Pennsylvania Approves Ransomware Bill

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Pennsylvania Approves Ransomware Bill

Pennsylvania has approved new legislation barring state and local governments from using taxpayers’ money to pay ransoms to cyber-criminals. 

Senate Bill 726, amending Title 18 (Crimes and Offenses) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, was approved by the Pennsylvania Senate on Wednesday. The legislation has now advanced to the House of Representatives for further consideration.

The amendment defines ransomware and makes it illegal to possess, use, develop, sell or threaten to use the malware in Pennsylvania. 

Penalties set for the newly imposed ransomware offenses vary depending on how much money is being exploited. While some violations are classed as first-degree misdemeanors, others have been designated a first-degree felony.

While prohibiting state and local governments from spending taxpayers’ dollars on cyber ransoms generally, the legislation allows this practice to go ahead should a declaration of disaster emergency be made and authorized by the governor.

Under the new legislation, state agencies, including the General Assembly, local government entities, school districts, state-related universities, community colleges and charter and cyber schools are required to notify the Office of Administration of ransomware attacks within an hour of discovery. Commonwealth agencies must report ransomware within two hours. 

The Office of Administration is required to notify the FBI of ransomware attacks within 24 hours. In addition, the office must submit an annual report to the General Assembly on ransomware attacks. 

The bill’s primary sponsor, senator Kristin Phillips-Hill, said: “We have seen an increase in ransomware attacks in governmental entities at all levels, as well as against critical infrastructure across the United States.

“We know that these attacks will grow as technology used by criminals becomes more sophisticated.” 

She added: “This legislation draws a line in the sand to say that taxpayers will not pay the ransom requested by entities seeking to illegally extort cash from hard-working Pennsylvanians.”

On January 19, the Senate of Pennsylvania also approved legislation that would create a new Office of Information Technology and require cybersecurity best practices across state agencies.

The new office would manage and maintain IT procurement within state agencies and establish a strategic plan for future IT projects across state government.

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Crime Shop Sells Hacked Logins to Other Crime Shops

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Up for the “Most Meta Cybercrime Offering” award this year is Accountz Club, a new cybercrime store that sells access to purloined accounts at services built for cybercriminals, including shops peddling stolen payment cards and identities, spamming tools, email and phone bombing services, and those selling authentication cookies for a slew of popular websites.

Criminals ripping off other crooks is a constant theme in the cybercrime underworld; Accountz Club’s slogan  — “the best autoshop for your favorite shops’ accounts” — just normalizes this activity by making logins stolen from users of various cybercrime shops for sale at a fraction of their account balances.

The site says it sells “cracked” accounts, or those that used passwords which could be easily guessed or enumerated by automated tools. All of the credentials being sold by Accountz provide access to services that in turn sell access to stolen information or hijacked property, as in the case of “bot shops” that resell access to infected computers.

One example is Genesis Market, where customers can search for stolen credentials and authentication cookies from a broad range of popular online destinations. Genesis even offers a custom-made web browser where you can load authentication cookies from botted PCs and waltz right into the account without having to enter a username or password or mess with multi-factor authentication.

Accountz is currently selling four different Genesis logins for about 40-50 percent of their unspent balances. Genesis mostly gets its inventory of botted computers and stolen logins from resellers who specialize in deploying infostealer malware via email and booby-trapped websites. Likewise, it appears Accountz also derives much of its stock from a handful of resellers, who presumably are the same ones doing the cybercrime service account cracking.

The Genesis bot shop.

In essence, Accountz customers are paying for illicit access to cybercrime services that sell access to compromised resources that can be abused for cybercrime. That’s seriously meta.

Accountz says its inventory is low right now but that it expects to offer a great deal more stock in the coming days. I don’t doubt that’s true, and it’s somewhat remarkable that services like this aren’t more common: From reporting my “Breadcrumbs” series on prominent cybercrime actors, it’s clear that a great many cybercriminals will use the same username and password across multiple services online.

What’s more, relatively few cybercrime shops online offer their users any sort of multi-factor authentication. That’s probably because so few customers supply their real contact information when they sign up. As a result, it is often far easier for customers to simply create a new account than it is to regain control over a hacked one, or to change a forgotten password. On top of that, most shops have only rudimentary tools for blocking automated login attempts and password cracking activity.

It will be interesting to see whether any of the cybercrime shops most heavily represented in the logins for sale at Accountz start to push back. After all, draining customer account balances and locking out users is likely to increase customer support costs for these shops, lower customer satisfaction, and perhaps even damage their reputations on the crime forums where they peddle their wares.

Oh, the horror.

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Memorial Health System Confirms Data Breach

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Memorial Health System Confirms Data Breach

A cyber-attack on an Ohio-based health system may have exposed the protected health information (PHI) of 216,478 patients.

Memorial Health System was hit with ransomware in the early hours of August 15 2021. The incident forced the health system to suspend user access to all information technology applications related to its operations.

The disruption caused surgical cases and radiology exams to be canceled and placed Memorial Health System emergency departments on diversion.

Speaking at the time of the incident, Memorial Health System president and CEO Scott Cantley said: “Staff at our hospitals – Marietta Memorial, Selby and Sistersville General Hospital – are working with paper charts while systems are restored, and data recovered.”

A press statement, released three days after news of the ransomware attack broke, gave the impression that Memorial Health System had opted to pay its attackers.

“We have reached a negotiated solution and are beginning the process that will restore operations as quickly and as safely as possible,” said Cantley in the August 18 statement.

He added: “We are following a deliberate, systematic approach to bring systems back online securely and in a manner that prioritizes our ability to provide patient care.”

An investigation into the security incident determined that attackers had broken into the health system’s network on July 10 2021, then waited a month to deploy ransomware.

In September last year, Memorial Health System discovered that the patients’ data might have been accessed and exfiltrated in the incident. A review of what files the threat actors could have accessed was carried out. 

By December 9 2021, it had become clear that patients’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, medical/treatment information and health insurance information may have been viewed and stolen.

Memorial Health System began notifying impacted patients via letter on January 12 2022. Individuals affected by the data breach have been offered a complimentary 12-month membership to Kroll’s credit monitoring service. 

Jennifer Offenberger, associate vice president of service excellence at Memorial Health System, said: “While the extensive investigation with the FBI and cybersecurity teams indicates no reason to suspect there has been any fraudulent use or public release of patient information associated with this incident, we are notifying patients whose information may have been accessible during the breach.”

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China’s Olympics App Is Horribly Insecure

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China is mandating that athletes download and use a health and travel app when they attend the Winter Olympics next month. Citizen Lab examined the app and found it riddled with security holes.

Key Findings:

MY2022, an app mandated for use by all attendees of the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, has a simple but devastating flaw where encryption protecting users’ voice audio and file transfers can be trivially sidestepped. Health customs forms which transmit passport details, demographic information, and medical and travel history are also vulnerable. Server responses can also be spoofed, allowing an attacker to display fake instructions to users.
MY2022 is fairly straightforward about the types of data it collects from users in its public-facing documents. However, as the app collects a range of highly sensitive medical information, it is unclear with whom or which organization(s) it shares this information.
MY2022 includes features that allow users to report “politically sensitive” content. The app also includes a censorship keyword list, which, while presently inactive, targets a variety of political topics including domestic issues such as Xinjiang and Tibet as well as references to Chinese government agencies.
While the vendor did not respond to our security disclosure, we find that the app’s security deficits may not only violate Google’s Unwanted Software Policy and Apple’s App Store guidelines but also China’s own laws and national standards pertaining to privacy protection, providing potential avenues for future redress.

News article:

It’s not clear whether the security flaws were intentional or not, but the report speculated that proper encryption might interfere with some of China’s ubiquitous online surveillance tools, especially systems that allow local authorities to snoop on phones using public wireless networks or internet cafes. Still, the researchers added that the flaws were probably unintentional, because the government will already be receiving data from the app, so there wouldn’t be a need to intercept the data as it was being transferred.

[…]

The app also included a list of 2,422 political keywords, described within the code as “illegalwords.txt,” that worked as a keyword censorship list, according to Citizen Lab. The researchers said the list appeared to be a latent function that the app’s chat and file transfer function was not actively using.

The US government has already advised athletes to leave their personal phones and laptops home and bring burners.

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Multiple Vulnerabilities in Cisco Products Could Allow for Arbitrary Code Execution

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Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Cisco Products, the most severe of which could allow for arbitrary code execution. Successful exploitation of the most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute code on the affected systems. Depending on the privileges associated with the targeted user, an attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users configured to have fewer privileges on the system could be less impacted than those who operate with elevated privileges.

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McAfee, FireEye merger yields Trellix, a unified XDR security company

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Trellix, a new company formed from the merger of cybersecurity giants McAfee Enterprise and FireEye, is intent on becoming the leader in XDR (extended detection and response) technology by combining applications from both of the formerly separate companies into an interoperable suite of products for threat prevention, detection and response.

The strategy and the new company name were revealed this week by corporate parent Symphony Technology Group (STG), which acquired and merged McAfee Enterprise and FireEye last year. The new suite of products will cover endpoint and network infrastructure security, offer programs tailored for SOCs (security operations centers) and increasingly incorporate machine learning and automation, company officials said.

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(ISC)2 Appoints its First CISO

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(ISC)2 Appoints its First CISO

(ISC)2 has announced the appointment of Jon France, CISSP, as its first chief information security officer (CISO).

The non-profit association of certified cybersecurity professionals said France will lead all of its cybersecurity operations. This includes providing regular risk assessments and strategic insights to (ISC)2’s senior management and the board of directors and ensuring security is ingrained in all aspects of the organization’s strategy.

In addition, he will advocate best security practices for members around the world, publicly representing the body in this respect. He will report directly to (ISC)2 CEO Clar Rosso.

France’s new role follows more than 25 years of experience building and leading diverse technology and security teams. His primary focus has been on raising the resilience of the broader technology ecosystem and the information that flows through, protecting organizations and consumers.

Before his new post, France was head of industry security for GSMA, a global organization representing the mobile ecosystem. Here, he led GSMA’s fraud and security function and served on the company’s leadership team. He previously served as deputy IT director and business continuity manager LexisNexis.

