Last week, the United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) advised on initial steps to take in response to the SolarWinds software that was compromised by advanced persistent threat actors. While federal agencies were under a deadline to complete certain actions, this issue will require continued clean-up and longer-term...

We’ve previously discussed best practices for securing Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services but, this time, we are going to turn our attention to Google Cloud Platform. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is growing at an impressive 83 percent year over year but generally receives less focus than AWS and Azure.We can use some of our best practice cloud...

Vulnerability Description The United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has advised that an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor was able to insert sophisticated malware into officially signed and released updates to the SolarWinds network management software. The attacks have been ongoing since at least March 2020 and...

Digital threats confronting Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) are on the rise. That’s because attackers are increasingly going after the Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) that shareholders use to protect these assets. In their report “Caught in the Crosshairs: Are Utilities Keeping Up with the Industrial Cyber...

For the longest time, or as far as I can remember, the holy grail of all networking platforms has been the need for a single pane of glass, that single source of all information that you would need to be most effective.So, what is a single pane of glass? If you take it at face value, it simply means a window that consists of a single square frame...

Today’s VERT Threat Alert addresses Microsoft’s December 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-918 on Wednesday, December 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs There are no In-The-Wild or Disclosed CVEs patched this month. CVE Breakdown by Tag While historical Microsoft...

Tripwire's November 2020 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle. First on the patch priority list this month are three vulnerabilities in Oracle WebLogic Server that have recently been included within the Metasploit exploit framework. Supported versions of Oracle WebLogic Server that...

Organisations are still underestimating the risks created by insufficiently secured operational technology (OT). One current example comes from Germany. According to a report by heise.de, external security testers consider it “likely” that a successful serious cyberattack against the publicly owned water company Berliner Wasserbetriebe could lead to a...

The Lazarus Group (also known as Guardians of Peace or Whois) is a notorious cybercrime gang made up of unknown individuals. According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations, the group is a North Korean “state-sponsored hacking organization.” However, some believe that their connections to North Korea might be a false flag intending...

U.S. Federal Cybersecurity Today Computer security regulations have come a long way from their early beginnings. Even before the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), there was the Computer Security Act of 1987 (CSA). The Computer Security Act was enacted by the 100th United States Congress in response to a lack of computer security...

In October, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released its “2020 Staff Report Lessons Learned from Commission-Led CIP Reliability Audits.” The report summarizes the Commission’s observations from Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) audits performed in conjunction with staff from Regional Entities and the North American Electric...

The outbreak of COVID-19 has led many businesses to transition a large number of employees to remote work. The shift could end up becoming a long-term trend; it’s expected to continue after the pandemic ends. Therefore, it is more important than ever to develop strategies for managing and responding to risks within your organization. Internal risk...

If high-tech gadgets are on your holiday shopping list, it is worth taking a moment to think about the particular risks they may bring. Under the wrong circumstances, even an innocuous gift may introduce unexpected vulnerabilities. In this blog series, VERT will be looking at some of the Internet’s best-selling holiday gifts with an eye toward their...

Hacked air conditioning and plummeting elevators? Imagine that you are in an elevator in a high rise building when suddenly the elevator starts to plummet with no apparent stopping mechanism other than the concrete foundation below. While this may sound like something from a Hollywood movie, consider the idea that a securely tethered, fully...

Chloe Messdaghi, VP of Strategy at Point3, advocate and activist joins the show to explain common misconceptions about the hacking community and how we can do better to combat those stigmas. She also unpacks the diversity challenges specifically in the infosec industry. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7G9cXfVFeFxCfoEdhZlHOk?si...

Malicious actors are targeting Apple. Although Apple introduced a notarization mechanism to scan and prevent malicious code from running on Apple devices, attackers have found ways to circumvent this process. Such Apple-notarized malware constitutes a threat to macOS users. Let us start by exploring what Apple notarization is. We will then discuss...

The notion that the time we are living in now is “unprecedented” is a common one, but historians and philosophers alike will happily note that things are rarely so different that we can’t learn a lot from the past. Despite IT often being dominated by forward-thinking individuals developing novel and innovative new designs, a lot of the problems and...

Digital attack attempts in industrial environments are on the rise. In February 2020, IBM X-Force reported that it had observed a 2,000% increase in the attempts by threat actors to target Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Operational Technology (OT) assets between 2018 and 2020. This surge eclipsed the total number of attacks against organizations...

One significant negative implication of technology's continual evolution is proportional advancement in nefarious internet activities, particularly cyber attacks. The past few years have seen a rising sophistication in cyber attacks at levels never experienced before. The worst fact is that attacks will likely only continue to get more advanced. To...

Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s exam division issued a Risk Alert (the “Alert”) where it carried out several targeted cybersecurity investigations. The agency is now concerned with how there’s been an increase in a specific type of hack known as “credential stuffing.“ This cyberattack involves using stolen credentials to log into...