In-brief: Gadi Evron recalls the denial of service attacks aimed at the government of Estonia in 2007 – one of the first recognized acts of ‘cyber war’ and a template for incidents that followed. Evron says there were many lessons in that incident – some of which the U.S. and its allies are still struggling to learn.
Threats
Report: we’ll know antivirus is dead when it goes quiet
In-brief: anti-virus software may go out with neither a bang nor a whimper – but utter silence. That’s if the trend towards cyber criminal actors using file-less malware continues, according to a new report.
Analysis of 85K Remote Desktop Hacks Finds Education, Healthcare Top Targets
In-brief: An analysis of 85,000 hacked Remote Desktop Protocol servers from the cyber criminal marketplace xDedic shows that education and healthcare networks were the most often targeted by hackers, who often used brute force password guessing to gain access.
Update: Emboldened, Fancy Bear hacking crew targets French, German Politicians
In-brief: emboldened by media attention for its escapades in the U.S. Presidential election, the hacking crew known as “Fancy Bear” is targeting political parties in France as well as Germany, the firm Trend Micro reported on Tuesday – the latest evidence of meddling in foreign affairs. (Editor’s note: updated to add comment by Michael Sulmeyer, Director of the Cyber Security Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. PFR Apr 25 2017.)
Podcast: Passwords are dying, but they’re not going anywhere
In-brief: Companies like Microsoft and Google have both unveiled initiatives that de-emphasize the traditional, static, alpha-numeric password in recent days. So is the password going the way of the horse and buggy? Don’t be so sure, says Robert Capps of the firm NuData. Capps thinks that passwords will be with us for the foreseeable future and that companies concerned about security need to do more than just find a more secure way to log-in.