In this 67th episode of The Security Ledger Podcast, we talk with Bob Rudis of the firm Rapid7 about KRACK, a security hole that affects most wi-fi hotspots. Also: Or Katz of Akamai talks about that company’s work analyzing fast-flux botnets, which have become like AirBnB for cyber criminals looking for a place to host malicious networks. Finally: Tim Jarrett of Veracode tells us how a single security hole in an open source library found its way into millions of applications.
Malware
Research Finds Home Routers fill ranks of Fast Flux Botnets
Research from the firm Akamai finds cyber criminals are marrying vulnerable home routers to sophisticated “fast flux” command and control tools to create long-lived, cyber criminal infrastructure.
Is CCleaner the Tip of an Iceberg of Supply Chain Hacks? And Alexa: did China hack us Last Night?
In the latest Security Ledger podcast, Paul speaks with Michael Gorelik of the firm Morphisec about the hack of security software vendor CCleaner – a hack that Gorelik’s firm discovered. CCleaner, he says, may just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to supply chain hacks. And: “Alexa: have we been hacked by China?” Paul speaks with Grant Wernick of the firm Insight Engines, which is releasing a product this week that integrates the Splunk log management tool with Amazon’s voice assistant.
Report: 1.9b Records Lost in First Half of 2017, topping 2016
A survey of public data breaches has found a large increase in the number of records that have been stolen, lost or compromised in the first six months of 2017. The firm Gemalto said that the number of records caught up in breaches jumped 164% from the second half of 2016 and the first half 2017 to almost 2 billion lost records. That is more than the total number of records lost in all of 2016. Gemalto said its latest data from the company’s Breach Level Index, a global database of public data breaches, indicates 918 data breaches led to 1.9 billion data records being compromised worldwide in the first half of 2017. Most of the leaked records came from just 22 large data breaches, each involving more than one million compromised records, the company said. How many records? Nobody knows. Even more worrying: of the 918 data breaches, the […]
FedEx: NotPetya Cost $300m, Wrecked Q1 Earnings
FedEx, the worldwide package delivery giant, said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that the NotPetya ransomware outbreak in late June has cost it an estimated $300 million dollars and forced the company to miss its fiscal first quarter earnings. The company said in its quarterly “8K” report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the impact of NotPetya on TNT Express N.V., a newly acquired subsidiary based in The Netherlands. “Worldwide operations of TNT Express were significantly affected during the first quarter by the June 27 NotPetya cyber attack,” the company reported. The subsidiary has restored “substantially all” critical operational systems but “volume, revenue and profit still remain below previous levels.” The statement is the latest on the effects of NotPetya, which spread by way of bogus updates for software by the Ukrainian firm MeDoc. In July, FedEx said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission […]