Author Archives: Patrick Howell O'Neill

Senator pushes NSA, DHS to help government officials secure devices and accounts

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Sen. Ron Wyden urged the heads of the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to help government officials protect personal devices and online accounts from attacks by hackers and foreign governments. Wyden, D-Ore., asks for a voluntary and regular device screening program, a cybersecurity checkup for personal accounts and collaboration with major telecom and internet companies to flag accounts of senior government officials for extra security. In a letter sent on Friday, Wyden cited a report that White House chief of staff John Kelly’s personal smartphone was infected with malware. “General Kelly joins a long list of senior government officials whose accounts or devices have been compromised in recent years, including CIA Director John Brennan, Colin Powell, John Podesta and Sarah Palin,” Wyden wrote. Chris Soghoian, the former ACLU technologist, is once again leading the charge behind Wyden’s tech efforts and is listed as the point of contact for moving […]

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NotPetya ransomware cost Merck more than $310 million

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The NotPetya cyberattack has cost the American pharmaceutical giant Merck more than $135 million in sales and $175 million in additional costs since June, the company said in a call with investors Friday. That number comes in addition to the $300 million loss FedEx said it suffered when systems were disrupted until as late as September. The shipping company Maersk lost $200 million when its systems were infected by the ransomware outbreak. The nation of Ukraine got the worst, however, with more than 1,500 people and organizations reporting being affected by the ransomware. In response, NATO pledged to increase aid to Ukraine’s cybersecurity. The June attack impacted Merck’s global manufacturing, research and sales for nearly a week. Company email was disabled, 70,000 employees were forbidden from touching their computers, and instructions were sent via copy-and-pasted text messages. The exact cause of the infection remains publicly unclear. Merck’s pain may not yet be over. […]

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Two lawmakers want to give consumers a way to know if their IoT devices are secure

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The internet-connected devices that broke the internet in 2016 — what kid needs a Wi-Fi connected teddy bear? — sell like mad to consumers who have little idea if any security lies below the interfaces. One year after the Mirai botnet attacks brought some of the biggest tech companies to their knees, a new bill introduced on Friday aims to create a voluntary cybersecurity certification program to “independently identify, verify, and label compliant Internet-of-Things devices with strong cybersecurity standards.” The bill, known as the “Cyber Shield Act,” was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and in the House of Representatives by Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. The act would establish an advisory committee to evaluate devices like cameras, cellphones, laptops and baby monitors. Companies meeting the standards could display a label on their products that would better inform customers on security issues. “It is critical that we prioritize developing products with the security of […]

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Android Play Protect finishes dead last in first security tests

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Android’s new Play Protect security system finished dead last in the first round of real-world testing in which Google’s cybersecurity software was put up against nearly two dozen well-established competitors by the German antivirus testing lab AV-Test. The testing, conducted in September 2017, showed Play Protect detecting 65.8 percent of new malware samples and 79.2 percent of month-old malware. Both numbers count for last place in their categories when compared with results from rivals like Trend Micro, which finished with a 100 percent mark both times. The industry average was 95.7 percent detection on new malware and 98.4 percent detection on month-old malware. When reached for comment, a Google spokespersom promised to respond to the test results but did not offer a response immediately. The Android security apps that finished best in AV-Test’s rankings were those from Trend Micro, Tencent, Sophos, PSafe DFNDR, Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky, G Data, Cheetah Mobile, Bitdefender, Avast, Antiy and AhnLab. Google’s Play […]

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Congress promises more hearings on Kaspersky

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Little substance was offered on Capitol Hill Wednesday at the first of multiple hearings examining the accusations swirling around Kaspersky Lab’s alleged espionage actions against the United States. None of the witnesses came from the Department of Homeland Security, which banned Kaspersky from federal systems, nor the White House, which backed the decision, nor the intelligence community, which provided the data and intelligence behind the directive. Instead, officials from NIST, GSA and two private companies gave no new insight into the case. It’s unclear why these witnesses were chosen to testify instead of other options more closely involved in the case. More hearings on the Moscow-based cybersecurity firm are likely on the way, but it’s not clear if any U.S. government experts or Kaspersky employees will be present. CEO Eugene Kaspersky was invited to a hearing originally scheduled in September, but Congress has been silent since the hearing was canceled. Eugene […]

