Author Archives: Zaid Shoorbajee

Tax prep tools lag in DMARC implementation, advocacy group says

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With tax season underway, a cybersecurity advocacy group is warning that vendors of popular tax preparation tools may be unprepared to protect users from phishing scams. Four out of the eight most popular tax preparation software products don’t employ basic protections against email spoofing, according to testing by the cybersecurity nonprofit Global Cyber Alliance. GCA tested the domains of the popular programs to check what settings they employ under the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) protocol. DMARC is an industry standard designed to detect and prevent email spoofing. GCA’s findings, released last week, are as follows: Reject: Liberty Tax Quarantine: Credit Karma, Jackson Hewitt and Tax Slayer None: Free Tax USA and Turbo Tax No policy: H&R Block and TaxAct DMARC has three levels of protection against emails that try to hijack a particular domain. If an organization employs the “reject” policy — the highest setting — a spoofed […]

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DHS cyber incident response teams closer to becoming permanently codified

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The House approved a bill on Monday that would make the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber incident response teams a permanent fixture within the agency. The DHS Cyber Incident Response Teams Act would codify the agency’s “cyber hunt and incident response teams,” which provide support to organizations running critical infrastructure. The teams often respond to cyber incidents and help organizations mitigate cybersecurity risks. “Everyone is a target,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the bill’s sponsor, on the House floor. “Our enemies don’t just attack individuals and their devices. They also put America’s critical infrastructure sectors in their crosshairs, endangering all aspects of civilian life.” The teams referenced by the bill currently operate in DHS’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC). The bill also would authorize the secretary of Homeland Security to include cybersecurity specialists from the private sector in those response teams. “By fostering this new collaboration between government and private sector, […]

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Election infrastructure ISAC created to share threats specific to voting systems

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States and localities are getting a new, Department of Homeland Security-backed center to coordinate and share information on election security. The Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) was announced Thursday, giving the nation’s 8,800 state and local jurisdictions a dedicated venue to share information about cyberthreats and vulnerabilities specific to election systems and remote security monitoring capabilities. DHS has tasked the nonprofit Center for Internet Security with establishing and running the ISAC. CIS already runs the Multi-State ISAC, which states have been using to coordinate on election security in lieu of any official. “The Elections Infrastructure ISAC will significantly improve communications with and among the elections community as well as enhance the cyber defense tools and capabilities available to protect elections systems,” said CIS Chairman John Gilligan in a press release. The new ISAC was announced at a panel event featuring individuals representing DHS, state-level secretaries of state and state […]

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SEC commissioner: ‘our companies, and our country, are under attack’

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The Securities and Exchange Commissioner says that corporations need to do more to protect investors from the financial damages of data beaches. Speaking at Tulane University’s Corporate Tulane Law School on Thursday, a leader of the SEC plainly stated that American companies are “under attack” from hackers. “The cyberthreat is not primarily a regulatory issue any more than it is primarily a technological issue. Cybercrime is an enterprise-level risk that will require an interdisciplinary approach, significant investments of time and talent by senior leadership and board-level attention,” SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson said. The SEC issued updated guidance last month for how companies should approach the issue of breach disclosure. Jackson said that he only reluctantly joined the guidance because it leaves too much discretion to corporate counsel to decide whether investors should be informed of an incident. “I worry that these judgments have, too often, erred on the side of nondisclosure, […]

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Want to reduce cybercrime? Undermine black market, watch cryptocurrency exchanges, experts say

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The neverending stream of high-profile, large scale data breaches has lawmakers searching for answers on how hackers are benefiting and how to stop them. At a hearing Thursday, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance heard from experts about how to find and crack down on cybercriminals who are swiping and trading massive amounts of individuals’ compromised private information. “The victim of a breach can become a victim repeatedly as their identity can be used to apply for credit cards, mortgages, and other financial products over and over again,” subcommittee Chairman Steve Pearce, R-N.M., said. “Unfortunately, this activity is only becoming more widespread as criminal organizations realize the low cost of entry, the ease of using hacking tools, and the difficulty law enforcement faces trying to apprehend hackers.” Lillian Ablon, an information scientist at the RAND Corporation, explained some ways law enforcement can crack down on black markets for stolen […]

