Showing posts with label Phishing Detection. Show all posts
New Ransomware program threatens to publish user files
The program's creators try to scare users into paying by threatening to publish their files online.
Ransomware creators have taken their extortion one step further: In addition to encrypting people's private files and demanding money before releasing a key, they now threaten to publish those files on the Internet if they're not paid.
This worrying development has recently been observed in a new ransomware program dubbed Chimera that was documented by the Anti-Botnet Advisory Centre, a service of the German Association of the Internet Industry.
The attackers behind this new threat target mainly businesses by sending rogue emails to specific employees that masquerade as job applications or business offers. The emails contain a link to a malicious file hosted on Dropbox.
Once Chimera infects a computer it starts encrypting the local files. After the first reboot it displays a ransom note on the user's desktop. The attackers ask for a payment of around 630 euro ($685) in Bitcoin in order to provide the decryption key.
Up to this point, the process is similar to that followed by other ransomware programs. However, Chimera's creators have taken their intimidation attempts to a new low. In their ransom note they claim that if they're not paid they will publish the user's files on the Internet.
There's no evidence that any victim's personal data has yet been released online, the German Anti-Botnet Advisory Centre said in a blog post.It's not clear if the ransomware program does indeed siphon off user files before or after encrypting them. But the threat could be enough to scare even users who have backups into paying.
Ransomware programs typically encrypt data locally and don't upload it to command-and-control servers because that would require a lot of storage space, even if attackers restrict the theft to certain file types such as pictures.But the prospect of this happening in the future is scary, as it would pose a major privacy risk to businesses and consumers alike.
Read more..
Top 10 Network Security Threats
Vendor researcher includes USB drives, smartphones as top security risks. With cyber-threats becoming a daily headache for IT security staff, it helps to have some advice, or at least know what to look out for. A network security software provider, offered his observations on the top 10 threats that can harm networks from the inside and ways to combat them.
“The ways that the networks can be compromised five years ago internally, certainly still exist. It’s just that today, that list is really growing, and that’s why this is ongoing research,”
“It’s really an ongoing case again of all this data that we’re seeing worldwide, all this feedback we’re getting, all the new threats that we’re seeing and how those threats can potentially affect systems,”
According to the researchers, the top 10 internal network vulnerabilities are:
- USB drives
- Laptops and netbooks
- Wireless access points
- Miscellaneous USB devices (digital cameras, MP3 players, etc.)
- Employees borrowing others’ machines or devices
- The Trojan Human (attackers who visit sites disguised as employee personnel or contractors)
- Optical media (CDs, DVDs, etc.)
- Lack of employee alertness
- Smartphones
The list also includes advice for prevention and mitigation, with tips like implementing asset control policies to handle removable media threats and implementing an encrypted file system for sensitive data.
Some potential security threats such as smartphones can be dangerous in part because people don’t see them as threats. And even though they can house viruses, the devices can threaten networks in ways people may not think of.
“If you have any sort of confidential information and you have access to that, even if the document doesn’t leave the quarantined area and you take a picture of that with a smartphone, you can send that over [a] 3G network. You can just keep it on the smartphone and walk out with it,”
But when it comes to locking down networks and implementing security protocols, the government may be in a different position than the private sector when it comes to enforcement.
“They have a heavier hand. They can enforce this and say, ‘OK, across all agencies, we are banning this until we can think of what’s going on with this.’ So that is a good thing in my view because if you can properly enforce something, and you can take action on that, then it’s a step forward,”But there could be drawbacks.