social engineering

This Week In Security: Ebay’s School of Hard Knocks

It’s the end of another busy week in the security world. As we’re wont to do at The Security Ledger, we had DUO Security Evangelist Mark Stanislav in to the deluxe Security Ledger Studios to talk about the events of the week. On the agenda this week: the continued fallout from the hack of online auction giant eBay. The company ran into a thicket of criticism this week for the breach and its botched response. Despite knowing about the security breach for weeks, eBay seemed unprepared for the fallout once the news became public. Beyond its statements to the press, the company hadn’t taken steps to streamline the (inevitable) flood of customers who wanted to update their password. In fact, more than a day after the news broke, eBay still hadn’t made mention of it on their home page. What lessons can we learn from the breach at online auction […]

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FireEye Report: Iranian Hacker Group Becoming More Sophisticated

A report from the security firm FireEye claims that hacking crews based in Iran have become more sophisticated in recent years. They are now linked to malicious software campaigns targeting western corporations and domestic actors who attempt to circumvent Internet filters put in place by the ruling regime.   The report, dubbed “Operation Saffron Rose,”(PDF)  was released on Tuesday. In a blog post accompanying the research, FireEye researchers say that it has identified a group of hackers it is calling the “Ajax Security Team” that appears to have emerged out of Iranian hacker forums such as Ashiyane and Shabgard. Once limited to website defacements, the Ajax team has graduated to malware-based espionage and other techniques associated with “advanced persistent threat” (APT) style actors, FireEye said. The researchers claim that the group has been observed using social engineering techniques to implant custom malware on victims’ computers. The group’s objectives seem to align with those […]

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Dog being rewarded

Is Pavlovian Password Management The Answer?

Something hit me straight in the face that may be a method for inducing cognitive awareness to end users in regards to password management. Ironically this also has a side effect of scalability when managing password changes. It isn’t completely flushed out but I wouldn’t mind getting some opinions on this. I am thinking of prototyping this in a PAM module in my spare time. Here goes… For end users we have been trying to get users to understand the importance of constructing good passwords. We provide guidance on what a good password is (even though the guidance that I have seen is still usually unacceptable in most places when compared to NIST guidelines). We spend a lot of time telling the user to “do this because security experts advise it, or it’s part of our policy” but we don’t really provide an incentive or an understanding of why we tell them to do this. Well humans are programmable, and the best […]

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Retail Breach - Who is Next?

Update: Retail Breaches Spread. Point of Sale Malware A Suspect.

Reuters is reporting on Monday that the recently disclosed hack of box store retailer Target Inc. was just one of a series of attacks against U.S. retailers, including Target, the luxury department store Neiman Marcus and other, as-yet-unnamed companies.* The story adds to other, recent revelations, including the breach at Neiman Marcus, which was first disclosed by the security blog Krebsonsecurity.com on Friday. Also on Monday, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel confirmed that his company was the victim of malicious software installed on point of sale (PoS) systems at the store. According to the Reuters report, Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are just two retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season. The story cites unnamed sources “familiar with attacks,” which have yet to be publicly disclosed. Breaches of “at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target,” according […]

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Target: Hack Exposed Data On 70 Million

Target provided some guidance on its fourth quarter earnings on Friday and, not incidentally, dropped another bombshell in the long-running story about the November data breach that exposed credit card information on some 40 million customers. It turns out that the credit card numbers were just the tip of a much larger iceberg. The box store retailer now claims that its investigation of that incident revealed that data on around 70 million customers was exposed, including e-mail addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses and more. In a statement, Target said that much of the stolen data was “partial in nature,” but that it will reach out to customers whose e-mail addresses were stolen to warn them about potential fraud, including “phishing” e-mails that purport to come from Target. “I know that it is frustrating for our guests to learn that this information was taken and we are truly sorry they are […]

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