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Information sharing on election security is getting better, officials say

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Federal, state and local officials who oversee election infrastructure and security are optimistic about their ability to share information that’s needed to protect elections from malicious actors. At a Thursday panel hosted by the Center for Internet Security, individuals representing the Department of Homeland Security, state secretaries of state, and state election directors discussed the progress they’ve made on election security coordination since 2016. “The Department of Homeland security and the U.S. government are so involved in election security because starting in 2016, we really did assess that the threat of something happening to our elections was relatively high,” said Bob Kolasky, DHS’s acting undersecretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate. “That does not mean that the risk to our elections systems has to be high.” When the U.S. intelligence community concluded in January 2017 that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, the DHS designated election systems as part of the country’s critical infrastructure. Kolasky acknowledged that […]

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Palo Alto Networks to acquire Evident.io for $300 million

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Palo Alto Networks is acquiring cloud security compliance company Evident.io for $300 million, the two California-based companies announced on Wednesday. The company will leverage Evident.io’s technology in its existing capabilities, which will help customers deploy applications to the cloud more easily and securely. In particular,Palo Alto Networks highlights integrating Evident.io into its API-based security for infrastructure using public cloud services. “Once integrated with the Palo Alto Networks cloud security offering, customers will be able to use a single approach to continuous monitoring, storage security, and compliance validation and reporting,” the company said in a press release. Evident.io provides cloud security and compliance automation services to organizations that use public cloud services like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Organizations that use such services often must comply with regulatory requirements relating to data storage, encryption and access control, among other things. “Organizations tend to lean heavily on manual inspection and audits to validate […]

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Former Equifax executive charged with insider trading after mega breach

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A former Equifax executive is facing charges from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice for insider trading before the company publicly announced a massive breach in September 2017. The SEC said in a press release that Jun Ying, Equifax’s former chief information officer, allegedly used privileged information to conclude that Equifax had suffered a breach and subsequently sold all of his stocks for a total of nearly $1 million. The agency claims that, by selling stocks before the company’s public notification, Ying dodged $117,000 in losses. “Ying used confidential information to conclude that his company had suffered a massive data breach, and he dumped his stock before the news went public,” said Richard Best, director of the SEC’s regional office in Atlanta in the release. “Corporate insiders who learn inside information, including information about material cyber intrusions, cannot betray shareholders for their own financial benefit.” The U.S. Attorney’s […]

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What’s worse? The AMD chip flaws or the disclosure process?

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A small cybersecurity company and research group is publicly reporting major, Meltdown-style vulnerabilities in chips made by AMD, yet the disclosure itself has sent security researchers into a frenzy about possible ulterior motives. CTS Labs, an Israeli cybersecurity company that purportedly focuses on hardware, launched a website and released a white paper on Tuesday describing 13 security flaws in AMD’s EPYC, Ryzen, Ryzen Pro and Ryzen processors. The chips are used in laptops, mobile devices and servers. The vulnerabilities reportedly include backdoors that would allow attackers to inject malicious code onto AMD’s chips. Such malware could allow attackers to take complete control of AMD processors, steal network credentials, install malware and read and write on protected memory areas, among other risks. CTS Labs released the vulnerability information on a public website, amdflaws.com, saying it released the findings for the sake of public awareness. “In particular, we urge the community to pay closer attention to […]

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Victims can sue Yahoo for massive breaches, federal judge says

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Plaintiffs suing Yahoo for failing to protect all of the company’s 3 billion users can move forward with the majority of their case, a federal judge in California ruled on Friday. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh denied in part a motion by Verizon, which owns Yahoo, to dismiss the case. The plaintiffs are claiming that Yahoo was too slow to correct security vulnerabilities, as well as disclose three data breaches between 2013 and 2016. Since Yahoo’s breaches affected virtually every user, the plaintiffs are seeking class certification. “Plaintiffs explain that, had they known about the inadequacy of these security measures, they ‘would have taken measures to protect themselves,’” Koh writes in the ruling. “Plaintiffs’ allegations are sufficient to show that they would have behaved differently had Defendants disclosed the security weaknesses of the Yahoo Mail system.” The plaintiffs argue that the breaches have put them at risk of identity theft and forced them to spend time […]

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