Hacking, Security & Privacy News - Page 68

The rise and fall of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange took just a few years, but left a serious black mark on the budding cryptocurrency market. More consumers and retailers are willing to experiment using bitcoins as currency and potential investments, despite continued security concerns.

The actual bitcoin protocol hasn't been breached by cybercriminals, and thieves have found ways to compromise bitcoin storage solutions, exchanges, and bitcoin owners directly. With no government regulation and very little insurance of recouping lost funds, some have shied away from jumping into the bitcoin market.

"It's important to remember that Bitcoin as a protocol and the blockchain, the record of transactions, has no known security vulnerabilities," said Trevor Murphy, Chief Technology Officer of bitcoin storage solution company BitStash. "It's impossible to counterfeit bitcoin and an impossibility with current computing power to modify a transaction that has been confirmed, say five or six times on the blockchain. This is very important. In fact, bitcoin marks the first time in human history that a currency has these attributes. People have been counterfeiting money, bouncing checks and chipping little bits off gold coins since time began."

A new advanced persistent threat (APT), known as DarkHotel, is now targeting C-level executives of major businesses. Instead of trying to compromise governments to steal state secrets, Dark Hotel is cleverly engineered to conduct corporate espionage, likely for a foreign state-sponsored group, utilizing poor wireless hotel security - a rather clever technique for when business leaders are staying in hotels.

Utilizing Flash zero-day exploits and using spear-phishing to compromise users, DarkHotel has been found to steal and re-use digital certificates that inject malicious code. The attacks have taken aim at business visitors in the United States, Japan, South Korea, India, mainland China, Russia, Germany, Hong Kong and Ireland.

"Just think about the playing field IT security professionals have to deal with, and why they need all the help they can get," said Joe Caruso, Global Digital Forensics (GDC) CEO and CTO. "There are mobile devices like smartphones and tablets being used more than ever before, all with seemingly endless choices of software and applications, and all providing a potential threat vector for cross-platform intrusions and attacks."

The recent launch of World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, the fifth expansion for the popular MMORPG game series, received a large amount of attention. The game launched in Europe and the number of players trying to enter Draenor caused problems, and Blizzard added multiple entrance points to the game - and while this initially helped - North American users were met by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

"While that solution helped a ton for our North American launch, we ran into a few other issues, including a distributed denial of service attack, that resulted in increased latency," the company confirmed.

Blizzard was able to recover from the DDoS attack, which no group has claimed responsibility for, though there are still problems related to server load. The game company will continue to work on server time outs and other improvements to help ease server load - and make sure gamers are able to log in and play with minimal interruptions.

The US State Department is now the fourth US federal government agency to be attacked by organized hackers, with hackers targeting unclassified computer systems. The "activity of concern" did not impact any classified systems, and shows foreign state-sponsored cybercriminals are having success attacking the US federal government.

"This has impacted some of our unclassified email traffic and our access to public websites from our main unclassified system," according to a senior State Department official. The State Department tried to avoid saying it was compromised, and said routine "maintenance" would be carried out, but the Associated Press was able to verify it was a cyberattack.

In previous weeks, the National Weather Service, US Postal Service and White House have all been targeted - and likely originated from Russian-sponsored cyberattackers.

The adoption of virtual currencies, mainly bitcoin, has continued to expand in 2014 - with a growing number of businesses accepting bitcoin payments - but legitimate securities offerings showing greater interest in virtual currencies face cybersecurity problems.

In addition to currency volatility, which has scared some investors away, associated anonymity and growing risk of cyber theft from hackers is increasing.

"We are living in an age where traditional financial and investing relationships are being transformed rapidly and sometimes in confusing fashion by technology and innovation," said Glenn Moyer, Secretary of Banking and Securities. "It is especially important that investors fully understand where they are putting their money, and with whom they are investing it."

Police authorities in Beijing have detained three suspects accused of creating the "WireLurker" malware targeting Apple iOS and OS X computers and mobile devices in China. The Chinese security firm Qihoo 360 Technology provided a tip that led to the arrest of three suspects, Chen, Wang and Li, and all three have been charged with the creation and distribution of WireLurker. It appears WireLurker was created to generate monetary profits for the organizers, which wouldn't be a surprising confirmation that cybercriminals are racking up large amounts of profits from cybercrimes.

Apple moved quickly to block the WireLurker malware from spreading any further, and recommended users only download apps from trusted sources.

It's ironic that China, believed to be one of the largest state sponsors of organized cyberattacks against the Western world, moved so quickly to arrest the creators of WireLurker - the malware victimized Chinese users only, and didn't have a widespread presence outside of the country.

Security threats continue to give IT professionals headaches, but hardware failure, lost data, and other potential problems are often overlooked. Even though almost nine out of 10 IT professionals have lost data, half of respondents don't back up data because they forgot to do it, according to a new survey published by the CloudBerry Lab backup and management solutions company.

Furthermore 88 percent of IT professionals suffered lost data due to hardware failure, data corruption, malware or accidental deletion. In a rather surprising finding, 38 percent have never bothered to test recoverability of backed up data, while 47 percent end up waiting up to one month before backing up data.

Depending on the type of business, IT professionals recommend at least weekly data backups - though some industries should have critical information backed up on a daily basis. CloudBerry Lab found 32 percent of IT professionals understood they weren't protected or were unsure if their backups were secured with encryption, password protection, or some other type of security protocol.

The FBI is aware of state-sponsored cyberattacks, with a large volume of attacks blamed on the Chinese and Russian governments, but finding ways to arrest and prosecute hackers overseas is difficult. Companies are struggling to keep their networks secure, as more employees and customers are at risk of data breaches with these groups evolving into better organized, well-funded cybercriminals.

"Since cybercrime is not found in only one country and is globally dispersed, law enforcement agencies must work together on identifying and arresting the actors perpetrating the crimes," a Special Agent from the FBI recently said during a webinar. "The biggest challenge is when these actors live in countries where the cybercrime laws are not distinct, or in some cases non-existent. There have been cases where these actors have traveled through cooperative regions of the world and arrests have been made."

Realistically, many of the state-sponsored cybercriminals will remain out of the reach of the FBI - and other Western European governments - but China, Russia, and select other countries are the largest perpetrators of attacks.

Apple hasn't heard reports of any users that have been compromised by the "Masque Attack," but cybersecurity experts are still asking Apple engineers to develop new protections to ensure enterprise users are more secure.

"We designed OS X and iOS with built-in security safeguards to help protect customers and warn them before installing potentially malicious software," an Apple spokesman recently said. "We're not aware of any customers that have actually been affected by this attack."

Cybercriminals want to hijack OS X and iOS users - and have largely struggled to find security loopholes - but are increasing their efforts into malware development.

Airplane flights have given the US Department of Justice (DoJ) the perfect opportunity to snoop on American citizens with a custom surveillance program operated by the US Marshals Service. The covert program originally started in 2007 and uses "dirtboxes," portable cell towers, that can secretly collect identity and phone locations on subscribers.

The flights leave from five different airports across the United States, and can snoop on thousands of citizens during any given flight. Specific details regarding the program remain unclear, but the US Marshals conduct these missions "on a regular basis" - and not surprisingly, the DoJ is refusing to comment. The phones are in continuous communication with local cell towers, providing a great opportunity to snoop while being discreet.

Following former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's mass surveillance disclosures, American citizens have become more concerned of government spying.