Commenting on the appointment, Clar Rosso, CEO of (ISC)², said: “The role of CISO at (ISC)² is a unique one, and Jon provides us with the experience and passion to lead our security operations and serve as an advocate for our members around the world.

“Jon has a strong track record of managing multi-disciplinary international teams and delivering results, and he will help (ISC)² to continue our rapid growth and global expansion while ensuring security is always a primary consideration.”

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Two-Fifths of Ransomware Victims Still Paying Up

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Two-Fifths of Ransomware Victims Still Paying Up

Two-fifths (39%) of ransomware victims paid their extorters over the past three years, with the majority of these spending at least $100,000, according to new Anomali research.

The security vendor hired The Harris Poll to complete its Cyber Resiliency Survey  interviewing 800 security decision-makers in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand, the UAE, Mexico and Brazil.

Some 87% said their organization had been the victim of a successful attack resulting in damage, disruption, or a breach since 2019. However, 83% said they’d experienced more attacks since the start of the pandemic.

Over half (52%) were ransomware victims, with 39% paying up. Of these, 58% gave their attackers between $100,000 and $1m, while 7% handed over more than $1m.

This will have helped increase the total figure for cybercrime losses over the period. In 2019, just 15% of responding organizations reported losses of $500,000 or more, but this figure almost doubled to 28% by the following year. Figures for 2021 weren’t available.

Part of the challenge appears to be the inability of organizations to quickly detect and respond to any suspicious activity on their networks. Less than half (46%) said they strongly agree current solutions can evolve to detect new globally identified threats.

This is born out in response times: organizations take several days to detect known attacks from adversaries, including cybercrime organizations (3.6 days), individual hackers (3.5 days), APTs (3.3 days) and nation-states (2.9 days), the research claimed.

“We’ve known that cyberattacks have been increasing over the course of the pandemic, but we didn’t know to what degree global enterprises as a whole were being impacted,” said Anomali president Hugh Njemanze.

“This research reveals that adversaries have not only stepped up the number of attacks they have started launching since COVID-19 first struck the world, but have also greatly improved their success rates.”

It will remain frustrating for industry watchers that many organizations are still paying their extorters.

Research has revealed that even those who do so find their stolen data is leaked or monetized by their attackers in any case. A separate study claimed that paying might actually double the cost of recovery.

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#COVID19 Phishing Emails Surge 500% on Omicron Concerns

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#COVID19 Phishing Emails Surge 500% on Omicron Concerns

The latest COVID-19 variant has led to a 521% increase in phishing attacks using the virus as a lure to trick users into clicking, according to Barracuda Networks.

Cyber-criminals often use newsworthy events in their social engineering attacks, and COVID-19 provided a bumper opportunity when it emerged in 2020.

The security vendor observed a 667% month-on-month surge in COVID-19 phishing emails from February to March that year. It recorded another significant increase when new vaccines were released at the start of 2021.

Now public concern over the highly transmissible Omicron variant is catching the eye of phishers.

Among the tactics used to trick users into clicking on malicious links and/or entering personal details are offers of counterfeit or unauthorized COVID-19 tests and protective equipment such as masks or gloves.

Some impersonate testing labs and providers, or even employees sharing their results, said Barracuda.

In other phishing emails, the user may receive a fake notification for an unpaid order of tests and is urged to provide their PayPal details to complete delivery of the kit, the vendor claimed.

Barracuda Networks CTO, Fleming Shi, said the answer lies in improving employee phishing awareness training and plugging in advanced email security.

“Capitalizing on the chaos of the pandemic is not a new trend in the world of cybercrime. Yet with constantly evolving tactics, and new trends to latch on to, it’s easy to see why scammers are not giving up on this trick,” he added.

“Just like the threat of COVID-19, pandemic-themed scams are not going to disappear overnight, but fortunately, there are a number of tactics that businesses and consumers can employ to ensure they remain protected.”

In related news, a Comparitech study this week claimed that unscrupulous healthcare workers are enabling a massive black market in COVID-19 digital vaccination certificates and passes.

The researchers found dark web adverts looking for any such workers who empathize with the anti-vaxxers buying these passes.

“When someone buys a fraudulent certificate, they must first sign up for their country’s respective COVID vaccination database. They send their name, PIN number and other necessary info to the vendor,” Comparitech explained.

“A doctor or other healthcare worker marks that person’s record with confirmed vaccination. The buyer’s QR code then becomes valid. It takes just a few hours for the process to complete once a purchase is made.”

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Security hygiene and posture management: A 2022 priority

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While cybersecurity is complex and multifaceted, security certifications (i.e., CISSP common body of knowledge 8 domains), regulations (i.e., HIPAA, PCI DSS, etc.), and best practices (i.e., CIS critical security controls) all recommend starting cybersecurity programs at the same place: security hygiene and posture management.  Experts agree that strong cybersecurity starts with the basics, like knowing about all IT assets deployed, establishing secure configurations, monitoring “drift” from these secure configurations, prioritizing remediation actions based on risk scores, and validating that everything is working as it should.

To read this article in full, please click here

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