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High-severity vulnerability found in SecureDrop system

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A high severity vulnerability found in SecureDrop, a whistleblower submission system used by newsrooms and advocacy groups, prompted a patch from developers and coordination with dozens of prominent news organizations that use the software to communicate with sensitive sources. The bug, blamed on developer error, leaves the system unable to verify key packages and can grant remote code execution against targets. Some SecureDrop users, including the New York Times, are reinstalling the software as part of a general update. Other organizations “decided that the chance of an attack was so remote that they do not believe a reinstall is necessary,” SecureDrop developers explained. The vulnerability has not been spotted in the wild and “would be incredibly difficult to pull off,” according to a bulletin posted on Tuesday afternoon. While stressing the difficulty of exploitation, SecureDrop developers said it’s “likely that only a nation-state actor with network-level access would have the ability to conduct […]

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Senate mulls subpoena to force White House cyber czar to testify on cybersecurity

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Sen. John McCain and the Senate Armed Services Committee railed against the Trump administration on Thursday when White House cybersecurity coordinator Rob Joyce failed to show up to a hearing focused on defending against cyberattacks. Thursday’s hearing quickly became contentious when the White House only offered up an empty chair despite Joyce being invited to appear alongside senior officials from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. McCain, R-Arizona, led a chorus of sharp attacks against the White House culminating in the suggestion of using a subpoena to force Joyce to testify and the promise of a full committee meeting to evaluate the committee’s options and the excuse cited by the White House because of “executive privilege” and “precedent against having nonconfirmed [National Security Council] staff testifying before Congress.” As the White House cyber czar, Joyce’s power and responsibilities lay at the heart of the topic of today’s senate hearing which […]

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DOJ examines controversial new ‘hack back’ bill

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Washington is waiting and watching for the Department of Justice to weigh in on the newly introduced Active Cyber Defence Certainty (ACDC) Act, a controversial proposal to legalize companies’ ability to “hack back” after being targeted in cyberattacks. Speaking at CyberTalks in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, DOJ special counsel Leonard Bailey said the department is still looking at the House bill, and he commended co-sponsors Tom Graves, R-Ga. and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. for taking a years-long discussion “and actually producing legislative text.” “We look forward to thinking about that and figuring out what that balance looks like,” Bailey said. The DOJ’s position on ACDC is crucial because the bill would amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) as well as requiring law enforcement oversight and reports to the government by “entities that use active-defense techniques,” Graves explained last week when the newest version of the bill was introduced. NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers warned Congress in May […]

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Chinese-linked trojan found in breach of Western aerospace firm

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A threat actor with “significant” links to a Chinese advanced hacking group was spotted attacking a western aerospace company, according to the cybersecurity firm Cylance. A remote access trojan (RAT) known as “Hacker’s Door” was discovered during a recent Cylance-led incident response when an unidentified western aerospace company was breached. Hacker’s Door dates back to 2004, but has rarely been found in the wild, due to being intermittently improved, updated and sold over the last decade. The connection to a Chinese APT comes in the form a stolen certificate known to be used by the Winnti group. The link is described as “fairly significant in terms of attribution,” according to Cylance’s Tom Bonner, but not definitive. The RAT is being sold by a Chinese-language developer going by the name “yyt_hac” who timidly asks buyers to avoid “illegal” activity with the tool. The newest version of the tool is designed to run […]

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Severe weakness in Wi-Fi security gives hackers wide access to eavesdrop

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Nearly everyone using Wi-Fi to connect to the internet is being urged by experts to patch their devices on Monday as a new widespread vulnerability to virtually all modern protected Wi-Fi networks leaves a huge swath of internet traffic potentially open for eavesdropping. The vulnerability known as KRACK, short for Key Reinstallation Attack, allows data previously believed to be safely encrypted to be read and manipulated. Importantly, KRACK requires an attacker to be within Wi-Fi range in order to exploit the weakness in WPA2, the 13-year-old protocol securing virtually all modern Wi-Fi networks. “This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on,” researcher Mathy Vanhoef from the Belgian university KU Leuven explained. “The attack works against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to […]

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