand the broader picture (no pun intended!) of what’s happening.

Our thanks to DEFCON for publishing their outstanding DEFCON Conference Blockchain Village Videos on the groups’ YouTube channel.

The European Union’s Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) regulation finally came into full force in most countries this year, putting the burden on companies to meet authentication requirements for payments. Regulations like these often come with additional security hoops consumers have to jump through. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Companies operating constant satellite surveillance systems seem to be struggling to find a market for their imagery.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates are what cause your browser to display a padlock icon, indicating that your connection to a websites is secure. Although the padlock may soon be hidden from view, certificates aren’t going anywhere.

Our thanks to DEFCON for publishing their outstanding DEFCON Conference Blockchain Village Videos on the groups’ YouTube channel.